Foregrounding Effects Of The Texts On Chinese English Majors' Literary Reading Emotions And Empathic Ability-from The Perspective Of Cognitive Poetics

With the rapid development in economy and culture,China has been playing an increasingly important role in the international society,which has accordingly brought new demands and challenges to its domestic English education.In an effort to cultivate the highly qualified international talents who can satisfy the demands of social development in the new era,it is urgent and necessary to attach greater importance to the development of English majors' humanistic qualities and have English literary education reoriented to the center of the cultivation system of English professionals.Against this background,the present paper conducts an empirical research on the process of English literary reading by the Chinese English majors from the perspective of Cognitive Poetics.The birth of Cognitive Poetics makes it possible for the various methodologies and findings of other disciplines such as cognitive science,psychology and neurology to be combined with the studies of linguistics and literature,which provides concrete and feasible empirical methodologies for the study of real readers‘ literary reading emotions.Scholars in western academia have conducted interdisciplinary research on the foregrounding effects of literary texts on readers‘ reading emotions.Though the systematic theoretical framework has not come into being,these findings provide enlightenment for the further study of how Chinese readers experience emotions and develop their empathic ability in English literary reading.The study of emotions in domestic academia of Cognitive Poetics,which mainly focuses on the introduction of theories and the analysis of texts,is just at its early stage,with few interdisciplinary researches on real readers' emotions in English literary reading.In view of this,the present study,with 173 English majors from one of the 211 universities in Jiangsu Province as the participants,probes into the issue of how the foregrounding of classic English stories interacts with Chinese English majors' emotions and their empathic ability by drawing on the methodology of psychology.Guided by the theory of Cognitive Poetics that literary reading is an interactive and embodied process,the study expounds upon how the foregrounding of texts,the attributes of individual readers,as well as readers‘ social emotional experiences in real life interact with one another within the analysis framework involving the conceptual metaphor that “reading is investment”.The research questions are listed as follows:(1)Does the foregrounding of English literary texts exert any impact upon Chinese readers‘ literary emotions(including aesthetic emotions,narrative emotions and reflections)? If so,how does foregrounding interact with readers‘ process of experiencing emotions?(2)Does the foregrounding of English literary texts exert a positive impact upon the instant improvement of Chinese readers‘ empathic ability? If so,what role does it play in this process?(3)Do Chinese readers‘ personal attributes(motivations of English literary reading, experience of English literary reading,readers‘ personal trait empathy and their traumatic grief experiences in real life)play any important roles in readers‘ interactionwith the foregrounding of English literary texts? If so,what effects do they have?With the quantitative and qualitative research methods,the study inquires into what emotions readers experience when exposed to different versions of the texts,what changes take place in reader‘s empathic ability after reading,and what roles the personal attributes play in this process.The experiment on literary reading emotions(Research?),the test of empathic ability(Research ?)and the research of personal attributes(Research ?)are respectively centered upon the three research questions above.Grounded on the analysis of the experimental data,the study presents the following three major findings:First of all,as Research ?indicates,the foregrounding of English literary texts has a significant influence on Chinese readers‘ literary reading emotions.According to the analysis framework of the current study,the findings of Research?can be reported at three levels:(1)At the first level of reading investment,where interaction takes place between readers and the text itself,readers mainly make intellectual investment and obtain aesthetic emotions as the main emotional rewards.In this case,compared with the sense of “attractiveness”,“novelty” is more significantly influenced by the foregrounding.(2)At the second level,reading investment mainly occurs between readers and the narrative world.Both intellectual and emotional capitals are invested in the reading process and narrative emotions are the mostly expected rewards.The foregrounding of texts has particularly significant effects on readers‘ “empathic experience”.Besides,the more foregrounding features the text involves,the greater sense of participation the readers have and the less likely for readers to have negative emotions.(3)The third level of reading investment takes place on the basis of the integration of the real world and the narrative world.With the introduction of social capital,readers are able to acquire more profound emotions such as reflections.Foregrounding at this level seems to have little bearing on readers‘ sense of emotions,and it is readers‘ own emotional experiences in the real world that plays a significant part in evoking readers' reflections in literary reading.Secondly,according to the findings of Research ?,reading English literary texts,which are abundant in foregrounding features,contributes to improving Chinese readers‘ empathic ability,though the improvement is not significant enough.In terms of the metaphor of investment,the enhancement of empathic ability depends on the increase of capital,which,to some degree,overshadows the impact of foregrounding.Even so,the fact that Chinese English majors do make progress in the test of empathic ability after reading is enlightening for the further study of whether regular English literary reading conduces to the enhancement of Chinese readers‘ empathic ability.Thirdly,the findings of Research ? show that the foregrounding of the English literary texts has significant influence on Chinese readers‘ emotions even if the four personal attributes(motivations of English literary reading,experience of English literary reading,readers‘ personal trait empathy and traumatic grief experiences)are taken into account.Meanwhile,none of the four attributes has any significant influence on readers‘ empathic ability.Viewing from the metaphor of investment,readers‘ personalized capital,in a general sense,does not greatly impact their emotional rewards.However,specifically speaking,readers‘ trait empathy is closely related with their narrative emotions,whereas their personalized traumatic grief experiences have great impact on the reading reflections.Besides,the motivation of “learning the language” plays a positive role in the interaction between the foregrounding of texts and readers‘ perception of aesthetic emotions in a particular condition.As for readers‘ experience of English literary reading,it does not have remarkable effect on readers‘ reading emotions,which,in a large part,is due to the fact that the participants of the current study have read a rather small number of English stories and lack experience of literary reading.The current study is expected to make the following contributions in terms of research content,research methodology and theory construction:First of all,the research content is characteristic of subjectivity,embodiment and transcendence.From the perspective of real readers,the study investigates Chinese English majors‘ process of experiencing emotions in English literary reading within an interactive framework that involves both the foregrounding of the texts and the personal attributes of readers.It transcends the limitation of the text and expands the scope of literary reading research.Secondly,in terms of methodology,the study is interdisciplinary and empirical in nature.The measuring tools such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index,the Inventory of Traumatic Grief and Mind-in-the-Eyes Test,which are commonly used in psychological research,are applied to the study on the emotions in literary reading.It is conducive to orienting the development of Cognitive Poetics in the direction of empirical science.In addition,the research findings are expected to provide beneficial supplements for the localized theory construction of Cognitive Poetics.With Chinese English majors as the research object,the current study incorporates readers‘ emotional experiences in real social life into the research framework of cognitive study on literary reading,which conduces to the localized development of Cognitive Poetics.