Abstract
Current research on identification with narrative characters poses two problems. First, although identification is seen as a dynamic process of which the intensity varies during reading, it is usually measured by means of post-reading questionnaires containing self-report items. Second, it is not clear which linguistic characteristics evoke identification. The present paper proposes that an interdisciplinary framework allows for more precise manipulations and measurements of identification, which will ultimately advance our understanding of the antecedents and nature of this process. The central hypothesis of our Linguistic Cues Framework is that identification with a narrative character is a multidimensional experience for which different dimensions are evoked by different linguistic cues. The first part of the paper presents a literature review on identification, resulting in a renewed conceptualization of identification which distinguishes six dimensions: a spatiotemporal, a perceptual, a cognitive, a moral, an emotional, and an embodied dimension. The second part argues that each of these dimensions is influenced by specific linguistic cues which represent various aspects of the narrative character’s perspective. The proposed relations between linguistic cues and identification dimensions are specified in six propositions. The third part discusses what psychological and neurocognitive methods enable the measurement of the various identification dimensions in order to test the propositions. By establishing explicit connections between the linguistic characteristics of narratives and readers’ physical, psychological, and neurocognitive responses to narratives, this paper develops a research agenda for future empirical research on identification with narrative characters.
Highlights
Characters of fiction can evoke strong emotions in their readers
Willems and Jacobs (2016) argue that studying processes of immersion and aesthetic appreciation requires a thorough understanding of the linguistic finesses of stories. These finesses include metric, phonological, morpho-syntactic, and semantic features at the sublexical, lexical, interlexical, and supralexical levels of discourse (Jacobs, 2015a; Jacobs et al, 2016b). Whereas these previously developed models aim to account for a variety of reading experiences, the present paper presents a multidimensional framework that focuses exclusively on the experience of identification with narrative characters
We presented a multidimensional Linguistic Cues Framework that might be beneficial in overcoming these issues and developed a research agenda incorporating linguistic and narratological accounts of viewpoint in discourse and psychological and neurocognitive methods suitable for measuring effects of these viewpoint elements on identification
Summary
Characters of fiction can evoke strong emotions in their readers. The Irish politician Daniel O’Connell is reported to have thrown Charles Dickens’ The old curiosity shop out of the window of a riding train after reading the part in which the heroine, little Nell, dies (Camden Hotten et al, 1870, p. 46). First: researchers are aware that identification is a process and that the degree of identification and its immediate reactions in terms of perception, cognition, and affect, will vary during reading, the degree of identification and the accompanying emotions are mostly measured only after reading with questionnaires consisting of self-report items The ability of these ad hoc, explicit measures to adequately capture complex narrative experiences such as immersion and identification has recently been subject of debate (Jacobs, 2015b; Dixon and Bortolussi, 2016; Kuiken, 2016). The Neurocognitive Poetics Model of Literary Reading (Jacobs, 2015c) posits that the background elements of a story (expressed in, e.g., familiar words) prompt a fast reading process that facilitates immersive experiences, whereas foregrounded elements (e.g., figurative language use) prompt a slow reading process that facilitates aesthetic experiences The difference between both routes of processing is hypothesized to be discernible at the neuronal, affective-cognitive, and behavioral level. We conclude by presenting an agenda for future research assessing the impact of these techniques on identification
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