Living with literature : cognitive deixis in Dickens’ universe of individuality

Abstract

Through applying cognitive deixis, particularly Stockwell’s (2002) cognitive linguistic framework, to the chosen Dickensian texts, this dissertation explores how certain stylistic elements further enrich the reader’s cognitive construction of the literary-world. A number of distinctions will be made throughout, for example, between the real-world and the literary world from which a number of other distinctions and relationships arise. For instance, it will be proposed that in making a distinction between the real-world and the literary-world a differentiation is also necessary between the different forms of power which the character and reader possess. Through the theoretical discussions and stylistic analysis, one of the main targets will be of illustrating how a profound literary text can never be fully exhausted from all that it has to cognitively offer. The reasoning behind this is that a text can always be viewed from a new light of perception, depending on the individual who presently picks up the book and starts exploring all that it has to perceptively propose. Dickens has been chosen precisely because he strives towards his readers being able to broaden their sympathies, by means of helping us to identify with individuals whose outward lives may be unlike ours, but whose inner lives are not dissimilar. In turn, these true masterpieces of literary characters are the perfect mould for analysing the prominent deictic character-reader relationship, whilst exploring the constant communication between the real-world and the literary-world.