From text-linguistics to literary actants – The force dynamics of (emotional) vampirism

Abstract

This article provides some groundwork for applying the cognitive linguistic theory of force dynamics (Talmy, Cognitive Science 12: 49–100, 1988, Toward a cognitive semantics, MIT Press, 2000) to narrative discourse. It proposes that Talmy's analytic apparatus is suitable for revealing character-related dynamics in literature, especially by exploiting the previously unnoticed convergence with the notion of actancy proposed by the narratologist Greimas (Sémantique structurale, Larousse, 1966). Force imagery both in ordinary action descriptions and in metaphor opens a vista on how readers infer, stabilize, and elaborate narrative macro-representations of “who wants what” and “who does what to whom?” Hence, texts subtly encode aspects of higher-level story logic through forces, enabling readers (and scholars) to detect and scale up coherence patterns that shed light on character motives, protagonist interaction, and plot dynamics. A full-scale text linguistic analysis is proposed. My case study of about 500 text units found in Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's novella Carmilla (Oxford University Press, 1872) reveals a dynamic web of driving, penetrating, manipulating, attracting, and erupting forces between the two main protagonists, a beautiful girl vampire and her 19 year-old victim.