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Article published In:
Scientific Study of Literature
Vol. 9:1 (2019) ► pp.72–103

What psycholinguistic studies ignore about literary experience

| Cognitive Scientist and Independent Scholar
| University of Alberta

Multiple decades of psycholinguistic research exploring people’s reading of different types of language has delivered much improved understanding of textual comprehension experience. Psycholinguistic studies have typically focused on a few cognitive and linguistic processes presumed to be central in reading comprehension of language, but this emphasis has omitted other processes and products readers commonly experience in their imaginative, aesthetic encounters with literature. Our paper describes some of the limitations of psycholinguistics for explaining people’s literary experiences. Nonetheless, we argue that recent research on embodied simulation processes may help close the gap between psycholinguistics, with its emphasis on generic processes of non-literary language use, and studies associated with the scientific study of literature with their focus on phenomenological, lived reactions to literary texts.

Keywords: embodied simulations, figurative language, literature, metaphor, pragmatics, psycholinguistics
Article outline
  • Psycholinguistic studies on figurative language
  • Social motivations as framers of literary experience
  • Phenomenological studies of literary experience
  • Embodied simulations as the process and products of literary experience
  • Conclusion: Embodied simulations and literary experiences
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.18009.gib
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