Despite the current explosion of interest in cognitive linguistics, there has so far been relatively little research by cognitive linguists on narrative comprehension. Catherine Emmott draws on insights from discourse analysis and artificial intelligence to present a detailed model of how readers build, maintain, and use mental representations of fictional contexts, and how they keep track of characters and contexts within a complex, changing fictional world. The book begins with a summary of current issues in text-processing theory and a discussion of the methodological importance of recognizing the hierarchical structure of discourse. The core of the book explores the significance of contextual monitoring in narrative comprehension and looks particularly at the cognitive demands placed on readers by flashbacks. Later chapters examine the implications of contextual monitoring for reference theory and for a literary-linguistic model of narrative text types. The study focuses on anaphoric pronouns in narratives, assessing the accumulated knowledge required for readers to interpret these key grammatical items. The work has implications for linguistic theory since it questions several long-held assumptions about anaphora, arguing for a `levels of consciousness' model for the processing of referring expressions.
Reviews
a major advance in narrative analysis the book will be an invaluable resource for discourse analysts, cognitive scientists, and narrative theorists alike. * David Herman, North Carolina State University, USA, Language *
This is a book which a lot of people should read. It has relevant things to say to linguists and psychologists interested in text and discourse analysis, narratologists, stylisticians, literary theorists, reading theorists and those interested in the empirical study of literature and in the teaching of literacy skills. * Professor Mick Short, Lancaster University, Journal of Literary Semantics *
any future serious treatments of written narrative, and particularly of anaphora, will have to take this work into account. * Professor Wallace Chafe, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198238683
Author Catherine Emmott
Format Paperback
Page Count 340
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 510g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 19mm