Characterization In The Theory Of Cognitive Stylistics

Cognitive stylistics is a new branch of learning at the interface between linguistics, literary studies and cognitive science. It combines the kind of explicit, rigorous and detailed linguistic analysis of literary texts that is typical of the stylistics tradition with the cognitive structures and process that underlie the production and reception of language, so as to systematically illuminate the relationship between language and cognition. Characterization is an important factor in literature, and readers'understanding of characters may straightly influence their interpretation of texts.This thesis tries to analyze the characterization in literary works under the theory of cognitive stylistics, and explains how the character impression forms in readers'mind. The first two chapters clearly expound—from the perspective of cognitive schema and cognitive context—how characterization is effected by readers'cognition. The last chapter then shows how characterization happened step by step in a cognitive way which contains 5 parts: prior knowledge, situation model, textbase representation, surface representation and control system. Through this the advantages and disadvantages of this model can be found. A conclusion can be made by this study that analyzing characterization in a cognitive approach is a kind of supplement and improvement relative to the old literary studies. However, it has its own shortcomings since it is a new field. There are few studies in this field in China and almost nobody has analyzed the characterization under the theory of cognitive stylistics. This is the creative point of this thesis. It is hoped that this kind of research can bring some improvement to our literary studies.