Mind, Brain and Narrative
Cambridge University Press, 12/20/2012
EAN 9781107017566, ISBN10: 1107017564
Hardcover, 335 pages, 23.2 x 15.4 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Narratives enable readers to vividly experience fictional and non-fictional contexts. Writers use a variety of language features to control these experiences: they direct readers in how to construct contexts, how to draw inferences and how to identify the key parts of a story. Writers can skilfully convey physical sensations, prompt emotional states, effect moral responses and even alter the readers' attitudes. Mind, Brain and Narrative examines the psychological and neuroscientific evidence for the mechanisms which underlie narrative comprehension. The authors explore the scientific developments which demonstrate the importance of attention, counterfactuals, depth of processing, perspective and embodiment in these processes. In so doing, this timely, interdisciplinary work provides an integrated account of the research which links psychological mechanisms of language comprehension to humanities work on narrative and style.
List of illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgements
1. Narrative and the rhetorical processing framework
2. Fundamentals of text processing
3. Multiple levels
counterfactual worlds and figurative language
4. Attention in text
foregrounding and rhetorical focussing
5. Rhetorical focussing and depth of processing
6. The experiential aspect
using embodiment theory
7. Narrative perspective and the representation of speech and thought
8. Hot cognition
emotion, empathy and suspense
9. Narrative's social impact
persuasion and attitude change
10. Final comments
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Bibliography
Author index
Subject index.
'Sanford and Emmott's Mind, Brain and Narrative is the book of the decade for those in the interdisciplinary discourse sciences who appreciate the nuances of multi-layered narrative representation, comprehension, and communication. They discuss scenario-mapping theory, rhetorical focussing principles, and experiential immersion, which are central to a deep understanding of inferences, perspective, emotions, persuasion, figurative language, embodiment, and other phenomena that continue to mystify empirical researchers and literary scholars.' Arthur C. Graesser, University of Memphis