A COGNITIVE STYLISTIC STUDY OF EPITHET SYSTEM IN COLSON WHITEHEAD’S FANTASY

Abstract

Attempts by cognitive stylists to explain readers' comprehension of literary texts face a significant challenge in bridging the author's and reader's worlds. Attempting to clarify the conceptual space that links the different discourse realms to the author-reader levels of interpretation is something that Werth (1999) does. This method offers a fresh perspective on how we think about writing and reading. When it comes to interpreting literature using language models, cognitive stylistics goes farther than conventional stylistic accounting. It examines reading experiences, both comparable and different, by applying concepts from cognitive science regarding the mind, language, and the world. The purpose of this research is to examine Colson Whitehead's chosen novel through the lens of cognitive stylistic devices, with a focus on the impact of mental spaces on meaning interpretation. The poet's worldview can be better conceptualized through the use of these mental spaces in the construction of grammars. Not only are they utilized to model dynamic mapping in language and mind, but they also interact and aid in the integration of concepts throughout production. The study utilizes a descriptive qualitative method with the model of Text World Theory by Werth (1999). The study concludes that Text World Theory is used in a novel to describe the characters' lives in various locations, such as subways, kill fields, refuges, colleges, and streets. The protagonist's solitude, paralysis, and senseless state are depicted through the use of pronouns like 'he', 'they/routes', and 'it/gray'. The characters' world is described as tedious, paralyzed, and a gloomy environment. The epithets, which are adjectives and nouns, describe the protagonist's life in a dark, gloomy environment filled with corpses, bad smells, and crazy activities. These epithets help to convey the complexities of the characters' lives and the complexities of their world.