Smoothly moving through Mental Spaces: Linguistic patterns of viewpoint transfer in news narratives

Abstract

This article presents a Mental Space model for analyzing linguistic patterns in news narratives. The model was applied in a corpus study categorizing various linguistic markers of viewpoint transfers between the mental spaces that readers must conceptualize while processing news narratives: a Reality Space representing the journalist and reader’s projected here-and-now viewpoint; a News Narrative Space representing the newsworthy events from a there-and-then viewpoint; and an Intermediate Space representing the information of the news actors provided from a temporal viewpoint in-between the newsworthy events and the present. Viewpoint transfers and their markers were examined in a corpus of 100 Dutch crime news narratives published over a period of fifty years. The results reveal clear patterns, which indicate that both linguistic structures and narrative-based as well as genre-based inferences play a role in the processing of news narratives. The results furthermore clarify how these narratives have been gradually crystallizing into a genre over the past decades. These findings elucidate the complex yet fluent process of conceptually moving between mental spaces, thus advancing our understanding of the relation between the linguistic and the cognitive representation of narrative discourse.

Child-Gendered Mental Spaces Triggered by Space Builders Reflect Art Psychotherapy Clients' Childhood Experiences

“…Clients' conceptualization of ideas while communicating through a narrative deploys certain linguistic forms, reflecting cognitively-based language discipline. Their linguistic forms provide cues to the therapists on how the clients construct the intended Gilles Fauconnier's 'Mental Space' model such as BASE SPACE, PARENT SPACE, CHILD SPACE (Fauconnier, 1994(Fauconnier, , 1997Fauconnier & Turner, 2002), REFLECTION SPACE (Evans & Green, 2006;Fauconnier, 1994), REALITY SPACE (Al Masudi & Daghir, 2017;Fauconnier, 1994;Krieken, 2016;Van Krieken & Sanders, 2019), DEPICTION SPACE (Evans & Green, 2006;Mok et al, 2004), DESIRE SPACE (Fauconnier, 1994;Hamad et al, 2018) and POSSIBILITY SPACE (Evans & Green, 2006).…”

“…The verbalization shows that language behaviours play a noteworthy role in the clients' reflection journey on art psychotherapy. Clients' feedback during Reflect Interview provides insights into the conceptualization of abstract ideas while processing a narrative about their journey in art psychotherapy (Cienki, 2013;Van Krieken & Sanders, 2019).…”

The Psychological and Social Effects of Literariness: Formal Features and Paratextual Information

“…Earlier studies found that even implicit representation of news characters' viewpoints enhances the news texts' attractiveness (Sanders & Redeker, 1993). To reconstruct what took place within news sources' consciousness at the time of the news events is a complex cognitive task for both journalist and the audience (Van Krieken & Sanders, 2019a). It requires journalists to give a voice to their sources or to mix their voice with the sources' voice, and to represent this using subjective literary techniques, such as direct free indirect speech and thought.…”

O-Töne in Fernsehnachrichten im Spannungsfeld von Narration und Argumentation

“…Seit der Jahrtausendwende hat das Interesse an Narrativität wieder zugenommen, insbesondere unter dem Stichwort ›Storytelling‹, unter dem insbesondere die deutlich dramatisierende und emotionalisierende Rekonstruktion von Ereignissen in der Berichterstattung verstanden wird (vgl. Shim 2014 ; Krieken 2016 ).…”