Recent investigations into emotion and discourse processing using the Text World Theory framework (Werth, 1999) regard psychological projection as a key factor in readers’ emotional responses to discourse (Gavins, 2007; Lahey, 2005; Stockwell, 2009). The present article examines psychological projection in relation to an extract from Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989) and the comments made by a group of readers discussing the novel. As a result, a more nuanced account of psychological projection is proposed, which highlights the multiple perspectives which readers are able to monitor and adopt during text-world construction. Whilst previous work in Text World Theory has focused upon psychological projection in relation to a single text-world role (such as the addressee, for example), here it is argued that multiple projections in relation to a range of text-world enactors are of fundamental significance in our emotional responses to narrative. Such multiple projections, it is proposed, should receive greater consideration in accounts of our emotional experience of literary discourse.
Allington, D. and Benwell, B. ( 2007) ‘"I almost was crying": A discourse analytical approach to analysing reception’, conference paper, presented at Beyond the book, University of Birmingham , 1 September.
2.
Baron-Cohen, S. ( 1995) Mindblindness: An essay on autism and theory of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
3.
Booth, W.C. ( 1961) The rhetoric of fiction. Chicago, IL : Chicago University Press.
4.
Buhler, K. ( 1982) ‘The deictic field of language and deictic worlds’ , in R.J. Jarvella and W. Klein (eds) Speech, place and action: Studies in deixis and related topics, pp. 9-30. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.
5.
Burke, M. ( 2010) Literary reading, cognition and emotion: An exploration of the oceanic mind. London: Routledge .
6.
Carruthers, P. and Smith, P.K. ( 1996) Theories of theories of mind. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
7.
Culpeper, J. ( 2001) Language and characterisation. Harlow : Pearson Education.
8.
Duchan, J.F., Bruder, G.A. and Hewitt, L.E. ( 1995) Deixis in narrative, a cognitive science perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
9.
Emmott, C. ( 1997) Narrative comprehension: A discourse perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10.
Emmott, C. ( 2002) ‘The experience of reading: Cognition, style, affect and social space’, in S. Csábi and J. Zerkowitz (eds) Textual secrets: The message of the medium, pp. 29-41. Budapest: Eotros Lorand University.
11.
Fauconnier, G. ( 1997) Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
12.
Fludernik, M. ( 1995) ‘Pronouns of address and "odd" third person forms: The mechanics of involvement in fiction’, in K. Green (ed.) New essays in deixis: Discourse, narrative, literature, pp. 99-129. Amsterdam: Rodopi .
13.
Fuller, D. ( 2008) ‘Reading as social practice: The beyond the book research project’, Journal of popular narrative media1(2): 211-17.
14.
Gavins, J. ( 2007) Text world theory: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gerrig, R.J. ( 1996) ‘Participatory aspects of narrative understanding’ , in R.J. Kreuz and M.S. MacNealy (eds) Empirical approaches to literature and aesthetics, pp. 127-142. Norwood: Ablex.
18.
Goldman, A.I. ( 1992) ‘In defense of the simulation theory’, Mind and Language17(1-2): 104-19.
19.
Green, K. ( 1992) ‘Deixis and the poetic persona’, Language and Literature1(2): 121-34.
20.
Green, K. (ed.) (1995) New essays in deixis: Discourse, narrative, literature. Amsterdam : Rodopi.
21.
Herman, D. ( 2002) Story logic: problems and possibilities of narrative. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
22.
Holt, E. ( 2007) ‘"I’m eyeing up your chop mind": Reporting and enacting’ in, E. Holt and R. Clift (eds) Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction, pp. 47-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23.
Holt, E. and Clift, R. ( 2007) Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Ishiguro, K. ( 2005[1989]) The remains of the day. London : Faber & Faber.
25.
Johnson-Laird, P.N. ( 1983) Mental models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
26.
Kövecses, Z. ( 2000) Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture and body in human feeling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Kuiken, D., Miall, D.S. and Sikora, S. ( 2004) ‘Forms of self-implication in literary reading’ , Poetics today25(2): 171-203.
28.
Lahey, E. ( 2003) ‘Seeing the forest for the trees in Al Purdy’s "trees at the arctic circle"’, BELL: Belgian Journal of language and literatures1: 73-83.
29.
Lahey, E. ( 2005) ‘Text-world landscapes and English Canadian national identity in the poetry of Al Purdy, Milton Acorn and Alden Nowlan’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, UK.
30.
Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. ( 1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
31.
Leech, G.N. and Short, M. ( 1981) Style in fiction. London: Longman.
32.
Leslie, A.M. ( 1991) ‘The theory of mind impairment in autism: Evidence for a modular mechanism of development?’ in A. Whiten (ed.) Natural theories of mind, pp. 63-78. Oxford : Blackwell.
33.
Long, E. ( 2003) Book clubs: Women and the uses of reading in everyday life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
34.
Malle, B.F. and Hodges, S.D. ( 2005) Other minds: How humans bridge the divide between self and others. London: Guilford Press .
35.
Miall, D.S. ( 2006) Literary reading: Empirical and theoretical studies. New York: Peter Lang.
36.
Myers, G. ( 1999) ‘Functions of reported speech in group discussions’ , Applied Linguistics20(3): 376-401.
37.
Nisbett, R.E. and Wilson, T.D. ( 1977) ‘Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes’, Psychological Review84(3): 231-59.
38.
O’Halloran, K. ( 2008) ‘Arguing in social reading’, unpublished paper presented at the Reading Experience Database Conference, Institute of English Studies, University of London, 21 July.
39.
Oatley, K. ( 2002) ‘Emotions and the story worlds of fiction’ , in M.C. Green, J.J. Strange and T.C. Brock (eds) Narrative Impact, pp. 36-69. London : Lawrence Erlbaum.
40.
Palmer, A. ( 2004) Fictional minds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
41.
Phelan, J. ( 1996) Narrative as rhetoric: Technique, audiences, ethics, ideology . Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
42.
Phelan, J. ( 2005) Living to tell about it: A rhetoric and ethics of character narration. New York: Cornell University Press.
43.
Rabinowitz, P.J. ( 1998[1987]) Before reading: Narrative conventions and the politics of interpretation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
44.
Ryan, M.L. ( 1991) Possible worlds, artificial intelligence and narrative theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
45.
Ryan, M.L. ( 1998) ‘The text as world versus the text as game: Possible worlds semantics and postmodern theory’, Journal of literary semantics27(3): 137-63.
46.
Segal, E. ( 1995) ‘Narrative comprehension and the role of deictic shift theory’, in J.F. Duchan, G.A. Bruder and L.E. Hewitt (eds), pp. 3-17. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
47.
Short, M. and Van Peer, W. ( 1989) ‘Accident! stylisticians evaluate: Aims and methods of stylistic analysis’, in M. Short (ed.) Reading, analysing and teaching literature, pp. 22-71. London: Longman.
48.
Stanzel, F.K. ( 1984) A theory of narrative (trans. C. Goedsche). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
49.
Steen, G. ( 1991) ‘The empirical study of literary reading: Methods of data collection’, Poetics20(5-6): 559-75.
50.
Stockwell, P. ( 2005) ‘Texture and identification’, European Journal of English studies9(2): 143-53.
51.
Stockwell, P. ( 2009) Texture: A cognitive aesthetics of reading. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
52.
Swann, J. and Allington, D.(2009) ‘Reading groups and the language of literary texts: A case study in social reading’, Language and Literature18(3): 247-64.
53.
Tannen, D. ( 1989) Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
54.
Van Dijk, T.A. and Kintsch, W. ( 1983) Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
55.
Wall, K. ( 1994) ‘The remains of the day and its challenges to theories of unreliable narration’, Journal of narrative technique24(1): 18-42.
56.
Werth, P. ( 1995) ‘How to build a world (In a lot less than six days and using only what’s in your head)’, in K. Green (ed.) New essays on deixis: Discourse, narrative, literature, pp. 48-80. Amsterdam: Rodopi .
57.
Werth, P. ( 1999) Text worlds: Representing conceptual space in discourse . London: Longman.
58.
Whiteley, S. ( 2010) ‘Text world theory and the emotional experience of literary discourse’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.
59.
Zunshine, L. ( 2006) Why we read fiction: Theory of mind and the novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.
