Reconstructing Macrostructures and Story Contours from Metaphoric Imagery

General aims. Cognitive linguistic methods of metaphor analysis, which have been developed to uncover imagery in language comprehension at the word and phrase level, are here applied to story comprehension. Previous narratological work of mine (Kimmel 2005) has modeled how local textual imagery constituents are cumulatively inscribed in a global "mental sketchpad" by the reader, whereby the macrostructure defining the global event ontology is gradually specified. To validate this mode lof "plot" comprehension more comparatively and to fine- grain the text-linguistic methods a larger-scale analysis of a corpus of six novellas is proposed. (For comparative purposes, texts with varying metaphor density are used.) To cope with the size of the corpus, the qualtitative software package Atlas.ti 5.0 is applied to analyze metaphor cohesion in the textbase and then reconstruct higher- level coherence that readers infer from it. Theory. Conceptual Metaphor Theory sees linguistic cognition as needing image-schematic and force-dynamic scaffolds, thus simple topological schemas which are grounded in sensorimotor, embodied experience. Applying this claim to narratology, story events are understood as "small spatal stories" (Turner 1996). Various "tracks" of global story ontology (cf. Zwaan, Magliano & Graesser 1995) are structured by FORCE, PATH or CONTAINER schemas: temporality, causal-intentional action, protagonist interaction and emotions or "mood contours". Kimmel (2005) empirically demonstrates that systematic and recurrent clues for all of these tracks of global event ontology may be found in (local) metaphorical imagery in the texts. To provide further backing for this, my task is to reconstruct in some detail the various ways of how image schema-evoking phrases may scale up to a global mental model. Method. My comparative qualitative coding approach steps into the gap between large-scale automatized counting of imagery-related vocabulary and interpretive, but ad hoc and non-comparative case-study approaches to imagery. Specifically, metaphoric and other imagery-evoking text is assigned multiple codes in each novella, as regards (a) the imagistic basis of a metaphor, (b) inferences or emotions licensed by it, and (c) its situatedness in non- metaphoric, wider themes. First, Atlas.ti allows exploring metaphor networks/clusters via code co-occurrence. The strongest evidence for a conceptual clusters in the reading mind comes from conceptual coherence (i.e. affines in imagery-type) combined with cohesion in a paragraph, although distributed clusters may exist: Thus, co-occurring and meaningfully-related PATH, FORCE, and CONTAINER schemas allow hypothesizing that readers mesh these imagistic constituents, make them interact and scale them up to higher-level effects (story meso- and macro- structure). Second, the software supports a wider distributional analysis of image schemas in the text to understand experiential "event contours", e.g. emotive texturing. Third, patterns from the distributional profiles will be compared across the corpus to understand different authorial strategies for deploying imagery and the effects thereof.

The project examined metaphor and related imagery-based tropes in literature against the background of cognitive- stylistic strategies of storytelling. Going beyond the typical impressionistic or thematically limited case studies, seven English and American novels were systematically screened and compared for the whole range of imagistic effects in each text (Carmilla, Turn of the Screw, Spy in the House of Love, Billy Budd, Of the Farm, Cement Garden, City of Glass). Coder`s read the texts word-by-word and marked imagery words, using the annotation and search tool ATLAS.ti. A first aim was to compile cognitively similar expressions of a text to analyze lite-rary themes or ambiguities. For example, in Carmilla force-related metaphors subtly foreshadow the manipulative nature of the vampire. Or, to provide an example of metaphor-based ambiguity, in Turn of the Screw the ghosts systematically appear as fallen, base creatures, but also high up. The methodological background for these analyses was conceptual metaphor theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), which posits that sets of differing metaphorical expressions reflect types of mental mappings. To illustrate, `she held out her mind like a saucepan` combines the common mappings THE MIND IS A CONTAINER with COMMUNICATION IS OBJECT TRANSFER. This kind of analysis allows screening texts for recurrent mappings and analyzing their effects. It also demonstrates that most literary metaphors are rooted in everyday metaphor. (Literary `strangification` comes about mainly through the linguistic novelty and elaboration or through the creative interweaving of mappings.) Second, it was examined how heavily repeated mappings across a text affect the conceptual scaffolds reader build of narrative. Often, recurrent force imagery in metaphors (e.g. `swept away by her feelings`, `hit by a realization`) or simple event descriptions (e.g. `slammed the door`) defines the interaction of protagonists (actants after Greimas 1966). For example, in Turn of the Screw, although the character narrator thinks of herself as moral and caring, the recurrent force images point to a manipulative character who `moves the story` against the others` interests. Third, metaphor clusters found by the ATLAS.ti tool were analyzed. For example, in Anais Nin`s Spy in the House of Love interwoven metaphors characterize the complex psyche of an unfaithful wife, intermixing imagery for a strong creative effect in rich sensory blends of colors, textures, sounds and body affects, and sometimes, compressing it in key images like `the firebird`. Fourth, the project examined ways in which imagery enhances reader immersion and embodied reading. Some kinds of imagery enhance inner feelings (e.g. emotion metaphors), while others enhance actions or settings, or remain more abstract (e.g. treating ideas as objects). Some texts are rich in language that manipulates bodily affects of, e.g. `a seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong`, while others encourage a detached kind of reading. A final (comparative) focus lay in surveying the cognitive ends to which authors use metaphor. Psychological novels require metaphor most heavily to express emotions and mental states. Metaphysical novels may employ them to create complex allegories. Most text use metaphors to vivify the understanding of characters and their relation- ships, and some texts use them to create a sensory ambiance or a feel of `being there`.