Growth in Adolescent Literature: Metaphors, Scripts, and Cognitive Narratology

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Seelinger Trites
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Adolescent Literature ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Cognitive Narratology ◽  
Interpretive Strategies ◽  
Character Growth

Cognitive narratology provides a way to explore discourse as the product of embodied beings as it simultaneously affects those embodied beings. Cognitive narratology specifically investigates how embodiment influences both the author's discursive creation of story and its subsequent meaning-making as a function of the reader's cognition. This essay explores three aspects of cognitive narratology pertinent to adolescent literature: metaphor, scripts, and blending – all of which are biologically and culturally situated cognitive processes. The essay first examines embodied theories of character growth within the field of adolescent literature before moving to a close reading of Jay Asher's Thirteen Reasons Why to illustrate the relationships between embodied metaphors, scripts, and blending. Thirteen Reasons Why demonstrates how the process of blending allows authors to fuse embodied metaphors and scripts into new narratives about adolescent growth. At stake are interpretive strategies that recognise adolescent embodiment within the culturally-defined discourses of adolescent literature.

Metaphor and Intertextuality: A Cognitive Approach to Intertextual Meaning-Making in Metafictional Fantasy Novels

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Anne Shonoda
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Approach ◽  
Mapping Model ◽  
Fantasy Novels ◽  
Narrative Functions ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Metaphoric Expression

Scholars in children's literature have frequently commented on the humorous and ideological functions of intertextuality. There has however, been little discussion of the cognitive processes at work in intertextual interpretation and how they provide readers with more interpretive freedom in the meaning-making process. Drawing on research from the field of metaphor studies and the interdisciplinary area of cognitive poetics, this article suggests that the interpretation of foregrounded intertextuality is analogous to the interpretation of metaphoric expression. Current models of metaphor interpretation are discussed before I outline my own intertextuality-based variant. The cross-mapping model developed is then applied to literary intertexts in Inkheart and cultural intertexts in Starcross in order to show how the model might work with intertexts of varying degrees of specificity and that serve different narrative functions. The explanatory power of the cross-mapping model is not limited to cases where elements in the primary storyworld can be directly matched with those in the intertext, but extends to instances that involve a recasting of the intertext and thus retelling as in Princess Bride.

Costume on film: How the femme fatale’s wardrobe scripted the pictorial style of 1940s film noir

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Star Image ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Double Indemnity ◽  
Mode Of Production

The character of the femme fatale and the visual style of film noir are vital elements in our understanding of that genre. Film costumes worn by the femme fatale are crucial, and are defining elements in genre recognition precisely because of their explicit cinematic visualization, rather than functioning as unequivocal signs. This article proposes a methodology for film costume researchers to conduct a pictorial analysis, without necessarily analysing film costume in terms of a meaning-making repertoire adhering to our understanding of film as a ‘language’. In the proposition of a framework for the close textual analysis of film costumes, the methodology is based on the triangulation of a shot-by-shot description, a wardrobe breakdown and an examination of production stills. This triangulation is crucial to understand the complexity of film costumes, which are defined by a wide-ranging set of factors such as: the film industry’s mode of production, the film costume’s relation to the fashion of its time, the body and star image of the actor, the work of the costume designer and his/her department, and the film-specificity. The ways in which a film costume functions in a specific shot will prove to be an important tool to analyse the pictorial characteristics of film noir and the femme fatale. To exemplify to methodology, this article proposes a close reading of an iconic film costume designed for one of the best-known performances of such a character, i.e. the white jumpsuit designed by Edith Head for Barbara Stanwyck in the closing scene of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944).

‘Composition of place’, experiential set, and the meditative poem

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reuven Tsur ◽  
Motti Benari
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Mental Set ◽  
Orientation Process ◽  
Over Time

Meditative poetry has the ability to reproduce aspects of the meditative experience. In this paper we explore this ability, trying to clarify the phenomenon by pointing out the cognitive processes involved. We focus on Christian Jesuit meditation and pinpoint one of its most effective elements: “the composition of place”. We argue that three main abilities associated with “the composition of place” are responsible for the meditative quality detected in poetic meditative texts: The text’s ability to evoke an orientation process; the text’s ability to support diffuse perception and encourage divergent ways of processing; the text’s ability to generate the mental set required for this experience, the absence of purpose, and to supply the conditions that enable such a mental set to exist over time. We illustrate our theoretical discussion through a close reading of two meditative poetic masterpieces: Donne’s Holy Sonnet No. 7, and the Spanish anonymous sonnet “A Cristo Crucificado”.

scholarly journals Longitudinal Relations Between Self-Defining Memories and Self-Esteem: Mediating Roles of Meaning-Making and Memory Function

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 318-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsiao-Wen Liao ◽  
Susan Bluck ◽  
Gerben J. Westerhof
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Longitudinal Design ◽  
Memory Function ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Adult Lifespan ◽  
Social Cognitive Processes

The present study examines Hsiao-Wen Liao is now at the Department of Psychology, Stanford University, CA, USA. the role of self-defining memories in predicting self-esteem using a 1-year longitudinal design with an adult lifespan sample ( N = 1,216; age range 18–92; Mage = 49.52; SDage = 17.25). The interplay between narrators’ personality at the life story level and two social-cognitive processes, meaning-making and functional memory use, is investigated. Participants provided three self-defining memories, and their personality positivity was assessed in terms of the ratio of positive-to-all memories. Memory narratives were reliably coded for meaning-making, and participants reported the extent to which they use each remembered event to serve adaptive functions. One year later, participants completed a measure of self-esteem. Personality positivity at Time 1 predicts greater self-esteem at Time 2. The effect of personality positivity occurs, however, completely through creating positive meaning and using memories functionally. The findings contribute to the literature on narrative identity and autobiographical memory by delineating how memory processes relate to self-regulation over time. The relative roles of personality and social-cognitive processes in autobiographical narratives in linking to self-esteem are discussed.

scholarly journals Social representations theory: An approach to studying translators’ socio-cognitive processes

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Hokkanen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Representations ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Psychological Phenomena ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Integrative View ◽  
Social Representations Theory ◽  
Embodied Meaning ◽  
The 1960S

Social Representations Theory provides a comprehensive theoretical model for researching translators’ socio-cognitive processes. Developed in social psychology in the 1960s, the theory offers an integrative view of both individual and social processes in the construction and re-construction of knowledge. It draws attention to embodied meaning-making and the effect of material surroundings in perpetuating and disseminating social representations. Importantly, Social Representations Theory does not see representations as individual, solely conscious, or static mental constructions but as dynamic social–psychological phenomena that are enacted in discourse and social interaction. This article discusses Social Representations Theory as an approach to the empirical study of translators’ cognitive processes. Introducing the main concepts of the theory and using translators’ conceptualizations of source-text authors and target-text readers as an example, the article suggests avenues for using the theory in Cognitive Translation Studies.

scholarly journals “Stand Still in The Light”: What Conceptual Metaphor Research Can Tell Us about Quaker Theology

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Rachel Kirkwood
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Metaphor Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Theological Thought

The purpose of this study is to explore how an interdisciplinary approach can benefit Quaker Studies. The paper applies conceptual Metaphor Theory to help explicate aspects of theology in 17th century Quaker writings. It uses a combination of close reading supported by a corpus of related texts to analyse the writing of 4 key figures from the first decade of the movement. Metaphor analysis finds that orientational schemas of UP-DOWN and IN-OUT are essential structural elements in the theological thought of all 4 writers, along with more complex metaphors of BUILDINGS. Quaker writers make novel extensions to and recombinations of Biblical metaphors around Light and Stones, as well as using aspects of the theory of Elements. Such analysis can help explicate nuances of theological meaning-making. The evaluation of DOWN IS GOOD and UP IS BAD—except in specific circumstances—is distinctively Quaker, and embodied metaphors of divine immanence in humans indicate a ‘flipped’ soteriology which is distanced from the Christ event.

scholarly journals A Gendered Economy of Pleasure

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Catharina Landström
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Gender And Technology ◽  
Female User ◽  
Gendered Economy

This paper analyses cultural signification in the co-production of gender and technology. Focusing on the popular genre of motoring magazines, it discerns a pattern organising men and women in opposite relations to cars. Men’s relationships with cars are premised on passion and pleasure while women are figured as rational and unable to attach emotionally to cars. This “gendered economy of pleasure” is traced in a close reading of motoring magazine representations of cars and humans. Further, a DVD representation of the Volvo YCC, a concept car developed by women for an imagined female user, is discussed in relation to this semiotic pattern. The paper is conceptual, texts are interpreted in order to bring forward aspects of meaning-making that are not immediately obvious. The objective is to critically illuminate one aspect of the cultural production of the car as a masculine technology.

The Quantum Dance and the World's ‘Extraordinary Liveliness’: Refiguring Corporeal Ethics in Karen Barad's Agential Realism

Somatechnics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Bodily Integrity ◽  
Agential Realism ◽  
Experimental Apparatus ◽  
The World ◽  
Quantum Universe ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
The Universe

In her 2007 monograph Meeting the Universe Halfway, Karen Barad introduces her reader to a world of movement and flux, where bodies ceaselessly participate in their own material configuration, where bodily integrity and identity is entangled in the dynamic materialisation of its social and political significance, and where processes of understanding and meaning making are bound up in ‘an ongoing performance of the world in its differential dance of intelligibility and unintelligibility’ (2007: 149). Through her reading of Niels Bohr's ‘philosophy-physics’, Barad introduces us to a quantum universe that poses some counterintuitive challenges to the modernist worldview which understands matter to be determinate and measurable, or that may quietly preserve something of matter's evidence against culture's symbolic dexterity. In advancing her agential realist account, Baradmoves beyond anthropocentric constraints to conceive of the world in its ‘extraordinary liveliness’ (2007: 91), an enlarged and productive scene of agency engaged in an ongoing performance of its own intelligibility, articulating itself differently. With the suggestion that agency is extended beyond the framework that assigns it to the intentions and accountability of the human subject, Barad offers a powerful rethinking of the politics and ethics of identity in her claim that the ethical call is ‘embodied in the very worlding of the world’ (2007: 160). In this paper I undertake a close reading of Barad's argument to consider its implications for how we might conceive a corporeal ethics that accounts for the production of inequalities and exclusions within the very becoming of the world, and becoming embodied. In the process, I argue that through asomatechnical unfolding of matter, the experimental apparatus, and concept, Barad prompts some challenging considerations for feminist approaches to what ‘the ethical’ constitutes or should achieve.

Using Expert Systems to Build Cognitive Simulations

2003 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
David H. Jonassen ◽  
Sherwood Wang
Keyword(s):  
Expert Systems ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Intelligent Tutoring Systems ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Tutoring Systems ◽  
Effective Learning ◽  
Metacognitive Processes ◽  
Building Simulations ◽  
Cognitive Activities

Cognitive simulations are runnable computer programs for modeling human cognitive activities. Traditionally used to develop expert and learner models for intelligent tutoring systems, building simulations are also effective learning activities in psychology-related courses. Using inexpensive and easy-to-use expert system shells, students can develop simulations of cognitive processes. This article reports a case study where expert systems were used as a formalism for modeling metacognitive processes in a seminar. Building cognitive simulations engages intensive introspection, ownership, and meaning making in learners who build them.

The hermeneutics of casting

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-351
Author(s):  
Anat Sella Inbar
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Original Series ◽  
National Myths

This article offers a close reading of the casting in the Israeli drama series BeTipul (the original series for the HBO adaption In Treatment). My analysis views casting as a key mechanism of meaning-making in television series and explores its heightened cultural and social significance in recent Israeli television dramas. I explore, in particular, how through the casting of well-known actors, who have previously portrayed key mythological figures, old national myths are challenged in an almost iconoclastic manner that adds symbolic layers to the series, layers that might be overlooked by viewers who are unfamiliar with the specific cultural background.

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