The notion of mind style was put forward by Roger Fowler (1977, 1986, 1996) in order to account for the particular world view projected by a text. Fowler defines mind style as ‘any distinctive linguistic presentation of an individual mental self5 (1977: 103). Thus, his definition makes reference to consistent stylistic patterns that reflect an individual’s view of the world. Halliday (1971) was one of the first researchers to investigate how linguistic patterns reflected people s view of the world in the novel The Inheritors, by W. Golding. In this text, the protagonist is characterised by not understanding relations of human agency and cause-effect
relationships. His particular way of comprehending and making sense of the world, his mind style, can be analysed linguistically in terms of the transitivity patterns of his language, which reflect his cognitive condition as a Neanderthal man.
As it was first proposed by Fowler, mind style is the ‘world view of an author, or a narrator, or a character, constituted by the ideational structure of the text’ (1996: 214). Nevertheless, most research has been carried out on the mind style of peculiar characters, or characters that are at the same time narrators. My research is also exclusively devoted to the mind style of literary characters (most of the times acting as narrators as well), since my ultimate purpose is to show that mind style reveals characterisation issues.
This thesis deals with the mind style of characters suffering from cognitive deviations. However, my analysis will also take into account the mind style of other characters interacting with them. Leech and Short propose a scale ranging from ‘natural and uncontrived’ mind styles to ‘those which clearly impose an unorthodox conception of the fictional world’ (1981: 189). Although most research has concentrated on characters with mental deviations, as will most of my thesis, I will also consider those more ‘natural’ mind styles to observe how they are affected by their interaction with ‘deviant’ mind styles.
Since Fowler coined the term ‘mind style’, several authors have provided their own definitions of the term with different emphasis depending on their goals. Moreover, related concepts like ‘point of view on the ideological plane (Uspensky 1973) simply ‘point of view’ or ‘world view have been utilised sometimes as complementary and sometimes as overlapping with the notion of mind style. For Fowler, the notions are equivalent (1986: 150). The result is we have a variety of
concepts that sometimes refer to the same phenomena and which need to be differentiated from each other.
Semino (2002) has provided a clearer explanation and differentiation of these concepts, which was already anticipated in Semino and Swindlehurst (1996). ‘World view is regarded by Semino as the most general term that refers to ‘the overall view of reality or the text actual world’ (Ryan 1991) conveyed by the language of a text’ (2002: 97). Then, ideological point of view’ is a narrower concept as far as it is defined as the aspects of the world views that are social, cultural, religious or political in origin, and which an individual is likely to share with other members belonging to similar social, cultural, religious or political groups’ (2002: 97).
On the other hand, mind style is defined as the way in which ‘language reflects the particular conceptual structures and cognitive habits that characterise an individual’s world view’ (Semino 2002: 95). Semino proposes that the way this phenomenon is best analysed is by combining linguistic theories with cognitive ones. In traditional stylistics, the study of mind style relied almost exclusively on linguistic analysis (Halliday 1971, Fowler 1977, 1986, 1996, Leech and Short 1981). However, the approach to mind style from cognitive stylistics makes use of both linguistic analysis and cognitive theories to analyse the language of the text (Black 1993, Semino and Swindlehurst 1996, Semino 2002). By relating linguistic features to theories of cognition (e.g. schema theory, cognitive metaphor) a more systematic and explanatory methodology is provided for the interpretation of mind style.
Semino’s contribution in the differentiation between mind style and ideological point of view is that the former is defined as characterising (1) the particular cognitive habits of an individual or (2) of a group of people sharing the same cognitive aspects, such as mental illnesses (e.g. schizophrenia, autism), or (3) a given stage of cognitive
development (e.g. children or Golding’s Neanderthal man). According to her, these aspects would include cognitive habits, abilities and limitations, and any beliefs and values that may arise from them’ (2002: 97). In the chapters dedicated to textual analysis, I will pay special attention to the study of these cognitive habits, abilities and limitations as exemplified in people suffering from different cognitive deviations.
The analysis of mind style as part of characterisation has received little attention (Bockting 1993, 1994). With this particular goal in mind, Bockting includes in her definition of mind style not only ‘the conceptualisation of the world achieved by the individual’, but also ‘the conceptualisation of the individual himself in this world’ (1994: 171-2). This last aspect will acquire much relevance in my research because characters’ conceptualisation of their reality is conditioned by their conceptualisation of themselves in their social context. In my approach to mind style, I claim that the cognitive habits of characters can also be observed in their conceptualisation of self, their self-concept: what and how they think about themselves.
Moreover, I will analyse the particular mind styles of characters in their interpersonal behaviour with other characters, how they behave and communicate with others. Both characters’ self-concept and interpersonal behaviour will vary depending on contextual features: setting, participants, and goals among others. This is consistent with Bockting’s view when she states that ‘[personality is a pragmatic issue: it is something that one does in relation to ‘the other rather than something one is, a strategy rather than an essence’ (1994: 158) (see Culpeper 2001 for a similar view of characters as part of the pragmatic context). Bockting demonstrates how the general concept ‘personality’, applied to literary characters, is analysable in interaction. My claim is that mind style, character’s conceptual structures and
cognitive habits, can also be analysed through interpersonal behaviour, in relation to other characters.
My usage of the term mind style is consistent with how it is used in the literature. The major difference between my work and previous work on mind style is the linguistic phenomena I select to exemplify it. Most research has used similar linguistic techniques for the analysis of mind style. For example, regarding lexicalisation, a character s level of vocabulary has been examined in terms of under and over-lexicalisation, value-laden expressions, or hedges (Leech and Short 1981). Within syntax, transitivity patterns have received special attention (Halliday 1971, Black 1993) as well as various syntactic structures. And other areas such as phonology, morphology and deixis (Bockting 1993) have also been reported to influence mind style. Recently, within the cognitive stylistics approach, cognitive metaphor has been shown to play a part in the creation of mind style (Black 1993, Semino and Swindlehurst 1996, Semino 2002).
The linguistic phenomena I will be analysing is mostly the representation of conversation, the social interaction between characters. For this purpose, the linguistic theories I will use belong to the discipline of pragmatics, which was originally oriented towards the study of spoken interaction. In my thesis, I will apply pragmatic theories (e.g. Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory, speech act theory, Grice’s CP and maxims) to the conversations between characters, and to the narratives of narrator-characters, and complement it with theories of cognition to arrive at conclusions about characters’ mind styles. Moreover, I will demonstrate that characters’ cognitive structures and processes are also indicative of mind style. The construction of characters’ self-concepts and possible selves, the related mental processes (e.g. inference or self-regulation), and their styles of self-presentation are
cognitive processes expressed in their use of language that reveal peculiar mind styles (see 6.3.4.2 and 6.3.4.3). Thus, characters’ peculiar cognitive habits are another tool to study mind style.