Textual properties and attentional windowing: A cognitive grammatical account of Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers

Parivash Esmaeili; Fazel Asadi Amjad

doi:10.1515/jls-2016-0009

Article

Textual properties and attentional windowing: A cognitive grammatical account of Gustav Hasford’s The Short-Timers

Parivash Esmaeili and Fazel Asadi Amjad

Published/Copyright: August 31, 2016

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Journal of Literary Semantics Volume 45 Issue 2

Abstract

Deploying a cognitive grammar perspective, this paper reads Gustav Hasford’s war narrative, The Short-Timers, as displaying the way attentional windowing is reflected in the language. We have taken the methodological decision of becoming cognitively sensitized to the linguistic texture of traumatically loaded episodes, with the aim of looking at the specific linguistic choices that the producer of literary language has made, and the role played by such linguistic choices in cueing the reader’s attention toward these event frames. Specifically, we demonstrate that confluence of windowing and nesting of attention with theories of conceptual metaphor, schema, and force dynamics can yield a fuller cognitive grammatical account of the foregrounded event frames. It is observed that allocation of salience to such event frames is greatly dependent on phraseology that has a high density of metaphoric constructions.

Keywords: attentional windowing; event frame; schema; force dynamics; metaphor

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Professor Raymond W. Gibbs for his insightful comments on a previous version of this paper.

References

Coulson, Seana. 2001. Semantic leaps: Frame-shifting and conceptual blending in meaning construction. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511551352Search in Google Scholar

Coulson, Seana & Todd Oakley. 2000 Blending basics. Cognitive Linguistics 11(3/4). 175–196.10.1515/cogl.2001.014Search in Google Scholar

Dewell, Robert B. 2005. Dynamic patterns of CONTAINMENT. In Beate Hampe & Joseph Grady (eds.), From perception to meaning: Image schemas in cognitive linguistics, 369–393. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197532.5.369Search in Google Scholar

Dodge, Ellen & George Lakoff. 2005. Image schemas: From linguistic analysis to neural grounding. In Beate Hampe & Joseph Grady (eds.), From perception to meaning: Image schemas in cognitive linguistics, 57–91. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110197532.1.57Search in Google Scholar

Emmott, Catherine, Anthony J. Sanford & Lorena I. Morrow. 2006. Capturing the attention of readers? Stylistic and psychological perspectives on the use and effect of text fragmentation in narratives. Journal of Literary Semantics 35. 1–30.10.1515/JLS.2006.001Search in Google Scholar

Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar

Freeman, Margaret. 2000. Poetry and the scope of metaphor: Toward a cognitive theory of literature. In Antonio Barcelona (ed.), Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: A cognitive perspective, 253–281. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110894677.253Search in Google Scholar

Gibbs, Raymond W., Jr. 1994. The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language, and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Goatly, Andrew. 1997. The language of metaphors. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203210000Search in Google Scholar

Harrison, Chloe. 2014. Attentional windowing in David Foster Wallace’s ‘The Soul Is Not A Smithy’. In C. Harrison et al. (eds.), Cognitive grammar in literature, 53–68. New York: John Benjamins.10.1075/lal.17.04harSearch in Google Scholar

Hasford, Gustav. 1979. The short-timers, New York: Bantam.Search in Google Scholar

Johnson-Laird, P. N. & Keith Oatley. 1989. The language of emotions: An analysis of a semantic field. Cognition and Emotion 3. 81–123.10.1080/02699938908408075Search in Google Scholar

Kövecses, Zoltan. 2008. Metaphor and emotion. In Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of metaphor and thought, 380–396. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511816802.023Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to western thought. New York: Basic Books.Search in Google Scholar

Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive grammar: An introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331967.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Langacker, Ronald W. 2001. Discourse in cognitive grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 12–2. 143–188.10.1515/cogl.12.2.143Search in Google Scholar

Naciscione, Anita. 2010. Stylistic use of phraseological units in discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.159Search in Google Scholar

Oatley, Keith & P. N. Johnson-laird. 1990. Semantic primitives for emotions: A reply to Ortony and Clore. Cognition & Emotion 4. 129–143.10.1080/02699939008407143Search in Google Scholar

Ricoeur, Paul. [1975] 1994. The rule of metaphor: Multi-disciplinary studies of the creation of meaning in language. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203426616Search in Google Scholar

Short, Mick. 1996. Exploring the language of poems, plays and prose. London: Longman.Search in Google Scholar

Simpson, Paul. 2004. Stylistics: A resource book for students. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203496589Search in Google Scholar

Sanford, Alison J. S., Anthony J. Sanford, Jo Molle & Catherine Emmott. 2006. Shallow processing and attention capture in written and spoken discourse. Discourse Processes 42(2). 109–130.10.1207/s15326950dp4202_2Search in Google Scholar

Stockwell, Peter. 2002. Cognitive poetics: An introduction. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Stockwell, Peter. 2006a. Language and literature: Stylistics. In Bas Aarts & April McMahon (eds.), The Handbook of english linguistics, 742–758. Oxford: Blackwell.10.1002/9780470753002.ch31Search in Google Scholar

Stockwell, Peter. 2006b. Schema theory: Stylistic application. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics 11. 8–13.10.1016/B0-08-044854-2/00544-7Search in Google Scholar

Stockwell, Peter. 2014. War, worlds, and cognitive grammar. In C. Harrison et al. (eds.), Cognitive grammar in literature, 19–34. New York: John Benjamins.10.1075/lal.17Search in Google Scholar

Talmy, Leonard. 1988. Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 12. 49–100.10.1207/s15516709cog1201_2Search in Google Scholar

Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. 1. Cambridge: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/6847.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Talmy, Leonard. 2007. Attention phenomena. In Dirk Geeraerts and Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of cognitive linguistics, 264–293. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

van Peer, Willie. 1986. Stylistics and psychology: Investigations of foregrounding. London: Croom Helm.Search in Google Scholar

van Peer, Willie, Sonia Zyngier & Jèmeljan Hakemulder. 2007. Foregrounding: Past, present, future. In David L. Hoover & Sharon Lattig (eds.), Stylistics: prospect and Retrospect, 1–22. Amsterdam: Rodopi.10.1163/9789401205313_002Search in Google Scholar

Werth, Paul. 1994. Extended metaphor – A text-world account. Language and Literature 3(2). 79–103.10.1177/096394709400300201Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2016-8-31

Published in Print: 2016-11-1

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/jls-2016-0009

Keywords for this article

attentional windowing; event frame; schema; force dynamics; metaphor