Beyond amusement: language and emotion in narrative comedy

This thesis builds on cognitive stylistics, humour studies and psychological approaches to literature, film and television to explore how the stylistic features of comic novels and short stories may shape readers’ experience of comedy. I suggest that our responses to written humorous narratives are triggered by two types of stylistic cue: those which lead to amusement and stabilise our experience of comedy, and those which destabilise it by evoking non-humorous emotions associated with experiencing narrative worlds generally. When presented simultaneously, those cues can trigger complex humorous responses in which amusement is experienced alongside other, often negative, emotions. In order to investigate how textual elements can influence our emotional experience of humorous narratives, this thesis examines the ways in which stylistic cues affect some of the main experiential features of the narrative worlds of comedy: the moods evoked by the world, our relationships with characters, and our reactions to plot events. Following on from the Introduction and the Literature Review (Chapters 1 and 2), Chapter 3 explores the ways in which stylistic cues may evoke various moods by establishing, reinforcing and disrupting our expectations. Chapter 4 focuses on the role of characterisation in humorous narratives, concentrating on those cues which encourage us to laugh at narrative characters, and those which evoke other, non-humorous responses to them. In Chapter 5, I consider how the presentation of story events affects our experience of humorous plots. I discuss the cues which add humour to the presentation of otherwise problematic events, as well as those which combine humour with more uncomfortable emotions that stem from our reactions to story structures. Chapter 6, finally, provides a summary of the argument and of the contribution to knowledge made by this thesis. My exploration of the non-humorous side of experiencing narrative comedy offers a key contribution to the study of humorous narratives. By investigating humour as part of a wider narrative world, this thesis moves beyond the analysis of amusing language and towards addressing the complexity of the creation and experience of humour in a narrative world. The interdisciplinary, stylistic-psychological approach adopted here allows for hypotheses to be made not only about the emotional experience of humour in comic novels and short stories, but also about the affective side of narrative comprehension more generally

Humorous worlds: a cognitive stylistic approach to the creation of humour in comic narratives

In this thesis, I examine some of the ways in which humour is created in comic novels. I combine concepts from cognitive stylistics and psychology to address the question: ‘How does the construction of narrative worlds contribute to the creation of humour in narratives?’. I suggest that the narrative world can be designed to enhance the humour of particular elements which appear in it by encouraging a playful interpretation of those elements. I call the narrative worlds which are constructed to elicit an overall experience of humour humorous worlds and outline some of the techniques which writers use to build them, focusing on three aspects: (1) Disrupted Schemata. In the first chapter, I discuss the elements which are used to build humorous worlds. I outline the ways in which representations of settings, objects, characters and situations which make up humorous worlds can be manipulated to achieve an amusing effect. I demonstrate some of the applications of schema theory in the stylistics of humorous texts, including Cook’s schema disruption and schema refreshment (1994), Gibbs’ soft-assembling of schemata (2003) and Schank and Abelson’s notion of scripts thrown off normal course (1977). I link those to McGhee’s concept of fantasy-assimilation (1972). (2) Repetition and Variation. I then outline some of the ways in which the disrupted elements are combined. I write about repetition and variation, which in humorous narratives operates in two ways (conceptual/stylistic) and on two levels (local/extended). I discuss the cognitive mechanisms involved in them (by drawing on, for example, Emmott’s 1997 contextual frame theory) and hypothesise about their amusing effect by basing my work on classic research in psychology (Berlyne 1972, Suls 1972). (3) Humorous Mode. Finally, I discuss the devices which mark humorous worlds as humorous. I point out that comic narratives need to be labelled as humorous discourse and that the humorous cueing/keying in novels is less explicit than that in jokes. I apply Triezenberg’s model of humour enhancers (2004) to humorous extracts, analyse narrative strategies in the opening paragraphs of a number of humorous novels and suggest some ways in which a manipulation of distance (e.g. Leech and Short 2007) between the writer and the reader can be seen as a humorous cueing strategy. I argue that while creating humour in narratives requires a skilful stylistic manipulation on the part of the writer, making sense of it demands a considerable cognitive effort from the reader. Through a range of examples from nine humorous novels (by authors including Heller, Fielding, Pratchett, Amis, Roth and Vonnegut) and relevant secondary literature, I illustrate how a cognitive stylistic analysis of humour in narratives has the potential to offer some hypotheses not only about reading comprehension, but also about the pleasure of reading

Schema theory in stylistics

This chapter outlines the background to schema theory in psychology and artificial intelligence and explains some of the key areas in which it has been used in stylistics and related disciplines, followed by a range of representative examples and an indication of directions for future research. It explores some of the core research applications of schema theory in these areas. A key use of schema theory in stylistics has been in studying mind style, which generally involves examining the style of the thought representations of characters who perceive the world differently from ordinary, modern-day adult humans. Schema theory has also been influential in second language teaching, where reading is viewed as the interaction between top-down socio-cultural schemata guiding reading and bottom-up signals from the text, and where varying schemata can explain misunderstandings by readers of different cultures

Metaphor framing and distress in lived-experience accounts of voice-hearing

This paper explores the potential role of metaphor as a signal and determinant of distress in first-person accounts of voice-hearing by people with schizophrenia diagnoses. The degree of distress experienced by voice-hearers depends, amongst other factors, on voice-hearers’ perceptions of the “power” of the voices, and on the extent to which the voices can control or be controlled by the person. Metaphors are well known to both reflect and reinforce particular ways of making sense of subjective and sensitive experiences, including in terms of attributions of agency, power and control. Metaphors were systematically identified and analysed in semi-structured interviews with 10 voice-hearers with diagnoses of schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Divergent uses of metaphors framed the experience of voice-hearing in distinctive ways and were found to have different implications for perceptions of mutual power and control between voice-hearer and voices. Participants who used metaphors in which they are in disempowered positions tended to report higher level of distress, while participants who used metaphors in ways that constructed them as empowered tended to report lower levels of distress. It is argued that metaphor analysis can be usefully added to well-established approaches to both understanding and addressing distress in voice-hearers