Narrative Progression and Characterization

2020 ◽  
pp. 165-194
Author(s):  
Beatrix Busse
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Functional Potential ◽  
Anchor Points ◽  
Narrative Progression

The seventh chapter focuses on the functional interplay between passages of narration that interplay with the different modes of discourse presentation. It shows how this interplay is linguistically realized in 19th-century fiction and which functional potential it has for narrative progression and characterization. The discussion focuses on (a) the lexico-grammatical variety of reporting verbs that accompany direct and indirect forms of speech, writing, and thought presentation; (b) paralinguistic narration describing mime, gesture, and body movement as well as moments of silence; and (c) foregrounded occurrences of passages of visual narration and discourse presentation. With particular grammatical, syntactic, and pragmatic patterns priming narrative stretches, readers are able to identify them and use them as anchor points for the processing of the narrative in general. Via recourse to quantitative methodology such as the identification of keywords, the chapter further presents some conclusions about particular 19th-century strategies of world creation.

The Discourse Presentation Model So Far

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-54
Author(s):  
Beatrix Busse
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Qualitative Investigation ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Automatic Coding ◽  
Narrative Progression

The second chapter discusses Semino and Short’s (2004) model of discourse presentation and adapts it for the study of 19th-century narrative fiction; the chapter presents a state-of-the-art overview of relevant research on discourse presentation in narrative fiction, including Sinclair’s concept of “trusting the text,” and Toolan’s (2009, 2016) concept of narrative progression. The chapter outlines first the main objectives of the study as comprising a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the types of speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century English narrative fiction, their distribution and functions; second, the development of a new methodology for investigating discourse presentation in historical data in order to enable diachronic comparison; third, the development of a tool for the automatic coding of discourse presentation on the basis of characteristic lexico-grammatical patterns; and finally, a qualitative investigation of the interplay between narration and modes of discourse presentation and their narratological function.

Speech, Writing, and Thought Presentation in 19th-Century Narrative Fiction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrix Busse
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Wuthering Heights ◽  
State Of Mind ◽  
Narrative Progression

The present study investigates speech, writing, and thought presentation in a corpus of 19th-century narrative fiction including, for instance, the novels Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Oliver Twist, and many others. All narratives typically contain a reference to or a quotation of someone’s speech, thoughts, or writing. These reports further a narrative, make it more interesting, natural, and vivid, ask the reader to engage with it, and, from a historical point of view, also reflect cultural understandings of the modes of discourse presentation. To a large extent, the way a reader perceives a story depends upon the ways discourse is presented, and among these, speech, writing, and thought, which reflect a character’s disposition and state of mind. Being at the intersection of linguistic and literary stylistics, this study develops a new corpus-stylistic approach for systematically analyzing the different narrative strategies of historical discourse presentation in key pieces of 19th-century narrative fiction, thus identifying diachronic patterns as well as unique authorial styles, and places them within their cultural-historical context. It shows that the presentation of characters’ minds reflects an ideological as well as an epistemological concern about what cannot be reported, portrayed, or narrated and that discourse presentation fulfills the narratological functions of prospection and encapsulation, marks narrative progression, and shapes readers’ expectations as to suspense or surprise.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 195-198
Author(s):  
Beatrix Busse
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Narrative Fiction ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Social Mind ◽  
And Function ◽  
Narrative Progression ◽  
The Way

The final chapter summarizes the results from the study and presents directions for future research. The study has illustrated that speech, writing, and thought presentation in 19th-century narrative fiction works in a variety of modes and plays a crucial role in establishing, reflecting, and construing a social mind in action. This construal affects both intra- and intertextual dimensions, including readers and their processing as well as theoretical concerns of interpretation and methodological issues of analysis. The study has done pioneer work in the way it uses the analysis of keywords and repetitive patterns as basis for a tool that automatically annotates speech, writing, and thought presentation in digitized corpora. It has furthermore shown how repetitive patterns on all levels of discourse contribute to characterization and function as a means of narrative progression.

Book project: Body, movement and mental health - a physiotherapy perspective

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riitta Keskinen Rosenqvist ◽  
Gabriele Biguet ◽  
Adrienne Levy-Berg
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Body Movement
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