Presupposition and the processing of literary texts
The integration of linguistics and literature in this thesis departs theoretically and methodologically from the Stylistics and Cognitive Poetics interdisciplinary motivated by Roman Jakobson and the Prague Structuralists. The basic intuition about presupposition in this thesis is that it refers either to information assumed by the speaker to be held in the mind of the hearer, or to information assumed by interlocutors to be in the common ground of discourse. Either of these views of the presupposition makes the relation acquire all the features of linguistic underdeterminacy and therefore requiring interpersonal negotiation, background assumptions and cultural knowledge to be fixed. There are therefore two intertwining objectives for this inquiry: (i) to study the pragmatic category of presupposition as it operates in the ordinary processes of literary communication; and (ii) to study literary communication as part of social communication. My methodology is empirical: tracking readersâ use of their presuppositions as they create contexts which allow them to make sense of the texts they read. This is done under experimental conditions and during interviews. I use naturalistic texts from different cultural
Arko, Joseph
Presupposition and the processing of literary texts. The integration of linguistics and literature in this thesis departs theoretically and methodologically from the Stylistics and Cognitive Poetics interdisciplinary motivated by Roman Jakobson and the Prague Structuralists. The basic intuition about presupposition in this thesis is that it refers either to information assumed by the speaker to be held in the mind of the hearer, or to information assumed by interlocutors to be in the common ground of discourse. Either of these views of the presupposition makes the relation acquire all the features of linguistic underdeterminacy and therefore requiring interpersonal negotiation, background assumptions and cultural knowledge to be fixed. There are therefore two intertwining objectives for this inquiry: (i) to study the pragmatic category of presupposition as it operates in the ordinary processes of literary communication; and (ii) to study literary communication as part of social communication. My methodology is empirical: tracking readersâ use of their presuppositions as they create contexts which allow them to make sense of the texts they read. This is done under experimental conditions and during interviews. I use naturalistic texts from different cultural
presupposition processing literary_text integration linguistics literature depart theoretically methodologically stylistics cognitive poetics interdisciplinary motivate roman jakobson prague basic intuition presupposition refers either information assume speaker hold mind hearer information assume interlocutor common_ground discourse either view presupposition make relation acquire feature linguistic underdeterminacy therefore_require interpersonal negotiation background assumption cultural knowledge fix therefore intertwine objective inquiry study pragmatic category presupposition operate ordinary process literary communication study literary communication part social communication empirical track reader use presupposition create contexts allow make_sense text read experimental condition interview use naturalistic text different cultural