Christine A. Knoop

Rhetorical features facilitate prosodic processing while handicapping ease of semantic comprehension

Studies on rhetorical features of language have reported both enhancing and adverse effects on ease of processing. We hypothesized that two explanations may account for these inconclusive findings. First, the respective gains and losses in ease of processing may apply to different dimensions of language processing (specifically, prosodic and semantic processing) and different types of fluency (perceptual vs. conceptual) and may well allow for an integration into a more comprehensive framework. Second, the effects of rhetorical features may be sensitive to interactions with other rhetorical features; employing a feature separately or in combination with others may then predict starkly different effects. We designed a series of experiments in which we expected the same rhetorical features of the very same sentences to exert adverse effects on semantic (conceptual) fluency and enhancing effects on prosodic (perceptual) fluency. We focused on proverbs that each employ three rhetorical features: rhyme, meter, and brevitas (i.e., artful shortness). The presence of these target features decreased ease of conceptual fluency (semantic comprehension) while enhancing perceptual fluency as reflected in beauty and succinctness ratings that were mainly driven by prosodic features. The rhetorical features also predicted choices for persuasive purposes, yet only for the sentence versions featuring all three rhetorical features; the presence of only one or two rhetorical features had an adverse effect on the choices made. We suggest that the facilitating effects of a combination of rhyme, meter, and rhetorical brevitas on perceptual (prosodic) fluency overcompensated for their adverse effects on conceptual (semantic) fluency, thus resulting in a total net gain both in processing ease and in choices for persuasive purposes.

Fictional communication: developing Gregory Bateson's “Theory of Play and Fantasy”

Purpose – To supplement Gregory Batesons theory with findings from literary studies and attempt a new take on literary communication.Design/methodology/approach – On the basis of Gregory Batesons “Theory of play and fantasy” the transmission of messages between author and readers is investigated. After that, it is attempted to show the particularities of literary messages and their communication, including different literary levels of what Bateson calls the “frame” of a message. The elements discussed include creativity, tension, surprise, Coleridges notion of “the willing suspension of disbelief” in reading fiction and emotional response.Findings – While messages usually contain signs referring to an existing range of object representations, literary texts depart from and expand this range. The term “message” is subject to shift. The creativity of both author and readers allows a level of innovation that alters Batesons categories: the metacommunicative level is not necessarily denoted by the message...

Over the Edge of the Mental Map: On the Narrative Functions of Wilderness in Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut

Abstract This paper identifies and discusses different narrative functions of the American wilderness in Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut. While the novel offers a detailed account of its French locations, its fictional Louisiana is presented as a largely undescribed blank space that remains impenetrable to the characters. I argue that the change in their behaviour, which becomes evident as they struggle to come to terms with their place of exile, is to be situated in a narrative strategy that intrinsically links the development of literary characters to the spatial givens of their world. In that sense, Manon’s death, which seems unsurprising in the wider context of the genre, is not only rooted in convention, but also results from the geography of the fictional world.