A Cognitive Stylistic Approach To Characterisation In Biblical Narrative

The present research has made an intensive study of characterization in narrative texts from a cognitive stylistic perspective. The object of the study is biblical narrative. Qualitative methods are used to investigate the process of characterization in the mind of readers during the reading. The aim of the study is to provide a theoretical framework and analytic model for cognitive stylistic approach to characterization. The present research consists of two parts.In the first part, we review the study of biblical narrative in literary criticism and the study of characters in traditional literary criticism and structuralism. So far few studies of biblical narrative have been conducted in linguistics and the traditional approaches to characters are text-based and static. Jonathan Culpeper has put forward a cognitive stylistic approach (2001) to the process of characterization which is dynamic and considered as an interaction among author, text and reader. But his model also has limitations. By making some amendments and personal addition to his model, we attempt to offer a model which we think is more adaptable to narrative discourses. In the second part, we probe into three stylistic features of the Bible: mind style, point of view and type-scenes to illustrate the function and influence these features have on readers'cognition.The present research derives its inspiration from Culpeper's model of characterization. We share the main notion of his theories but we disagree with some of the ideas enveloped in the theory. We are of the same opinion with Culpeper about how readers understand characters. His model explains the construction of characters'mental representation, drawing theories from social cognition and cognitive psychology, and has received a positive evaluation from linguistics (John V. Knapp, 2003; Silvia Bruti, 2002). Although Culpeper's model is a useful and highly informative study of literary character, it still needs some improvement: 1) His attribution theory is simply the combination, not the integration of Jones's and Kelley's theories. The universality of fundamental attribution error has also been questioned. We hold that when fundamental attribution error is in use, cultural elements should be taken into consideration. 2) One of Culpeper's major theories is categorization, of which he makes a distinction between social and literary categorization types. In our model, text-specific categorization is added to categorization types. 3) Like Culpeper's model, the textual representation in our model is also made up of five levels: surface structure, textbase, situation model, control system, prior knowledge. But in our model, prior knowledge (reader's knowledge) includes not only social knowledge, but also literary knowledge and readers'emotion and evaluations. In surface structure (textual cues), we add mind style and point of view to tool kits of stylistic analysis, both of which play an important role in the process of characterization.The present research is innovative in the following areas:1) Based on Culpeper's model, we establish a new model which is more applicable to narrative texts and prose fiction in particular. 2) So far, only characters of cognitive defect such as mental illness have come to the attention of both the traditional and present study of mind style. We hold that mind style of characters with outstanding intelligence is also worth investigation. Furthermore, so far the research on mind style has been limited to the narrator's mind style. The present research makes a case study of a biblical character, Hushai's mind style. The study uses theories of cognitive linguistics such as blending theory and schema theory to explain the metaphors in Hushai and Ahitophel's conversations. It concludes that speech acts and metaphors in conversations contribute a lot to the revelation of character's mind style and characterization. In other words, the way one speaks betrays his characteristics. 3) Point of view mechanisms are also typical of prose fiction. The present research, based on Uspensky's five planes, suggests a methodology for analyzing point of view in biblical narratives. We have made Verse-by- Verse search for the textual markers of point of view. We propose that point of view is connected with characterization because readers get involved in authors'manipulation of point of view. As actor-observer bias (point of view) is relevant to attribution theory, so that the way the author chooses to present a character will influence readers'attitudes towards this character. Point of view manipulations alone are not enough to ensure that a reader adopts the viewpoint of an actor or an observer. It also depends on whether the reader has empathy or is identified with the character concerned. 4) The present research explores Robert Alter's type scenes and characterization by using schema theory to analyze stories on textual level. Integrating Schank & Abelson's model and Cook's theory, we analyze seven stories relevant to the betrothal type scene in the Bible and find that variations in each story of the betrothal type scene reveal characters'different dispositions and predict their different life experiences and fates.The present research is of great importance to the stylistic development in China. As non-native speakers, we lack keen awareness of stylistic features in English literary works. Cognitive and psychological theories and experiments can provide us with supposition and experimental findings and help us find those features otherwise we would ignore.Traditional stylistic analysis is on the phonological level, lexical-grammatical level and syntactical level. The present research makes careful analysis of mind style and point of view. The addition of these two levels to the tool kits of stylistic analysis helps us to find more stylistic features which otherwise will go unnoticed.This study is in part textual research. Readers'cognitive mechanism used in reading literary works and all the other types of texts as well is a project which needs further investigation in the future study. The present research can provide some inspirations to this project. It provides ground for textual research to test linguistic theories. The analysis of the Bible proves that theories in modern linguistics, literary criticism and narratology can be applied to ancient literary texts.This study tries to explain the construction of characters'mental representation. It tries to provide a plausible model for understanding characters in narrative texts from the perspective of cognition and stylistics. The research involves theories from social cognition, social psychology, text understanding and stylistics. It will be helpful in the construction of a multi-dimensional and multi-disciplinal model in future studies.