Stylistic Manipulation of the Reader in Contemporary Fiction (Advances in Stylistics)

This book focuses on how readers can be manipulated during their experience of reading fictional texts. Offering fine-grained stylistic analysis of diverse genres, including detective story, crime fiction, short story, multimodal novel and poetry, the book throws new light into how our perspective on and representation of the world can be manipulated. The chapters adopt a cross-disciplinary perspective and highlight the linguistic, pragmatic, cognitive and multimodal springs of manipulation. They delve into how contemporary fictional works such as __The French Lieutenants Woman, The Remains of the Day__ and __We Need to Talk About Kevin__ bring readers to offer a certain type of response, and how their emotions are triggered, their attention controlled and their potential expectations played with. The book also shows how readers responses can, conversely, bring about a certain form of manipulation of texts as they challenge the positions the texts invite them to occupy. Title Page 4 Copyrignt Page 5 Contents 6 Contributors 7 Acknowledgements 10 Chapter 1: Introduction: Manipulation in fiction 12 1. The two poles of manipulation 12 2. Literary communication: Different channels 15 3. Guiding attention, influencing judgement 18 4. Book content 25 Notes 33 References 33 Part 1: Manipulating positions, representations and viewpoints 40 Chapter 2: Metalepsis, counterfactuality and the forked path in The French Lieutenant’s Woman 42 1. Introduction: Manipulating the reader 42 2. Synopsis: The French Lieutenant’s Woman 43 3. Narrators, narration and author intention 45 4. The endings: Author metalepsis and manipulation 48 5. Counterfactuality, the forked path and disnarration 50 6. The logic of narrative possibilities 50 7. The disnarrated: What does not happen 54 8. Conclusion 57 References 58 Chapter 3: Social deixis in literature 61 1. Introduction 61 2. A theoretical discussion of social deixis in literature 62 3. Analysing social deixis as a means of literary manipulation of the reader: An example 73 4. Conclusion 78 Note 78 References 78 Chapter 4: ‘The novel of the future’: Author’s manipulation in Henry Green’s Nothing (1950) and Doting (1952) 81 1. Introduction 81 2. Henry Green’s theory of art: Author’s manipulation 82 3. Data and methodology 84 4. Dialogue versus narration ratio: Textual space 87 5. Gricean pragmatics: Oblique dialogue 88 6. Corpus pragmatics: Stylistic saliency 94 7. Conclusion 99 Notes 99 References 100 Chapter 5: Building a world from the day’s remains: Showing, telling, re-presenting 103 1. Introduction 103 2. Key terms and concepts: Mimesis and diegesis, discourse presentation and stylistic balance 105 3. The Remains of the Day 116 4. Conclusions 120 Notes 122 References 123 Part 2: Readers’ responses to stylistic manipulation 126 Chapter 6: Manipulating inferences: Interpretative problems and their effects on readers 128 1. Introduction 128 2. Explicatures and implicatures 130 3. Understanding the novels: Three kinds of difficulties 132 4. Experiencing the novels: Immersion and realism 142 5. Fictional texts as communicative acts 151 6. Conclusions 153 Notes 153 References 154 Chapter 7: Surprise and story ending: Readers’ responses to textual manipulation in a short story by J. D. Salinger 157 1. Introduction 157 2. Theoretical background 159 3. Data and method 165 4. Results and discussion 167 5. Conclusions 179 References 180 Chapter 8: Manipulating metaphors: Interactions between readers and ‘Upon Opening the Chest Freezer’ 183 1. Introduction 183 2. ‘Upon Opening the Chest Freezer’: Stylistic analysis 184 3. Reading group talk 188 4. Manipulating metaphors in the reading group talk 190 5. Conclusion 200 Acknowledgements 200 Appendix 201 Transcription conventions 202 References 202 Part 3: Genre-specific and multimodal manipulation 204 Chapter 9: Manipulation in Agatha Christie’s detective stories: Rhetorical control and cognitive misdirection in creating and solving crime puzzles 206 1. Introduction 206 2. Handling the evidence: Controlling descriptive details 207 3. Controlling the suspect list: Task-based inattentional blindness 217 4. Conclusion 222 Notes 223 References 224 Chapter 10: Untranslatable clues: Reader manipulation and the challenge of crime fiction translation 226 1. Introduction: On crime fiction’s reader manipulation 226 2. On the translatability of crime fiction’s reader manipulation 229 3. Concluding remarks 241 Notes 242 References 242 Chapter 11: Multimodal manipulation of the reader in Abrams and Dorst’s S. 245 1. Introduction 245 2. The multimodal feast of Abrams and Dorst’s S. 247 3. Typography – a multimodal stylistics approach 248 4. Typographic meaning in S. 251 5. Concluding remarks 258 Notes 260 References 260 Index 262 1. Introduction: Manipulation in Fiction, Sandrine Sorlin (University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3, France) -- Part I. Manipulating Positions, Representations and Viewpoints -- 2. Metalepsis, Counterfactuality and the Forked Path in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Marina Lambrou (Kingston University, UK) -- 3. Social Deixis in Literature, Andrea Macrae (Oxford Brookes University, UK) -- 4. 'The Novel of the Future': Author's Manipulation in Henry Green's Nothing (1950) and Doting (1952), RocƯo Montoro (University of Granada, Spain) -- 5. Building a World from the Day's Remains: Showing, Telling, Re-presenting, Jeremy Scott (University of Kent, UK) -- Part II. Readers' Responses to Stylistic Manipulation -- 6. Manipulating Inferences: Interpretative Problems and their Effects on Readers, Billy Clark (Northumbria University, UK) -- 7. Readers' Textual Processing and Emotional Responses to a Story Ending: An Experimental Study of a Short Story by J.D. Salinger, Laura Hidalgo Downing (Universidad Autđnoma de Madrid, Spain) -- 8. Manipulating Metaphors: Interactions Between Readers and 'Upon Opening the Chest Freezer', Sara Whiteley (University of Sheffield, UK) -- III. Multimodal and Genre-Specific Manipulation -- 9. Manipulation in Agatha Christie's Detective Stories: Rhetorical Control and Cognitive Misdirection in Creating and Solving Crime Puzzles, Catherine Emmott (University of Glasgow, UK) and Marc Alexander (University of Glasgow, UK) -- 10. Untranslatable Clues: Reader Manipulation and the Challenge of Crime Fiction Translation, Christiana Gregoriou (University of Leeds, UK) -- 11. Multimodal Manipulation of the Reader in Abrams and Dorst's S., Nina Nırgaard (University of Southern Denmark, Denmark) -- Index "This book focuses on how readers can be 'manipulated' during their experience of reading fictional texts and how they are incited to perceive, process and interpret certain textual patterns. Offering fine-grained stylistic analysis of diverse genres, including crime fiction, short stories, poetry and novels, the book deciphers various linguistic, pragmatic and multimodal techniques. These are skilfully used by authors to achieve specific effects through a subtle manipulation of deixis, metalepsis, dialogue, metaphors, endings, inferences or rhetorical, narratorial and typographical control. Exploring contemporary texts such as The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Remains of the Day and We Need to Talk About Kevin, chapters delve into how readers are pragmatically positioned or cognitively (mis)directed as the author guides their attention and influences their judgment. They also show how readers' responses can, conversely, bring about a certain form of manipulation as readers challenge the positions the texts invite them to occupy."-- Provided by publisher