Empirical Study of Literature

This is the introduction to a thematic cluster (mini special issue) of articles on Empirical Ecocriticism in the Spring 2020 issue of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, co-edited by Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, Alexa Weik von Mossner, and W.P. Małecki. It introduces empirical ecocriticism, a novel, interdisciplinary form of environmental criticism that combines social scientific and humanistic methodologies to empirically examine the influence of environmental texts on their audiences. It describes the ways that empirical ecocriticism picks up on convictions about the influence of environmentally engaged literature on readers’ attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that have always been central to ecocriticism. It describes what empirical ecocriticism does and doesn’t do, how it might productively contribute to ecocriticism, and the kind of scholarship and synergies that might be possible in the future. /// The other articles in the cluster are: 1) Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, "'Just as in the Book’? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Justice and Perception of Climate Migrants,” https://tinyurl.com/justasinthebook. 2) W.P. Małecki, Alexa Weik von Mossner, and Małgorzata Dobrowolska, “Narrating Human and Animal Oppression: Strategic Empathy and Intersectionalism in Alice Walker’s ‘Am I Blue?,’” https://academic.oup.com/isle/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/isle/isaa023/5843531. 3) Pat Brereton and Maria Victoria Gomez, “Media Students, Climate Change, and YouTube Celebrities: Readings of Dear Future Generations: Sorry Video Clip," https://academic.oup.com/isle/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/isle/isaa021/5862597?redirectedFrom=fulltext.

In this article, we profile what we define as an " empirical cognitive poetic " approach to immersion in digital fiction by combining text-driven stylistic analysis with insights from theories of cognition and an empirical study. We provide empirically substantiated insights to show how immersion is experienced cognitively and site-specifically by using Andy Campbell and Judi Alston's (2015) digital fiction installation WALLPAPER as a case study. Our approach is unique in that it marks the first systematic attempt at analysing immersive features in digital fiction using a replicable method and, perhaps more importantly, at empirically investigating these immersive features. While current theories of immersion suggest that it is a completely absorbing experience, we show that immersion is an intermittent process, stimulated by multiple immersive features which interact. We also argue that any investigation into immersion in digital media must address the doubly-embodied nature of that reading experience and propose the category of 'doubly-deictic I' to define first-person pronoun use that signals double-situatedness. We empirically verify that immersion in digital fiction can be categorised as either narrative or ludic immersion. However, we also show that spatio-temporal immersion must take place before any other forms of immersion can. We also offer a new analytical method for immersive features in digital fiction by developing deictic shift theory for the affordances of digital media. We add the categories of 'interactional deixis' and 'audio deixis' to account for the multimodal nature of immersion in digital fiction. We also show how extra-textual features can contribute to or enhance immersion and thus propose that they should be accounted for when analysing immersion across media. While we focus on one case-study in this article, we suggest that the analytical framework and reader response protocol we have developed can be applied to other texts.

Woolf's work has been the object of several studies concerned with her experimental use of techniques of speech, thought and consciousness presentation. These investigated the way in which different perspectives coexist and alternate in her writing, suggesting that the use of such techniques often results in ambiguous perspective shifts. However, there is hardly any empirical evidence as to whether readers experience difficulty while reading her narratives as a result of these narrative techniques. This article examines empirically readers' responses to extracts from Woolf's two major novels-To the Lighthouse and Mrs Dalloway-to provide evidence to whether Woolf's techniques for the presentation of characters' voices, thoughts and perspectives represent a challenge for readers. To achieve this, a mixed-methods approach that combines a stylistic analysis with a detailed questionnaire has been employed. Selected extracts that were hypothesised to be complex due to the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue were modified by substituting these with less ambiguous modes of consciousness presentation, such as direct speech or direct thought. Readers' responses to the modified and unmodified versions of the same extracts were compared: results show that the presence of free indirect style and/or interior monologue increases the number of perspectives identified by readers, suggesting that this technique increases the texts' difficulty, laying a more solid ground for future investigations.

Book of abstracts of the doctoral conference "Past, History and Memory in Language and Literary Studies" held 23-25 June at the Department of Foreign Literatures and Languages of the University of Verona
with the support of the Project of Excellence in Digital Humanities. The conference aims at bringing together current and prospective PhD Students and early-stage researchers who wish to share and discuss their work around the themes of past, history and memory.

O título do presente volume, Avaliações & perspectivas: estudos empíricos em Letras, já sugere a sua relevância para os pesquisadores da área. Resultante de evento promovido pelo grupo de pesquisa internacional REDES (Research and Development in Empirical Studies), o livro oferece um material crítico significativo, seja no âmbito dos estudos literários e linguísticos, seja no nível de articulação entre estes campos de estudo e a sociologia, a psicologia, a educação, e as tecnologias da comunicação.

As pesquisas empíricas aqui coletadas possuem um princípio norteador: a vinculação entre a produção de conhecimento e a sua ressonância no contexto social amplo, de modo a transcender o espaço físico da sala de aula. São pesquisas que possuem uma relevância para além do contexto acadêmico porque são guiadas por parâmetros de autonomia, consciência crítica e experiência criativa e criadora. Outra característica importante diz respeito à atenção dada ao processo de construção do conhecimento, que não dispensa as atitudes questionadoras, as experiências sensoriais e cognitivas, e o valor da emoção, da memória narrativa singular e coletiva do educador.

Os textos que compõem o livro são instigantes porque revelam também o compromisso e entusiasmo dos pesquisadores com seus objetos de estudo, que incluem reflexões sobre o ensino de literatura, a força persuasiva das narrativas, as possibilidades educativas na formação de professores, a potencialidade do texto literário na formação subjetiva do leitor, atitudes efetivas que possam contribuir com o desenvolvimento e aprimoramento do processo de leitura.

Em época de saturação de informação e desmantelamento de crenças, faz-se necessário e urgente valorizar o poder transformador das ciências humanas, dentre as quais, aquelas que lidam visceralmente com as linguagens e seus modos de construir significados. Este livro evidencia que a produção de conhecimento é inseparável de sua função social. [Genilda Azeredo / Universidade Federal da Paraíba]

The purpose of the three studies described in this paper was to investigate the effects that reading fiction has on pro-animal attitudes and behavior. Although such effects have been widely claimed to exist by writers, activists and scholars, there has been scant experimental data to support that. In particular, there have been no experimental studies on the impact of fiction on attitudes toward animals over time and no experimental studies on the impact of fiction on behavior on behalf of animals. Our studies sought to address these limitations. Study 1 (n = 62) investigated the impact of a fictional narrative on attitudes toward animal welfare a week after exposure. Study 2 (n = 410) investigated the impact of that same narrative on attitudes toward animal welfare over the period of up to two months. Study 3 (n = 186) sought to establish whether that same text would have an impact on behavior on behalf of animals. All these studies were conducted in Poland on Polish subjects and with the use of texts written in the Polish language. While Study 1 yielded a positive result, the results of the remaining studies were negative. In conclusion, we discuss the practical and theoretical implications of these data.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304422X17302188

This fine collection of papers is the successful outcome of an international research project carried out by advanced undergraduate and graduate students from four different countries. Exceptionally, the papers do not rehash old ideas or themes but offer a fresh approach to a wide range of topics from language, literature and culture. This innovative attitude is the result of newly devised empirical methods of research, which clearly show that these students are well on their way to becoming inventive and resourceful researchers. Indeed, their papers must be a source of methodological inspiration for students (and their teachers!) all over the world struggling with the question of how to conceive and carry out a research project on a linguistic, literary and cultural topic. [Peter Verdonk / Emeritus Professor of Stylistics at the University of Amsterdam]

This volume connects three important themes and acts upon them. First, it provides empirical studies of literary texts and experiences, once again proving the value of empirical studies of literature. It thereby nicely forecasts the future of literary studies. Secondly, it highlights the connections between research groups in different continents, showing the strength of international collaborations. It thereby nicely forecasts the future of intercultural research. Thirdly, it presents work from students, illustrating upcoming talent. It thereby nicely forecasts the future of academia. This volume presents research that should excite anybody working in literary studies. Moreover, this is a volume any undergraduate and graduate student in this area of research should read – for its interdisciplinary ideas, for its intercultural message and for the path it paves for exciting research in language and literature. [Max Louwerse / President of the International Society for Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL)]

Literary fiction has been credited with considerable power to improve attitudes toward out-groups. It was even argued that it has been an important factor behind the global decline of violence against various minorities in the last centuries. Could it also help to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of animals? To test this, we studied the attitude toward animal welfare of n = 921 (experimental group) people of both sexes who read a short fragment of an unpublished novel with a motif of the physical abuse of an animal. The control group (n = 912) read a fragment of a similar length but not related to animals. After reading the text all subjects filled out an on-line questionnaire with seven items (camouflaged among many others items) measuring attitudes toward animal welfare. The questionnaire included also demographical questions, such as whether the subject keeps pets. We found that in comparison with the control group, the experimental group was significantly more concerned about animal welfare. This result indicates that literary fiction can influence attitudes toward other species. It is also worth noting that our study is characterized by a high level of ecological validity, i.e. a relatively high extent to which its results can be generalized (or extended) to real-world settings. Due to its specific design, which involved the cooperation of a best-selling author and his publisher, the study approximated the typical conditions in which people read fiction in a remarkably accurate way. Finally, our research has potential practical implications for promoting animal welfare.

In recent years, researchers have conducted empirical studies in reader response, which have either contested or confirmed earlier theories. Indeed, the 1970s and 1980s saw the shift from interpreting the page to looking into reading processes, but the studies remained on the level of abstraction. Our study follows the trend towards evidence-grounded investigations by examining real readers' reactions to poetry and innovates by looking into cross-cultural receptions of a poem in its original and translated versions. To verify whether responses to poetry are universal or culture specific, a rigorous method was adopted: 500 humanities undergraduate students from two different countries (Brazil and Ukraine) were asked to read Poe's "The Lake" and to gauge their reactions using a questionnaire with a fifteen-item semantic differential scale. Participants read either the original version in English (i.e., a foreign language to them) or its translation into their mother tongue (Portuguese, Russian, or Ukrainian). The results point to statistically significant differences within and between the groups. The findings indicate that first-hand responses to poetry are largely culture specific and that the translations also influence reactions.

This paper compares The Da Vinci Code and its translation in Portuguese against the language of canonical and non-canonical literary works. Based on the notion of literariness, as forwarded by the Russian Formalists, the study looks at the lexical density of these works. Two corpora are compiled and formulaicity is checked with the help of computers. Classification of lexical bundles is then carried out and seen in the light of socio-cultural differences. The results show that formulaic expressions are used differently in these works and that there are slight changes in the types of lexical bundles in both corpora. This paper contributes to the characterization of the language of literary texts by using empirical observations rather than hermeneutic argumentation. In addition, it brings out the advantages of corpus analysis for the study of literature.