DOI: 10.4324/9781315147505-4
Literature and Minds 99 linguistics can provide us with an adequate paradigm for literary stud-ies. Although post-structuralism denied that literary studies can take the form of one systematic and rigorous body of research, it still shared many of the textualist assumptions of its predecessors, most important of which was the belief that the study of language and literature and, consequently, the study of culture as such, can be absolutely autonomous from any considerations about humans, human action, human nature and human biology. Such research orientation was not only reminiscent of the nineteenth-century Diltheyan distinction into natural sciences and to so-called Geistesswissenschaften and C.P. Snow’s discussion of two cultures, but it also claimed that culture does not form a continuous body with nature in a non-trivial way. To study artifacts of culture, it was claimed, we do not need to adhere to any notions of humans as biological organisms, as culture is a self-contained and self-referential entity that operates without any direct connection to nature and the material in biological sense.
Contemporary discussions in analytic aesthetics put some of these claims into doubt. First, it is extremely problematic to study literature in a way that is parallel to the type of research done in linguistics. The no-tion of a “work” does not have a simple equivalent in linguistics. More-over, concepts such as rules of grammar or minimal units of meaning are hardly possible to identify with a high degree of regularity in each work.
Understanding and appreciating a literary work requires making use of sets of assumptions that are not merely linguistic. A general theory of literature that posits the concept of literariness, understood as deviation from ordinary language use, must encounter problems related to the fact that many of the established and celebrated literary works do not neces-sarily seem to be deviated from ordinary language, or particularly rich in linguistic or artistic devices.
Although analytic aesthetics can provide foundations for the type of textualist research often carried out by contemporary literary the-orists, neither aesthetics itself, nor a continuous body of aesthetics and textualism can produce a comprehensive account of literature that would include something more than accounts of how literature func-tions as a cultural discourse, or that would explore the philosophical problems around the questions of literary art. For what is then left un-explained is the question why and how humans use literature and what are its sources. Analytic aesthetics explores this really only partly as it emphasizes the need to study art in relation to human action and human institutions. The fundamental idea of research in analytic philosophy is to describe the necessary and sufficient conditions of use of certain concepts, which already implies a deep connection between this type of inquiry and observable or measurable human behavior. However, the most influential theories of art, as developed in analytic aesthetics (the institutional or the historical ones), tend to overemphasize the locality
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and conventionality of art. The assumptions that procedures involved in appreciating art are purely conventional skills to be mastered, or that art cannot exist beyond the institutions of the artworld, are rather strong claims that tend to run parallel to the Saussurean project of studying language, and later also literature, as entities that exist independently of nature, and independently of other disciplines, or human biology.
As I argued in the previous chapter, the study of art behaviors must necessarily rely and depend on certain natural facts. Art cannot be said to be simply conventional in the sense that traffic organization is con-ventional, as people engage in art-related behaviors spontaneously and naturally. It is not a matter of choice that people decide to enjoy music or stories. Similarly, understanding what art conveys and what stylistic fea-tures it applies seems to be impossible without placing it in the context of human interests and of human predispositions. In this light, it seems unlikely that the process of cognizing and appreciating art is merely a local and arbitrary convention. If this is true, as I am convinced it is, then to understand literature more fully one needs to posit the existence of yet another level in the research hierarchy that I have been outlining here. If aesthetics relies on a lower-order research into human cognition, then aesthetics in the institutional sense is not entirely discontinuous with everyday human behaviors. Determining the nature of this continu-ity, or, in other words, the connection between the research into human mind and the research into art is the focus of this chapter.
Language and Cognition
In Chapters 1 and 2 I insisted that Saussurean linguistics has had a considerable influence on various literary theories and that contempo-rary approaches to Theory largely stem from post-structuralist reinter-pretation of Saussure. As I firmly believe that it would not be too cavalier to state that some of the central concepts of Saussurean linguistics are quite outdated and mostly rejected by contemporary linguistic scientific community, I attempted to show how, in spite of this fact, the type of research into literature and culture espoused by post-structuralism- inspired theories is far from being discredited or inadequate. Never-theless, Saussurean linguistics remains highly problematic as a general theory of language, mostly due to its conviction about the independence of language from all types of human action that normally make use of language: communication, expressing intentions, having expectations or thinking. Instead, for Saussure and his followers, language is seen as a closed, independent structure with entirely arbitrary connection to nature and to the world. Its actual use and its links to human activity were seen as accidental and irrelevant for the study of language. How-ever, the above stance has been rejected almost universally by subse-quent generations of linguists. Starting with the late 1950s, generative
Literature and Minds 101 linguistics has asserted linguistic nativism: that the ability to produce and understand language and complex syntactic structures is largely innate, that there exist cross-cultural linguistic universals, and that there exists a separate, autonomous faculty of the mind that deals with language processing. But an even more radical break with de Saussure came with the advent of cognitive linguistics in late 1970s and 1980s.
Cognitivists, largely inspired by research in psychology, argued against the generativist claim that there can exist a special, autonomous module in the mind used solely for language processing. Instead, and this was congruent with relevant research in psychology, they claimed that lin-guistic ability is not separable from other cognitive processes. To under-stand how language functions it is necessary to frame it in the context of general human cognition: language and mind cannot be separated.
This constitutes a radical break with generativism and, moreover, places cognitive linguistics even further from Saussure’s rather simplistic vision of language as an arbitrary, dictionary-like structure where meaning is constituted solely on the basis of minimal phonetic differences.
The following paragraph is a summary of Fauconnier’s (Fauconnier 1999) and Croft’s/Cruse’s (Croft and Cruse 2004) discussion of the fundamental claims of cognitive linguistics in a form relevant for my research. One central claim that Fauconnier makes is that language’s primary function is “constructing and communicating meaning”
(Fauconnier 1999, 96) emphasizing the central role of semantics, rather than, for example, syntax, in the study of language. To this Croft and Cruse add that linguistic knowledge is essentially conceptual (Croft and Cruse 2004, 1). This includes not only basic semantic representation but also syntax, morphology and phonology, as they all require comprehen-sion and production as input and output cognitive processes. What im-mediately follows is that language processing involves the use of deeper mental structures that are correlated or “associated with their linguistic manifestations” (Fauconnier 1999, 96). Language itself carries relatively little information and involves what Fauconnier calls “backstage cog-nition,” (Fauconnier 1999, 96) drawing on “vast cognitive resources,”
(Fauconnier 1999, 96) models, frames, connections, mappings, etc.
Studying language, thus, must imply something more than just produc-ing a self-contained “account of the internal properties of languages”
(Fauconnier 1999, 102) but is indispensable in understanding “general aspects of human cognition” (Fauconnier 1999, 102). If there is no spe-cial faculty of the mind responsible for language use, then the latter is “in principle the same as other cognitive abilities” (Croft and Cruse 2004, 2). Croft elaborates on this point, adding that there is no signif-icant difference in the organization and retrieval of linguistic and any other knowledge (Croft and Cruse 2004, 2). Similarly, using language is not significantly different from other cognitive tasks such as “visual per-ception, reasoning or motor activity” (Croft and Cruse 2004, 2). Surely,
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language is a distinct ability that makes use of a unique configuration of cognitive abilities, but the set of these abilities is not unique to language.
The central claim of this chapter will be analogous to the claims of cognitive scientists. I believe that on a certain rudimentary level human art behaviors including production, understanding and enjoying art in-volve cognitive abilities that are in no way unique to art or literature. To a certain extent, art behaviors are not significantly different from other cognitive tasks. Art, thus, cannot be said to be easily separable from human interests, human minds, human rationality and general cognitive processes. This is not equivalent to saying that what the contemporary artworld deems valuable art is a matter of easily naturalized cognitive process, as I do not believe that philosophical aesthetics or the study of connoisseur art appreciation can be reduced to neuroscience, but it points to some foundations and conditions of how such decisions can be made. The following section deals with a research area that is at the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, aesthetics and literary stud-ies and which proves to be fundamental to understanding the relation between literature and cognition, that is, metaphor.
Metaphors and Poetics
In the recent decades, there has been a tremendous change in how we understand the role of metaphors. Metaphor has always been an import-ant part of research into linguistics, literature, rhetoric or philosophy of language. In literary studies and rhetoric, metaphor has often been con-sidered an ornament, an artistic device that is the staple of truly poetic language whose main function is to convey emotional experience and evoke a sense of aesthetic pleasure in readers. On the other hand, some idea of the cognitive aspect of metaphor was present from the beginning of poetics, as is the case with Aristotle. A proto-cognitivist account of metaphor was put forward by I.A. Richards in his The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936). Richards adhered to a theory of art that saw metaphor as a medium of transferring emotional experience between minds. For this sort of communication to be successful it is crucial to use certain poetic or rhetorical instruments of which metaphor is the supreme agent.
In this view, metaphor is definitely important in terms of its influence on the receivers of emotionally charged content and thus is essential to suc-cessful poetic language as it helps to conceptualize human experience.
The point is, however, that before cognitive linguistics, the cognitive aspect of metaphor was not accounted for in a systematic, coherent way.
Likewise, metaphors have always attracted a significant amount of interest in philosophy. In both continental and analytic philosophy what seemed to be most interesting to philosophers was their ambiguity.
Nietzsche (2000) famously called truth “a marching army of metaphors”
thus pointing to a lack of any direct correspondence between reality
Literature and Minds 103 and human conceptual schemes. Post-structuralist philosophers found metaphors fascinating in how they challenge the concept of literal or fixed meanings in language (Derrida 1982). In quite a similar fashion analytic philosophers have tended to explore the significance of met-aphors for truth conditional semantics. In other words, metaphorical expressions are typically false when one attempts to ascribe truth value to their literal meanings. Nevertheless, people normally use and under-stand metaphors as meaningful, but it is not entirely clear how to con-ceive of this meaning. Max Black (1954) and Donald Davidson (1984) famously argued that metaphors cannot have a referential function and, consequently, cannot have truth conditions. Instead, metaphors inspire the type of insight that enables us to perceive one thing in terms of an-other thing in a way that cannot be reduced to a series of propositions that have truth value.
Cognitive linguistics has taken the study of metaphor to a yet another level. In the foundational work for cognitive theories of metaphor, Lakoff and Johnson persuasively argued that far from being a mere stylistic ornament, or simply part of rhetoric or poetry, metaphor is essential to human cognition. It is through metaphors that we conceptualize com-plex phenomena or abstract concepts. Moreover, the basis for conceptu-alizing what is abstract appears to lie in basic perception of space, body and in directly lived experiences. Metaphor, thus, goes beyond not only poetry but also language as such and appears to be central to human thought and action. One simple example that Lakoff and Johnson men-tion in the beginning of their book is the “argument is war” metaphor.
The fact that argument is commonly conceptualized in terms of war is reflected in the following phrases (all taken from Lakoff and Johnson):
Your claims are indefensible.
He attacked every weak point in my argument.
His criticisms were right on target.
I demolished his argument.
I’ve never won an argument with him.
You disagree? Okay, shoot!
If you use that strategy, he’ll wipe you out.
He shot down all of my arguments.
(Lakoff and Johnson 2003, 4) In the above examples, the source domain (war, struggle) can serve its function precisely because it is more tangible, more primary for human experience. Examples of even more fundamental conceptual metaphors are clear when investigating how humans conceptualize categories such as up or down. Roughly speaking, whatever is conceptualized as a pro-cess moving upward, is simultaneously understood as positive. The for-mula good is up is realized in expressions such as “he was over the moon
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about it” or “I feel on top of the world.” Conversely, the formula bad is down underlies phrases like “I feel so low” or “this is really the pits.”
The idea that what was traditionally considered an ornamental poetic or rhetorical device lies, in fact, at the heart of the human propensity to conceptualize was later developed by Mark Turner in his theory of the literary mind. The point that Turner makes is already looming in the work of other cognitive linguists, such as Lakoff, Langacker or Fauco-nnier, but it is Turner who synthesizes some of their observations into a comprehensive theory of the literary mind. The literary mind theory implies that it is not just metaphor and metonymy that underlie human thought processes: they are but one instance of how human propensity to conceptualize is manifested in language. The relationship between lit-erature, language and the mind are much deeper: a vast array of the de-vices and mechanisms by which literary creations operate are yet again manifestations of human thought processes.
Although Turner’s chief focus is narrative, most of his observations apply equally to other literary forms. By using the example of the classic tales of Scheherazade, Turner claims that storytelling, narrative imag-ining, is an essential thought instrument on which rational capacities depend, “it is our chief means of looking into future, of predicting, of planning, and of explaining” (Turner 1998, 4–5). The type of narrative which Turner considers especially illuminating about the nature of hu-man thought is parable, which he defines broadly as a projection of story onto another story (Turner 1998, 7); it includes not only the vizier’s tale about the ox and donkey told to Scheherazade in order to give her advice or in, say, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but also in expressions such as “when the cat’s away, the mice will play” or “a poor workman blames his tools.” Parables, then, as most narratives, tend to employ, as in simulation or imagination, the human capacity to predict, evaluate, plan and explain (Turner 1998, 9). Moreover, comprehension of stories must entail the recognition that they include objects, agents and events, but again, the ability to discern and apply the three categories is by no means limited to literary narratives or to stories in any narrow sense, but is clearly central to human cognitive processes as such.
Other concepts that indicate the close interconnectedness of literary forms and cognitive processes that Turner mentions include emblems, or prototypes (e.g., the visier and Scheherazade are instances of parent and child prototypes), image schemas, or scripts, the “skeletal patterns that recur in our sensory and motor experience” (Turner 1998, 16), and which serve as a basis, a preliminary system of expectations through which comprehension of narratives is initiated (‘motion along a path, bounded interior, balance, symmetry […], container’)” (Turner 1998, 16), actions such as “pushing, pulling, resting, yielding” (Turner 1998, 16). Other processes include constructing and connecting mental spaces (e.g., having a mental model of the present state of affairs, producing
Literature and Minds 105 a mental space of a hypothetical future and blending them) or concep-tual blending (e.g., blending of talking people with animals common in folk tales). Finally, being entirely in tune with the findings of cognitive science, Turner makes the point that the structure of language as such, or, to be more specific, the structure of grammar and syntax, does not constitute an autonomous, self-contained human faculty, but reflects the more primary human predispositions to establish causality, agency, and to categorize into objects, actors and events. In the end, complex rules of grammar come from parable (Turner 1998, 118) and simple sen-tences such as “John broke the stick” or “the train left while I was in the shower” can be seen as primitive stories. The latter’s past tense reflects the fact that the point of focus precedes the point of view. Conceptual-izing observable phenomena in terms of agency and causality of events (as in constructing narratives) is primary in relation to more complex grammar rules. Both are, however, manifestations of deeper cognitive structures.
In a project called Paleopoetics, which brings together cognitive lin-guistics, literary studies, archeology, anthropology and neuroscience, Christopher Collins traces the emergence of language, imagination and early literary forms out of cognitive skills that predate both language and writing. Collins begins his argument by reviewing Dual-Process Theory that posits bipartite functioning of the human brain with one cognitive system being intuitive and the other deliberate. Both systems are com-plementary and are not only central to information processing, where they include parallel and serial processing, but are also modes of per-ception and action producing figure-ground distinctions and handling multitasking (Collins 2013, 19). The dual pattern they constitute is also manifest in types of broad and narrow attention and in
In a project called Paleopoetics, which brings together cognitive lin-guistics, literary studies, archeology, anthropology and neuroscience, Christopher Collins traces the emergence of language, imagination and early literary forms out of cognitive skills that predate both language and writing. Collins begins his argument by reviewing Dual-Process Theory that posits bipartite functioning of the human brain with one cognitive system being intuitive and the other deliberate. Both systems are com-plementary and are not only central to information processing, where they include parallel and serial processing, but are also modes of per-ception and action producing figure-ground distinctions and handling multitasking (Collins 2013, 19). The dual pattern they constitute is also manifest in types of broad and narrow attention and in