Literature as language and discourse:
a cognitive genre approach
Gerard Steen
VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
Faculty of Arts
Department of Language and Communication
g.j.steen@vu.nl
In this talk I will present the framework of a cognitive genre approach to the study of literature.
Even though genre is traditionally associated with the study of poetics, my own approach is
different in that it sets out from a more general form of genre analysis that has emerged over
the past decades in linguistics and discourse analysis as well as in communication science
(Steen, 2011). This more general form of genre analysis has partly arisen as a result of genre
analysis in poetics but it is now developing into an encompassing framework for all language
and discourse analysis, and from that perspective throws new light on the study of literature as
well.
In my talk I will present an explicit and encompassing genre model of the relation
between the discourse properties and language properties of literature. My model attempts to
synthesize a broad range of theory and research that has typically been more selective and
focused. It includes discourse analysis, poetics, text world theory, narratology, argumentation
analysis, Rhetorical Structure Theory, register analysis, stylistics, linguistics, and so on. One
advantage of this model is that it can show how literature can be seen as one specific area of
study in this massive field of language and discourse phenomena.
I approach literature via the novel notion of genre event. Genre events are the core
observational unit for any analysis of discourse and its reflection in language, including what
happens in literature. Adopting a cognitive approach to genre events enables us to model genre
events as organized by a form of knowledge and expectations that language users have when
they engage in any particular discourse event. In this way, my genre approach to cognitive
poetics is indebted to a long European tradition including reception aesthetics and its
psychological makeover in the empirical study of literature (e.g., Schram and Steen, 2001). As a
result, my cognitive genre approach can be related to psychological research on cognitive
structures, processes and their products in language and discourse processing (e.g., Clark, 1996;
Kintsch, 1998). This in turn provides a fruitful connection with the cognitive tradition in
linguistics, with its more recent offshoots in cognitive stylistics and cognitive poetics (Semino
and Culpepper, 2002; Stockwell, 2002; Gavins and Steen, 2003).
A cognitive genre approach to literature enables comparison with cognitive structures,
processes and their products outside literature, which enables us to assess what is general
about literature as opposed to what is specific and perhaps even special about it. It additionally
suggests that cognitive poetics is not necessarily limited to linguistic and discourse analysis but
can also make use of social scientific methods of investigation, including interviews, surveys and
experiments. As a result, a truly cognitive poetic approach to literature bridges the gap
between the humanities and the social and cognitive sciences, raising new questions about the
most important goals and research programs in the study of literature.
References
Clark, H.H., 1996. Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gavins, J. and Steen, G.J. (Eds.), 2003. Cognitive poetics in practice. London: Routledge.
Kintsch, W. , 1998. Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Schram, D.H., and Steen, G.J. (Eds.), 2001. The psychology and sociology of literature.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Semino, E., and Culpepper, J. (Eds.), 2002. Cognitive stylistics: Language and cognition in text
analysis. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Stockwell, P. , 2002. Cognitive poetics: An introduction. London: Routledge.
Steen, G.J. , 2011. Genre between the humanities and the sciences. In M. Callies, W.R. Keller, &
A. Lohöfer (Eds.), Bi-directionality in the cognitive sciences: Examining the
interdisciplinary potential of cognitive approaches in linguistics and literary studies (pp.
21-42). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.