some times and not at others?” His answer to this question here paraphrased is that if addressees recognize that the genre text type, discourse type of the text could eventually make use of initially
noncoherent material, then because of these genre-related “expectations of relevance” they retain it “in a kind of memory buffer” see also Sperber and Wilson 1995:138f. and retrieve it when it is used. In the
present treatment, what Unger says about the role of genre is stated in terms of discourse schemas §2.2.4: If addressees recognize a larger discourse schema which could eventually make coherent use of
initially noncoherent material, then they retain it and hopefully retrieve it at an appropriate point. If it is never utilized, then the text is to that extent noncoherent. If addressees are not able to recognize a genre
or larger schema which would justify their retaining the noncoherent material in memory, then especially if it is in a genre which comes with the expectation of coherence, they may give the text up as
noncoherent.
3.6 Text-internal point of view
This treatment of discourse topicality and thematicity is largely structural, especially with its emphasis on spaces and schemas. However, this is not traditional structuralism in discourse analysis.
• Here, “structural” does not imply “static.” On the contrary, we are concerned to see how addressees
go about building up conceptual structures at different points in the process of text comprehension; see, for example, provisional structures in §2.2.7.
• Neither does “structural” imply a preoccupation with formal signals. This treatment parts company
with a common tradition in attempting to recognize conceptual evidence that has no simple correspondence with linguistic form.
• Nor is this treatment restricted to propositional content, whether in interpreting what is said
semantics or in what is meant in a given context pragmatics. There is no question that propositional content is a major part of discourse production and comprehension, but existing
alongside content organization—what I call knowledge management—is attention management, involving various kinds of attention states of speaker and addressee that are to some degree
independent of knowledge per se. In fact, there is evidence that high-level attention management constrains and construes knowledge management from its earliest stages, and so has a claim to
priority with respect to it.
In high-level attention management I now want to examine more closely a path which leads from interest §2.1.3 to imagination to point of view. This line of inquiry presents challenges for a structural
approach and for any kind of linguistic approach. As Mey says a bit illiberally in regard to point of view, “Despite its importance for the analysis and understanding of text, this contextual device has found
no accepted place in the deliberations of those pragmatically oriented researchers who hail from various linguistic backgrounds: in most cases, their span of attention is limited by the purely grammatical,
cotextual phenomena” 2001:793f.. The two approaches, linguistic and imaginative, seem to be essentially complementary; each one stands to be informed by the other. To preserve the benefits of this
complementarity, for the present I will not try to reduce one approach to the other, yet I will try to point out points of possible contact. One area where the two approaches seem to come together is in discourse
topicality.
3.6.1 Imagination
“An obvious but remarkable fact of human consciousness is that it need not be restricted to events and states that coincide with the time and place of the conscious experience itself. Much of it has its source in
other times and places, even other selves, which enter it through processes of remembering, imagining, and that special kind of imagining we call empathy” Chafe 1994:195 or, as it is called in the present
treatment, text-internal point of view. I
MAGINATION
is one form of displaced attention. In real life we experience imagination in dreaming, daydreaming, role playing, imaginative games, etc. When people are
asked how many windows are in their house, they often “walk around it” mentally, in imagination counting the windows Shepard and Cooper 1982, cited in Clark and van der Wege 2001:782. Similar
uses of imagination are found in discourse production and comprehension. A description of one’s apartment is often conceived either as if the person is looking down at it from above “the map strategy”
or, more commonly, walking through it with the addressees “the tour strategy”; Linde 1981:105.
Probably all of us are commonly aware of imagination as we process narrative. As Emmott 1997:58 says, “I regard readers as imagining situations in which the characters appear to be ‘present’ to the extent
that the reader seems to ‘witness’ the actions occurring.” In narrative, addressees commonly “experience selective features of the narrative world as if they were actual, current experiences. These include visual
appearances, spatial relations, points of view, movement and processes, voices, and emotions” Clark and van der Wege 2001:780. Speakers encourage imagination by formal and conceptual signals such as
direct speech, ideophones, reported privates states of participants, “painting” a setting, etc. As the novelist John Gardner put it, “The writer’s intent is that the reader fall through the printed page into the scene
represented” 1983:132, cited in Clark and van der Wege 2001:784. The result can be described as “joint pretense” involving both speakers and addressees Clark and van der Wege 2001:783.
To take a specific example, narrative imagination seems to be largely behind the “historical present.” In modern Hebrew narrative the historical present, along with “highly emotional adjectives and ‘nearby
deictics’ this, these,…allows the author to relive the events of the past and forces his reader to relive or experience them as if they were actually taking place at the moment of narration or reading” Tobin
1987. In Koiné Greek, according to Blass and Debrunner 1961:167, “the historical present can replace the aorist indicative in a vivid narrative at the events of which the narrator imagines himself to be
present.” This often occurs preceding key events in the story Boos 1984, Levinsohn 2000:200, possibly to get the reader “there” in imagination to witness those events. Historical present is often thus a vivid
“scene-setting” device with an initialization function §2.3.1, either as the speech verb for a quotation or in highlighting narrative events. The historical present in accessing and initializing a discourse unit “often
leads to its occurrence early in a paragraph” Levinsohn 2000:202. The following examples have historical present bolded and underlined:
Mark 2:21–22 Young’s Literal Translation: And they go on to Capernaum, and immediately, on the sabbaths, having gone into the synagogue,
he was teaching, and they were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as having authority, and not as the scribes.
Acts 10:9–11 Young’s Literal Translation: And on the morrow, as these are proceeding on the way, and are drawing nigh to the city, Peter
went up upon the house-top to pray, about the sixth hour, and he became very hungry, and wished to eat; and they making ready, there fell upon him a trance, and he doth behold the heaven opened,
and descending unto him a certain vessel, as a great sheet, bound at the four corners, and let down upon the earth….
The above clauses with historical present access a discourse space. According to Levinsohn, what is being highlighted is not the fact of access, but the content of the discourse space itself.
Addressees may commonly use imagination in processing other genres as well: in procedural discourse, the addressees may “see themselves” going through the steps being described; in hortatory,
they may “see themselves” carrying out the prescribed action or not; in descriptive discourse, they may “see” what is being described, and so forth.
Imaginative elements can be part of mental representations. Johnson-Laird 1996:93 speaks of “visual images” as “representations of the perceptual aspects of a situation from the observer’s point of
view.” According to Emmott 1997:44f., “Johnson-Laird argues that even when drawing a conclusion from sentences such as ‘Mary is taller than Jane, Jane is taller than Ann’, the reader will produce and use
a spatial model of the three different heights rather than relying on the abstract logical transitivity operation. …readers may imagine three figures representing three individuals or might just produce a
schematic visual representation similar to plotting their heights on a graph. When reading fictional narrative, many readers seem to have visual images of the characters….”
The imaginative and affective involvement of addressees, although commonly left out of text processing models in artificial intelligence Emmott 1995:83, is important for both comprehension and
retention. Models of comprehension that use propositional mental representations and schemas “have convincingly accounted for a range of cognitive features of comprehension in the case of simpler, non-
literary narratives,” but when addressees engage a text with their imagination and their emotions—a
hallmark of literary texts and other types as well—their comprehension and retention turns out to be richer than what simple models predict Miall 1989.
• As addressees project themselves into the text world, their depth of processing §2.2.1 generally
increases. “The reports of readers show that in response to narrative a reader often becomes self aware, conscious of entertaining hopes or fears for the characters; readers feel curiosity, and respond
to the challenge to understand” loc. cit..
• As addressees project themselves into the text world, their comprehension is shaped by “self-relevant
issues” as well as by more objective, text-internal processes loc. cit.. This kind of affective interpretation may not be foreseen by the speaker and may or may not be helpful in the addressee’s
construction of the kind of mental representation the speaker intends.
• If addressees project themselves into the text world, their retention will predictably increase loc. cit.,
but not necessarily in relation to the propositional content of the text—in fact, that kind of retention can decrease. What they retain is how the text has affected them, their personal application of it.
Considerations such as these, which are further discussed in a recent special issue of Discourse Processes 2004, vol. 382, have obvious importance for translation.
As addressees project themselves imaginatively into the text world, they use many of the same conceptual strategies in discourse comprehension that they use in real-life situations:
• Addressees’ need for spatio-temporal orientation in discourse can be expected to “be like” their need
for spatio-temporal orientation in real-life situations §2.3.1; Emmott 1995:83f.. •
The sequencing of events or other temporal steps in discourse can be expected, in the default case, to “be like” what occurs in real life.
• Causal relationships in discourse can be expected, in the default case, to “be like” what occurs in real
life. •
Cultural schemas which addressees depend on to “make sense” of real-life experiences can often be used in discourse comprehension as well, guiding the recognition of innovative discourse schemas
§2.6.6. •
Topicality and thematicity in discourse can be expected to “be like” sustaining interest on elements in real life Tomlin et al. 1997:458.
• Deictic orientation in discourse can be expected to “be like” what is used in real life.
3.6.2 Evidence of text-internal point of view
