Mind Style Translated

Abstract

1. Choice, Style, and Mind Style Many different approaches to style share the that the style of a text or utterance is the result of a set of choices made by the writer or speaker (Fowler, Linguistic Criticism 185-86; Wales 436). If style is indeed the result of choice, then in order to understand both how style arises and how it is interpreted, it is necessary to consider how such choices come about. One possible way of viewing choices made by an author is that they are a result of his or her cognitive state, which will in turn be the result of a vast array of interacting factors. These factors will include knowledge (conscious and unconscious) of linguistic and stylistic forms and constraints, of literary convention, cultural background, and intended audience. Some of this knowledge will be universal: that languages encode notions such as agent, patient, or action, that situations and entities can be described metaphorically, that texts can be structured by patterns of repetition. Some of it will be specific to a particular language or culture or to a particular period or literary form: that articles express gender, that alcoholic drinks are masculine, that sonnets have fourteen lines, that poetry-reading audiences dislike inversion. Other influences upon choice will be the personal of the author, which can be characterized as the narrative the author constructs to make sense of the (Bockting 158), something which tends to be relatively stable, as well as other, more momentary considerations, such as a particular or attitude the author intends to convey. The that style results from a set of choices is linked to the notion of what is sometimes called mind style. This term was first used by Roger Fowler in Linguistics and the Novel to designate a linguistic presentation of an individual self (103). Later writers, such as Elena Semino and Kate Swindlehurst, define mind style as a projection of (143). However, neither Fowler's mental self nor Semino and Swindlehurst's world view seems entirely adequate as a description of what is reflected in mind style. Mental self in particular suggests something fairly permanent, but in fact a mind style may reflect the more transitory considerations and attitudes that an author wishes to convey, as mentioned above. And a is in general seen as a pattern of beliefs and cultural assumptions (Wales 410) and thus does not necessarily include the various types of knowledge (as opposed to belief and assumption) suggested above as influences on choice. The term cognitive state thus seems to me preferable, and I define mind style as the linguistic style that reflects a cognitive state. In particular, it is a linguistic style characterized by distinctive and striking textual patterns. Two further distinctions are important here. The first is between conscious and unconscious aspects of mind style, and of the cognitive state to which it provides clues. Early work on mind style and view, such as the two books by Fowler already cited, tended perhaps to emphasize the unconscious aspect more: the potential significances, says Fowler, of what we say are only partly under our control (Linguistics and the Novel 70). Style must therefore be expected to manifest elements that lead a careful reader to unconscious views as well as to conscious attempts to convey meaning. And even the notion of choice does not, as might at first seem to be the case, necessarily focus more on conscious structures: choices can also be affected by unconscious thoughts, views, influences, and information. More recent work (for example by Adrian Pilkington) that considers cognitive aspects of style tends to focus on the intentional, conscious elements of choice. In such views it is common to suggest that the author will portray a particular cognitive state that he or she can reasonably assume the reader will be able to reconstruct from evidence in the text. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 44 citations exist upstream.