Use of Parallel Texts as a New Methodology in Cognitive Poetics
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | As a burgeoning field, Cognitive Poetics has come to the fore in the field of cognitive scientific research (Brône 2009; Gavins and Steen 2003; Semino and Culpeper 2002; Stockwell 2002; Tsur 2008). However, little attempt has been made to explore the usefulness of parallel texts (or parallel corpora) as a methodology in cognitive poetics for cross-linguistic investigations. In view of this gap, we propose to investigate literary masterpieces that are translated into multiple languages as a fertile testing ground of cognitive poetics. We in particular intend to treat the author and the translators as text producers that tell the same story in their respective languages to their readers, which is seen as two usage events (Langacker 1999) with highly similar, if not identical, ideational contents. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of this methodology, we propose to use as our sample the first chapter of Alice in Wonderland and its Chinese translation for a parallel-corpus-based study (another translation by Y.R. Chao will be added at a later stage). We focus on demonstrative constructions, which are fundamental cognitive coordination devices and have attracted much scholarly interest (Ariel 1988; Botley and McEnery 2001; Diessel 2003; Enfield 2003; Glover 2000; Himmelmann 1996; Janssen 1995; Kirsner 1993; Laury 1997; Levinson 2004; Piwek et al. 2007; Strauss 2002; Vries 1995; Wu 2004). |
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