Style and Reader Response
Minds, media, methods
Editors
Style and Reader Response: Minds, media, methods profiles the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches in reception-oriented research in stylistics. Collectively, the chapters investigate how real readers, players, audiences, and viewers respond to, experience, and interpret texts. Contributions to the book investigate discourse types such as contemporary literature, poetry, political speeches, digital fiction, art exhibitions, and online news discourse. The volume also exemplifies the variety of empirical approaches in reception research, with contributors drawing on a range of methods including discussion groups, interviews, questionnaires, and think-aloud protocols with data analysed from both online and offline sources. Style and Reader Response makes an important contribution to an emerging paradigm within stylistics in which verifiable insights from readers are used to generate new models and new understandings of texts across media, with each essay demonstrating the centrality of empirical research for theoretical, methodological, and/or analytical advancements within and beyond stylistics.
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 36] 2021. vii, 236 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgements | pp. vii–viii
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Chapter 1. Responding to styleAlice Bell, Sam Browse, Alison Gibbons and David Peplow | pp. 1–20
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Section I. Minds
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Chapter 2. Interpretation in interaction: On the dialogic nature of responseDavid Peplow and Sara Whiteley | pp. 21–42
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Chapter 3. Modelling an unethical mindJessica Norledge | pp. 43–60
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Chapter 4. Towards an empirical stylistics of critical reception: The oppositional reader in political discourseSam Browse | pp. 61–80
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Chapter 5. A cognitive and cultural reader response theory of character constructionJulia Vaeßen and Sven Strasen | pp. 81–98
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Section II. Media
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Chapter 6. “Why do you insist that Alana is not real?”: Visitors’ perceptions of the fictionality of Andi and Lance Olsen’s ‘there’s no place like time’ exhibitionAlison Gibbons | pp. 99–122
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Chapter 7. Reading hyperlinks in hypertext fiction: An Empirical ApproachIsabelle van der Bom, Lyle Skains, Alice Bell and Astrid Ensslin | pp. 123–142
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Chapter 8. Evaluating news events: Using appraisal for reader responseMartine van Driel | pp. 143–162
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Section III. Methods
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Chapter 9. In defence of introspectionPeter Stockwell | pp. 163–178
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Chapter 10. Reading the readers: Ethical and methodological issues for researching readers and reading in the digital ageBronwen Thomas | pp. 179–196
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Chapter 11. Extra-textuality and affective intensities: Moving out from readers to people, places, and thingsHugh Escott | pp. 197–216
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Chapter 12. Postscript: Toward a reconciliation of empirical traditions in the investigation of reading and literatureMoniek M. Kuijpers | pp. 217–230
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Index | pp. 231–236
“Style and Reader Response: Minds, media, methods expertly showcases the value and versatility of empirical reader response methods in contemporary stylistic research. The studies and methodological applications in this collection trace those inherent dialogic connections that exist between text and reader, and convincingly demonstrate that, regardless of whether the data under focused consideration is the literary text or reader responses, reception-oriented research has much to offer stylistic accounts of reading. [...] The collection celebrates the value of situated and contextualised approaches. It demonstrates that naturalistic methodologies can be empirical, that experimental protocols can be qualitative, and that all such approaches can be systematic and scientific, and rigorous and reliable, in their own right.”
Chloe Harrison, Aston University, in Narrative Inquiry 33:1 (2023)
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Price, Hazel
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This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 march 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Communication Studies
Literature & Literary Studies
Main BIC Subject
CFG: Semantics, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009030: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Pragmatics