A reader response method not just for ‘you’

Abstract

This article contributes to empirical literary studies by offering a new reader response method for examining targeted textual features. With the aim of further establishing the new paradigm of reader response research in stylistics, we utilise a Likert scale – a tool that is usually used to generate data that is analysed quantitatively – to elicit qualitative data and, crucially, show how that data can be synthesised with an analysis of the primary text to provide empirically based conclusions relevant to particular textual features for cognitive narratology and stylistics. While we offer a new method that can be used to investigate textual features in all kinds of text, we exemplify our approach via the investigation of second-person narration in geniwate and Larsen’s digital fiction The Princess Murderer and provide a new understanding of the experiential nature of ambiguous forms of ‘you’ in fiction. Our stylistic analyses show how responses can be generated by linguistic features in the text. We then analyse reader responses to those examples and show that this can provide a more nuanced account of ‘you’ narratives than a stylistic analysis alone because it affords insight into how different readers do or do not psychologically project into and/or assume the role of ‘you’. Our results represent the first time that current typologies of the second person have been empirically tested and we are the first study to find an empirical basis for doubly deictic ‘you’. We therefore contribute a new empirically based understanding of how readers experience ambiguous forms of ‘you’ in fiction.

Cognitive Grammar and Readers’ Perceived Sense of Closeness: A Study of Responses to Mary Borden’s ‘Belgium’

“…My methodology drew on and partly replicated a protocol devised and discussed by Bell et al (2019), who use Herman's typology of the range of possible referents of 'you' (Herman, 1994) to examine how readers of digital fiction position themselves in relation to various uses of the pronoun. In order to mitigate the difficulty associated with generating verbal data about a specific textual feature in a more naturalistic context, Bell et al adopt a mixed methodology in which readers are first asked to comment on their response to the referent of 'you' using a Likert scale.…”

“…In the latter, more controlled conditions are set up that test particular textual features which may be analysed using quantitative methods. As Bell et al (2019) argue, although each methodological paradigm has its affordances, it can be quite difficult to find a useful middle point between on the one hand, the study of a specific textual feature and, on the other hand, generating as rich a source of verbal data as possible. They highlight, however, that in some cases, researchers have managed to adopt a mixed-methods approach successfully (e.g.…”

Intimate distractions: Fleabag ’s manipulations of audience attention

“…However, there are cases in which it is impossible to decide whether 'you' is fictional or actual; this type of 'you' is called 'doubly deictic'. This 'you' 'produces an ontological hesitation between the virtual and the actual' by continuously repositioning the reader (or viewer), rendering porous any border between text and context (Herman 1994;Bell et al 2019). It superimposes two or more deictic roles, internal and external to the diegesis.…”

Real readers reading Wasco’s ‘City’: A storyworld possible selves approach

“…Yet, empirical reader response research still poses notable methodological challenges. From a cognitive stylistics standpoint, these are mostly related to the choice between experimental approaches that rely on quantification and frequently resort to text manipulation in order to test hypotheses, and naturalistic, more ethnomethodologically oriented approaches (Bell et al, 2019; Peplow and Carter, 2011). Within the field of cognitive narratology, the difficulties revolve around accounting for both the cultural predictability shared by the communities of readers which literary critics usually address (Herman and Vervaeck, 2009, 2017) and the idiosyncratic variation postulated by scholars in the field of narrative immersion (Miall and Kuiken, 2002).…”

“…In line with current reader response research (Bell et al, 2019; Whiteley and Canning, 2017), we use a predominantly naturalistic, qualitative approach which focuses on the analysis of the answers provided by 15 readers to a questionnaire whose design combines cognitive narratology with mainstream research into possible selves in social psychology. This will be presented after a brief introduction to SPSs and their underpinnings in narrative engagement research, self-schema theory, and blending theory.…”