Thought presentation 25 Years on

1
Thought presentation 25 Years on

• Mick Short
• Department of Linguistics and English Language
• Lancaster University, UK

2
The Leech and Short (1981) presentation scales

• Speech presentation
• N NRSA IS FIS DS FDS
• Norm?
• Thought presentation
• N NRTA IT FIT DT FDT
• Norm?

3
Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (1) Another discourse presentation
scale (writing)

• The addition of a third parallel scale
• Writing Presentation
• Extracts from Ruby Lennox's school report,
  summer term, 1966 - Ruby has a real talent for
  acting . . . Ruby was the star of the school
  play.
• (Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the
  Museum)

4
Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (2) Major speech presentation
scale category changes

• N NV NRSA IS FIS DS (inc FDS)
• (NV was called NRS in Short 1996)
• The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of
  cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the
  air is alive with chatter and laughter, and
  casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on
  the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women
  who never knew each others names.
• (Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (2) Major speech presentation
scale category changes faithfulness claims

• NV Speech took place (1)
• NRSA (1) Speech Act (2)
• IS (1) (2) Propositional content (3)
• FIS (1) (2) (3) (4???)
• DS (1) (2) 3 Words used to express
  the propositional content (4)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (2) Major speech presentation
scale category changes faithfulness claims

• N NV NRSA IS FIS DS (inc FDS)
• ? Faithfulness ?
• ? Vividness, ?
• ? drama etc ?
• ?Sum-?
• mary
• ? Telling ? ? Showing ?

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline)

• Speech
• N NV NRSA IS FIS DS (inc FDS)
• Thought
• N NI/NT NRTA IT FIT DT (inc FDT)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline)

• N NI/NT NRTA IT FIT DT (inc FDT)
• ? Faithfulness ?
• ? Dullness ? ? Vividness, ?
• ? calm etc ? ? drama etc ?
• ?Sum-?
• mary
• ? Telling ? ? Showing ?

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) (F)DT

• It was George who broke the silence. Do we
  mind he said, repeating the strangers words.
  His face had gone very red.
• How absurd he looks! thought Mary, as she
  glanced at him. Like a bull calf. A blushing
  bull calf. Do we mind? Damned innocent little
  bounder! George was working up a righteous
  indignation.I should just think we do mind. And
  Ill trouble you
• to . . .
• Mary broke into laughter. We dont mind at
  all, she said. Not in the least.
• (Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NT

• You let him slump back again so that hes
  sitting against the chicken-wire gate and when
  his eyes start to open you pull his head forward
  by the hair and cosh him again. He falls to the
  side. You put the plastic ties in your pocket.
  Youre thinking. The foxhounds continue barking
  and yelping.
• (Iain Banks, Complicity)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NT

• . . . thank you mind how you go . . .
• Im thinking.
• This is the trickle-down effect in action, is
  it?
• (Iain Banks, Complicity)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NI

• But antiquities held no charm for Amanda
  Fergusson . . .
• (Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½
  Chapters)
• He disliked and slightly feared Richard Pearce,
  who was almost as big as himself.
• (J. G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun)
• Miss Fergusson's irritation over the incident in
  Erzerum began to calm. (Julian Barnes, A History
  of the World in 10 ½ Chapters)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NI

• I became aware of the age of this old crone of a
  ship for she is positively beaked in the manner
  of the last century and flimsy, I should judge,
  about the bow withal.
• (William Golding, Rites of Passage)
• It was in the autumn of 1839, after long
  meditation, that Amanda Fergusson proposed to
  Miss Logan the expedition to Arghuri.(Julian
  Barnes, A History of the World in 10 ½
  Chapters)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NI

• He doubted his ability to find it in the maze of
  roads that wandered around the hillside at the
  edge of the town . . .
• (Malcolm Lowry, Gin and Goldenrod)
• Finally, the ladies packed two small glass
  bottles, which they intended to fill with grape
  juice crushed from the fruit of Noah's
  vineyard.(Julian Barnes, A History of the World
  in 10 ½ Chapters)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (3) Major thought presentation
category changes (no faithfulness cline) NI

• N NI/NT NRTA IT FIT DT
• Or
• N inc NI NT NRTA IT FIT DT

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Some arguments for NI being part of narration,
not the thought presentation scale

• The prototypical examples do not look like
  presentations of thoughts, but narratorial
  statements about the internal world of
  characters, as opposed to the external fictional
  world.
• The name of the category in its various
  manifestations indicates narration or perception,
  but not thought.
• It could be that quite a lot of what we have
  called NI might need to be re-coded. We need to
  examine this category more carefully.
• Thought is part of cognition, and cognition is
  complex and not well understood. But we cant
  assume that all cognition is thought, even though
  psychologists tend not to use the term thought.

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Some arguments for NI being part of narration,
not the thought presentation scale

• Part of the issue is that there is considerable
  ambiguity over how to map examples.
• The free indirect perception problem.
• Translation into the various forms on the
  thought presentation scale becomes
  difficult/impossible with many examples.
• Thoughts can be about displaced matters but
  prototypically presented perceptions and
  descriptions of mind states are not displaced.
• For simplicitys sake it would be nice to keep
  the S/W/T presentation scales parallelism
  throughout.

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Bibliography (1)

• Brinton, L. (1980) Represented perception A
  study in narrative style, Poetics 9, 363-81.
• Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse Narrative
  Structure in Fiction and Film, Ithaca and London
  Cornell University Press.
• Cohn, D. (1978) Transparent Minds Narrative
  Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction,
  Princeton NJ Princeton University Press.
• Leech, G. N. and Short, M. H. (1981) Style in
  Fiction, London Longman.
• Semino, E., Short, M. and Culpeper, J. (1997)
  Using a computer corpus to test a model of
  speech and thought presentation, Poetics 25
  17-43.

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Bibliography (2)

• , Short, M. and Wynne, M. (1999) Hypothetical
  words and thoughts in contemporary British
  narratives, Narrative 7, 3 307-34.
• and Short, M. (2004) Corpus Stylistics A
  Corpus-based Study of Speech, Thought and Writing
  in a Corpus of English Writing, London
  Routledge.
• Short , M. (1988) Speech presentation, the novel
  and the press. In van Peer, W. (ed.) The Taming
  of The Text, London Routledge, pp. 61-81.
• (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays
  and Prose. London Longman.
• (2003) A corpus-based approach to speech,
  thought and writing presentation, in A. Wilson,
  P. Rayson and T. McEnery (eds), Corpus
  Linguistics by the Lune A Festschrift for
  Geoffrey Leech, Frankfurt/Main Peter Lang.

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Bibliography(3)

• , Semino, E. and Culpeper, J. (1996) Using a
  corpus for stylistics research speech and
  thought presentation, in J. Thomas and M. Short
  (eds) Using Corpora in Language Research, London
  Longman, pp. 110-31.
• , Wynne, M. and Semino, E. (1999) Reading
  reports discourse presentation in a corpus of
  narratives, with special reference to news
  reports, in Diller, H-J. and Stratmann, E. O-G.
  (eds) English via Various Media, Heidelberg
  Winter, pp. 39-65.
• , Semino, E. and Wynne, M. (2002) Revisiting
  the notion of faithfulness in discourse
  presentation using a corpus approach, Language
  and Literature 11, 4 325-55.
• Toolan, M. (2001) Narrative A Critical
  Linguistic Introduction (2nd edition), London
  Routledge.
• Wynne, M., Short, M. and Semino, E. (1998) A
  corpus-based investigation of speech, thought and
  writing presentation in English narrative texts,
  in Renouf, A. (ed.) Explorations in Corpus
  Linguistics, Amsterdam Rodopi, pp. 231-45.

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Free indirect perception (Chatman)/represented
perception (Brinton)/Substitutionary narration
(Fehr)/Psychonarration (Cohn)

• She sat at the window watching the evening
  invade the avenue. Her head was leaned against
  the window curtains and in her nostrils was the
  odour of dusty cretonne. (James Joyce,
  (Eveline)

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Free indirect perception (Chatman)/represented
perception (Brinton)/Substitutionary narration
(Fehr)/Psychonarration (Cohn)

• The clouds were drifting above him silently and
  silently the seatangle was drifting below him
  and the grey warm air was still and the new wild
  life was singing in his veins. Where was he now?
• (James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a
  Young Man)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (4) Discourse embedding

• "Mr Willis, Mr Willis! Do not omit to invite Mr
  Talbot to glance at the captain's Standing
  Orders. You may transmit to me any suggestions he
  has for their improvement." (William Golding,
  Rites of Passage)

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Changes suggested as a result of the Lancaster
SWTP project (4) Discourse embedding

• What would they say of her in the Stores when
  they found out that she had run away with a
  fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps, and her
  place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss
  Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge
  on her, especially whenever there were people
  listening.
• 'Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are
  waiting?'
• 'Look lively, Miss Hill, please.'
• She would not cry many tears at leaving the
  Stores.
• (James Joyce, Eveline)