Immersion in Digital Fiction

Alice Bell,Jen Smith,Astrid Ensslin,Isabelle Van Der Bom

doi:10.15462/ijll.v7i1.105

Abstract

In this article, we profile an empirically grounded, cognitive approach to immersion in digital fiction by combining text-driven stylistic analysis with insights from theories of cognition and reader-response research. We offer a new analytical method for immersive features in digital fiction by developing deictic shift theory for the affordances of digital media. We also provide empirically substantiated insights to show how immersion is experienced cognitively by using Andy Campbell and Judi Alston’s (2015) digital fiction piece WALLPAPER as a case study. We add ‘interactional deixis’ and ‘audible deixis’ to Stockwell’s (2002) model to account for the multimodal nature of immersion in digital fiction. We also show how extra-textual features can contribute to immersion and thus propose that they should be accounted for when analysing immersion across media. We conclude that the analytical framework and reader response protocol that we develop here can be adapted for application to texts across media.

Highlights

In this article, we profile an empirically grounded, cognitive poetic approach to immersion in digital fiction by combining text-driven stylistic analysis with insights from an empirical reader response study1
We address what we see as a potential limitation within existing cognitive narratological approaches to immersion – and cognitive narratology more generally – which is the tendency to craft theories about how text processing works without empirical evidence to substantiate them beyond an introspective account of the analyst’s personal experience
Applying this approach to immersion, we distinguish between ‘reader constructions of immersion’ which we retrieve via a reader response study and ‘immersive features’ that we show can be isolated via multimodal stylistic analysis

Summary

Introduction

We profile an empirically grounded, cognitive poetic approach to immersion in digital fiction by combining text-driven stylistic analysis with insights from an empirical reader response study. Providing an empirical basis for our approach, we combine the analysis of the primary text with results from a reader response study on WALLPAPER, which was conducted as part of the project’s public engagement activities. Empirical account of immersion in digital fiction in general, we contribute to and expand the scope of reader-response research in stylistics in which “rigorous and evidence-based approaches to the study of readers’ interactions with and around texts ... Empirical account of immersion in digital fiction in general, we contribute to and expand the scope of reader-response research in stylistics in which “rigorous and evidence-based approaches to the study of readers’ interactions with and around texts ... [and] the application of such datasets in the service of stylistic concerns ... contribute to a stylistic textual analysis and/or wider discussion of stylistic theory and methods” (Whiteley & Canning 2017: 73)

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Conclusion