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Part of
Visual Metaphors
Edited by Réka Benczes and Veronika Szelid
[Benjamins Current Topics 124] 2022
► pp. 209–230

Rendering, generalization and variation

On the use of multiple parallel texts as a comparative method in cognitive poetics

| Masaryk University
| Masaryk University

The chapter presents a case study of how the use of multiple parallel texts may be employed as a useful research method in cognitive poetics, using the English version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and its four published Czech versions as the samples. In the analysis, we examine the language of space in alternative verbalizations of the same literary scene across languages (English and Czech) and within the target language (Czech), and the different mental images invoked by the different ways of verbalizing the same scene. Our analysis shows that the use of multiple parallel texts can be a helpful research method in cognitive poetics, in the sense that the method is capable of providing naturalistic and representative linguistic evidence of how languages systematically differ, even for a domain as basic as space.

Keywords: construal, construction, generalization, parallel texts, stylistics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data and method
  • 3.How the systems are similar
  • 4.When the systems differ: Flexibility and irreducible difference
    • 4.1Multiple parallel texts as a window to human cognitive flexibility
    • 4.2Diachrony in multiple parallel texts as a key to identifying an irreducible difference between languages
  • 5.Towards the use of multiple parallel texts as a method in comparative cognitive poetics
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 9 September 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.124.09kno
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