Linguistics and Novel

The effect of animacy on the choice of referring expression

“…Some researchers have argued that animate entities are more accessible because language users tend to view the world from animates' perspective (Ehrlich, 1990;Kuno & Kaburaki, 1977) or have empathy towards them (Kuno & Kaburaki, 1977;Langacker, 1991). Others have pointed out that animate entities can initiate actions, whereas inanimates cannot (Fowler, 1977), so animates are more often responsible for actions or events (Davidson, 1971). Relatedly, more information can be predicated of animates than inanimates, which may make animates conceptually more accessible than inanimates (Bock & Warren, 1985).…”

The Event of Style in Literature

“…117 Roger Fowler's concept of 'mind style' -the idea that systematic linguistic choices reflect the workings of individual minds and 'distinctive linguistic' features can represent 'an individual mental self' -is built on similar premises but extends the analysis from authors to narrators and characters. 118 A limit of physiognomic conceptions of style is that such theories make it difficult to account for kinds of works -such as pastiches, parodies, imitations -in which one does not expect to find the authentic voice of an author. It becomes difficult for those who root style only in individuality and recognisability of the writer to account for a novel like James Joyce's Ulysses, which highlights what Karen Lawrence describes as the 'arbitrariness of all styles' and, in so doing, assaults propriety.…”

Speech presentation: A preliminary review from multiple perspectives

“…Palmer's notion of "fictional mind" is distantly reminiscent of the term "mind style", which was initially proposed by Fowler (1977) to refer to "distinctive linguistic representation of an individual mental self" (p. 103). Despite Fowler's emphasis on cumulative effects of "consistent structural options" to impose a particular "world view" (p. 76), Leech &Short (1981) argues that "mind style" can be associated with local effects in the depiction of characters and landscape as well as a novel's narrative point of view, and develops a rough scale model of mental sets, with "natural" and "uncontrived" mind styles at one end and unnatural, "unorthodox" mind styles at the other end (p. 188-189, p. 191-208).…”