What psycholinguistic studies ignore about literary experience
Raymond W. Gibbs | Cognitive Scientist and Independent Scholar
Herbert L. Colston | 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: 04 February 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.18009.gib
https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.18009.gib
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Cited by
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