Negation, Text Worlds, and Discourse - The Pragmatics of Fiction

This work originates from the need to develop an integrated dynamic model of negation in discourse that is adequate for understanding the role of negation in an extensive and complex piece of discourse. Most work on negation is strongly influenced by traditional philosopical problems, but little work has been carried out in the area of discourse.

Approaches to negation within the functional-cognitive tradition tend to focus of specific agents of negation, its function as a speech act, or its cognitive model. Few attempts have been made to propose an integrated discourse model, studies of negation with few exceptions tend to be limited to brief selections or isolated sentences. This book fills the gap in studies of negation in discourse by providing an up-to-date critical review of the state of the art in negation and by proposing a model that brings together the semantic, cognitve, and pragmatic features of negation, which are crucial for an understanding of its role in disourse.

List of contents

Basic Concepts
Approaches to Negation. Negation and Text World Theory
Negation, Frame Semantics, and Schema Theory
A Text World Model of Negation in Discourse: An Analysis Joseph Heller's Novel Catch-22
Conclusions
Appendix: A Quantification of Negation in Catch-22

About the author

LAURA HIDALGO DOWNING is a Lecturer at the Universidad Autonoma of Madrid.

Product details

• Authors: Laura Downing, Downing Laura Hidalgo
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Age Recommendation: ages 7 to 17
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.05.2000
• EAN: 9781567504750
• ISBN: 978-1-56750-475-0
• No. of pages: 248
• Weight: 340 g
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Semantics, Literary theory, Semantics, discourse analysis, stylistics, Semantics, discourse analysis, etc, Business: Business Communications