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reader of a literary work assumes the general cooperativeness of the author (the
story-teller) and draws inferences where incomplete or
indirect conversational
contributions are made. Gricean traditional pragmatics has undergone complex
revision by the relevance theorists, obtaining a more explicitly cognitivist
direction. In their understanding, cohesion and coherence are categories ultimately
derivable from relevance (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 289). In a coherent literary
narrative the reader has to be given sufficient overt and covert clues, which will
enable him/her to see links and understand
the text as a totality or, as Toolan
states, to “see a point and a tellability” (2012: 29). Similarly to conversation
cooperativeness, coherence is a strong norm of narrative; its absence raises
similar reactions as
uncooperative behaviour, namely confusion, frustration and
rejection.
When aiming at processing of literary discourse another aspect of analytical
work in modern pragmatic stylistics has to be emphasised. It is its central interest
in interpretations and effects of literary text, which inevitably raises questions
about contexts in which texts are interpreted. As noted by Stockwell (2006) “a
growing body of work in stylistics marries up detailed analysis at the micro-
linguistic level with a broader view of the communicative context” and thus
“stylistics necessarily involves the simultaneous practice of
linguistic analysis
and awareness of the interpretative and social dimension” (Stockwell 2006: 755).
As Stockwell further points out, the numerous different developments that can
be outlined in modern stylistics “all have in common the basic stylistic tenets of
being rigorous, systematic, transparent and open to falsifiability… In short, they
present themselves as aspects of a social science of literature” (Stockwell 2006:
755).
Regarding coherence as a pragmatically-determined quality of literary
discourse, we adopt a pragmatic stylistic approach to literary text, which can
be best characterized as a process of applying pragmatic principles to stylistic
analyses of texts. A natural assumption is that Gricean or post-Gricean approaches
can explain how characters understand each other and how we understand
characters. Of course, we have to consider the layers of discourse and differentiate
“between work that applies the pragmatic models to examples of communicative
interaction between fictional participants in literary texts, and work that addresses
the nature of the interaction between writer and reader” (McMahon 2006: 232).
This approach is social in that it focuses on the principles of cooperation and
politeness as employed by individuals, affected by the given
social contexts in
which communication and interpretation of messages take place.
Alongside the Cooperative Principle the Politeness
Principle, too, shows
relevance to the study of coherence in
literary discourse (cf. Miššíková 2012).
Considering the setting and situation in literary discourse, we have to acknowledge
the importance of the reader’s ability to recognize shared background knowledge
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as well as the patterns of knowledge stored and preserved in our memory. On
the one hand, scripts,
scenarios, and schemata allow for a relatively quick and
allusive style, and they enable readers to process language quickly. On the
other hand, the reader’s perception and understanding are dependent on the
amount and nature of his shared background knowledge, which implies a certain
relevance to the Politeness Principle as well: the narrator should provide as many
details, pieces of information, as necessary. Providing
more information than
necessary or giving over specification might be considered as non-cooperative
and impolite (the reader feels underestimated in his capacity to perceive the
message correctly). Providing judgements on the level of accuracy (truth-
telling) and informativeness (amount of information) can illustrate some of the
pragmatically-rooted challenges to coherence.
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