Mindstyle of a marginal character in postmodernist novel: cognitive stylistic dimension

Abstract

The paper discusses the phenomenon of a character mindstyle in postmodernist novels by a British writer M. Amis. Although the application of cognitive stylistic analysis has been extremely fruitful in recent years, the textual realization of mentally deviant characters in experimental novels has been given little attention so far. In postmodernist fiction the focus has been shifted to the characters which appear to be at the margins of social and mental norms, thus offering an alternative perspective onto the events of the fictional world. Such strategy also serves the purpose of defamilarisation of the subject matter, thus evoking reader’s interest.
The aim of the paper is to analyze the range of linguistic and stylistic means used by the author to achieve the effect of the mindstyle which implies an unorthodox worldview. This paper also draws on the theory of conceptual metaphor as methodological basis.
Within this research versatile stylistic means of author’s verbal creativity are discussed, narrative tactics and strategies used in the process of creating the mindstyle of the characters which appear to suffer from amnesia (“Other People”), brain damage (“Yellow Dog”), dyslexia (“The Information”), phobias (“Dead Babies”) are analyzed.
New important insights in this area of study might be provided by combination of cognitive poetic analysis and quantitative methods of corpus stylistics.