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Style Brings in Mental States1

2011; University of Arkansas Press; Volume: 45; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2374-6629

Lisa Zunshine,

Advanced Text Analysis Techniques

Much what write these days is an elaboration Alan Palmer's argument that reading is mind-reading. Here, too, take up one aspect that argument and consider it in light my recent experience studying fiction in a lab with fMRI equipment. (Well, not really - we are actually very far from approaching actual works literature with brain imaging technology - but as close as have come to doing so.) As Palmer observes in his target essay for this volume, to claim that we understand actions fictional characters by uncovering the network behind them, is not to flatten out undeniable differences between novels, or to make impossible any worthwhile distinctions between them. To say that reader can only follow actions characters in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1749) by following thought processes behind those actions is certainly not to say that it is same sort novel as James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). Of course two are different. And again, later in essay, [An] understanding characters' thought processes is as necessary for Tom Jones as it is for Ulysses. cannot find any way retreating from universality my claim. Equally, do not see any way in which this claim is a refusal to acknowledge astonishing and endless variety narrative. To say so would be like suggesting that am trying to flatten out fictional variation by pointing out that Ulysses and Dan Brown's The Da Vinci use exactly same 26 letters alphabet! Palmer identifies here what constitutes both a problem and a major cultural studies research project. If fiction is all about mind-reading, then burden is on us (i.e., on cognitive literary critics) to explain why reading Ulysses feels so strikingly different from reading Tom Jones (not to mention The Da Vinci I). What goes into construction this difference? To what extent is it intrinsic to text, and to what extent is it a reflection values a particular historical period, or an individual reader's perspective? Palmer begins to address such questions by pointing out that, Fielding gives us much less workings characters' than does Joyce, and so events are more central to plot former's novel and thoughts more central to plot latter's.2 He further observes that there seems to be significant variation in way writers belonging to different historical periods construct social minds in novel, a reflection, perhaps, of relationship between narrative technique and cultural conceptions self. In what follows, I, too, argue that, far from flattening out fictional variation, research in theory mind may actually shed a surprising new light on how we construct such variation. Specifically, by becoming consciously aware mental network behind characters' actions, we may gain a new appreciation what constitutes an individual writing style. II Style brings in states. That's what learned last summer, though my actual phrasing at time reflected frustration rather than joy discovery: style drags in states. As part a research team, comprising literary scholars and cognitive neuroscientists, studying theory mind with fMRI, was in charge putting together a series narrative vignettes containing different levels what we called mental To briefly illustrate our principle counting levels embedment, consider following four examples: The sentence, My last name begins with a Z, while Alan's last name begins with a P, contains no states, hence zero embedment. I don't want to read The Da Vinci Code contains one state, that not wanting to read book, hence one embedment. I used to think that would hate The Da Vinci Code contains two embedded states: thinking about hating book. …