cognitive poetics

The emergence of cognitive poetics in recent decades has resulted in a new attention to the relation between language and mind as well as a focus on what happens in the mind when one reads a poetic text. In a part of this theory that shows the importance of the "figure" and "ground" in human perception, it is suggested that in the analysis of human perception of poetry, these two concepts should be carefully considered because they can show how mental attention of the audience could be attracted and influenced by it. The present article firstly tries to provide a correct understanding of the general view of this type of poetic analysis especially in considering the specific definition of "interpretation" and "reading" in cognitive poetics. Then, by focusing more on the definitions and functions of figure and ground, it presents some examples of them in Hafez's poetry. After that, in order to evaluate more objectively the theoretical efficiency and practical utility of this type of cognitive analysis, the main pattern of figure and ground in a random Hafez sonnet is extracted. Then, following a method based on two concepts of "interpretation" used for micro-study and "reading" for macro-study in this theory, we have studied other examples in Hafez's Divan. This study has achieved significant results for the evaluation of Hafez' poetry. Furthermore, it can be concluded that this method can be useful for studying the works of other Persian poets too.

Every text is composed of a main world and several subworlds, which contribute to the formation of the meaning and concept of the main text, leading to a more comprehensive and nuanced reading by the reader. Based on Paul Werth’s "Text World Theory," a text can be analyzed from the perspective of cognitive poetics through the axes of discourse world, text world, and subworlds. The third level of this theory, the "subworld" or "subordinate worlds," includes three subsets: deictic subworlds, attitudinal subworlds, and epistemic subworlds. This article, employing a descriptive-analytical method and utilizing the axis of subworlds from Werth's theory, examines and analyzes the story of Prophet Yusuf (Joseph) in the Qur'an. The aim and necessity of this research are to understand the possible and diverse worlds within this unique Qur'anic story, focusing on the role of subworlds, which are often overlooked in the text, yet play a significant role in shaping the worldview of the narrative. The findings show that the narrative of Yusuf utilizes the capacities of these subworlds to create multiple layers of meaning, contribute to the dynamism and progression of the story, enhance the dialogic nature (especially between Yusuf, his brothers, and his adversaries), and reflect the silenced or marginalized voices (such as Yusuf’s fellow prisoners and other unnamed companions). The construction of these diverse subworlds facilitates the portrayal of essential Qur'anic themes, including divine decree, the certainty of divine commands, the conflict between good and evil, and the eventual emergence of prosperity and honor after hardship and humiliation.

The main purpose of current study, which is conducted through a descriptive-analytic method, is representation of belief and epistemic sub-world in Emam Ali’s khotbe-ye- 108(108th Peech) Based on Paul Werth’s Text worlds theory. It consider text in three dimensions; Text worlds, Discourse worlds, Sub-worlds. Author and reader intract In Text worlds through of text. Discourse worlds deal with situation and sub-worlds determine producer’s believes and approachs. Sub-worlds be devided to Diectic sub-worlds, Attitudinal sub-worlds and Epistemic sub-worlds. Current study want to answer these questions:Which kind of text use in this text, which Sub- worlds is predominate in text, how does is combined together three worlds. Achievements demonstrate usage of descriptive- discoursive and Instructive text that are suitable for interaction in ceremony. All of sub-worlds has used in speech, but Epistemic sub-worlds are outstanding. They are represented by a metaphoric system through of Incrementation. Incrementation reveal main Mapping in which relationship between the government and the people is encounter Emam and people’s one. Government-people’s relationship is represented by a binary oppositions; Wolf-sheep and Emam- people’s frindship is showed by doctor- sick’s one.

Cognitive deixis theory is one of the important issues in cognitive linguistics as determinants of the method of reference in the textual context. The aim of the present study is to investigate the application of the theory of cognitive deixis in the analysis of Persian poetry. The main claim made in the present study is that cognitive deixis are suitable tools for applying new methods in Persian poetry analysis that specifically analyze poetry based on types of references. In order to prove this claim and to study the application of this theory, first the theoretical foundations of cognitive deixis and its basic issues such as the theory of deictic shift have been discussed and then a sonnet by Saadi has been studied and analyzed. The results of the present study show that cognitive deixis and the theory of deictic shift can cover the gap that exists in traditional rhetoric under the category of reference, and by applying these theories, we can design a kind of reference-based analysis in Persian poetry.

In communication with infants, adults usually use a certain kind of language which in vocal stretches, hesitations and repetitions is different from the usual adults' conversational language. This special kind of language is called "Babytalk". The cognitive investigations on Babytalks has shown some specific poetic characteristics which can prove the existence of literal cognition in human infant as soon as the first weeks of life. This article as the first step, argues the theoretical researches which prove the cognitive potentials of poetic understanding in infants, among them David Mail and Ellen Dissanayake's research (2002). In the next step, the potentiality of cognitive poetics of Persian lullabies is argued. In this section we are going to show if the aesthetic criteria of Babytalks exist in lullabies as well; and if the lullabies can serve as the reference of the paradigms of infants' cognitive poetics? The results of our assessment show that Persian lullabies respond positively to the poetic characteristics of Babytalks. Those poetic dynamics which are in common between Babytalks and Persian lullabies including special metric features, simplifying, frequency of frontal phonemes, parallelism and iconicity are surveyed here.

Cognitive poetics as one of the new branches of cognitive science, provides appropriate tools for analyzing the text for the literay critics. The theory of text worlds is one of these tools and is useful in analyzing the textual space. In this study the authors seek to analyze the function of this theory in representing the world of constructed text in Persian poetry. To this goal, the authors  analyzed a sonnets of Saadi and a free verse poem of Nima, and examined the function of the theory of the text worlds. The results of this study indicate that this theory is more suitable for the analysis of free verse poetry, and in classical poetry, especially the liryc poetry, there are obstacles due to the inherent limitations of this kind of poetry. To solve the problems of classical poetry analysis, the authors have presented solutions using the theory of text worlds.

Figure and ground are cognitive devices for text analysis, indicating a phenomenological relation between literature and human beings. So critical research by cognitive poetics approach, on one hand, includes the possibility of analyzing texts considering the author, text and reader simultaneously, although different traditions have emphasized on just one or two of them. On the other hand, it gives phenomenological value to the literary research for the reason that it is created based on body, mind and human life. The concepts of figure and ground were first introduced in Gestalt Theory, and they were later developed in cognitive poetics to make the comprehension of a text possible, as lack of figure in any text can lead to a flat reading. Figure could be created through repetition, unfamiliar naming, innovative metaphor, creative syntactic ordering, use of puns, inner rhyme in a text, or any other technique which results in deviations from the expected use of language.  This paper draws on the function of figure and ground to analyze a poem by Nima Yooshij, entitled “Oh, Humans” through a cognitive poetics approach. It studied how analytical devices of cognitive theory with neurocognitive and psychological bases could explain the cognitive deviation from the Persian classic meter. Furthermore, it embodied a way that "the self" as a core of consciousness is interpreted through the structural arrangement of the words as well as "the other" as the historical memory in the background. Moreover, this poem is cognitively and structurally classified in three episodes based on the figure and groundchr('39')s usages, so the iconicity (similarity) of the form-meaning could reflect the absence of dialogue between the self and the other through discursive worlds. This proposes that the representation and recreation of the author-reader’s world through the form (structural arrangement) in a literary work equals the meaning that a text’s world tries to create. Therefore, the study of meaning is not disjointed from the form, that is, the cognitive conformity of form-meaning in this poem conceptualizes the self and the other, as it is conceptualized in the society.

Text world theory, which is derived from cognitive poetics, opens up new horizons to human beings to discover how the mind works and how to make a mental representation. From this point of view, the study of literary works is an effective step towards the construction of the author and audiences’ intellectual world and transferring the effects of text through textual signals. This article studies Tarikh-i Bayhaqi based on this approach. The three layers of “discourse world,” “text world,” and “sub-worlds” in this theory, and the small text worlds that create the original text world are shown. The dynamism of the text world in Tarikh-i Bayhaqi is less visible due to its historical narrative. The author, using world-building elements and function-advancing propositions, has produced a narrative-report construct and character-based and, in some cases, environment-based descriptions in this text. Changing the temporal and spatial conditions of narrations and guiding the various narratives through the sub-worlds force the reader to conceptualize the worlds with variable spaces. Of course, the conceptualization process implies the mobility of this action.

The current study investigates the similarities and differences of conceptualization of SADNESS in representative corpuses of ordinary (non-poetic) and poetic language. Analysing two separate corpuses (Persian Language Data Base and Farsi Language Corpus), the writers managed to identify and extract the relevant conceptual metaphors of SADNESS in both ordinary language and contemporary poetics respectively. Then according to Conceptual Metaphor Theory of Lakoff and Johnson (1989), the most frequent generic and specific mappings of SADNESS in both ordinary and poetic language were determined. The study showed that almost all the generic metaphors of SADNESS occur in both types discourse, though some of them occur significantly in either the one or the other type. An analysis of the two sets of metaphors revealed several important differences between poetic and non-poetic conceptualization of SADNESS, including the higher degree of agentivity, positive conceptualization of SADNESS and unconventionality in poetic language compared to non-poetic genre. The finding that almost all the identified metaphors are found in poetic and non-poetic language supports Lakoff and Turner’s claim (1989) that there is nothing essentially different about poetic metaphors.

Words and their relations have always been a considerable point among the critics especially those who are specialized in the cognitive poetics. This branch of literary studies is, more than anything, concerned with the similarities and relativities between things and to re-acknowledge their super-structure patterns. Naturally, this is attainable only by analyzing the literary texts. Analysis of the texts itself is also inter-connected with speech act of the author or the poet, and the inductive act among readers. Perceptions of these concepts can be found in two ways of speech and epilogue that each causes other’s line of actions. Hence, it can be asserted that every literary text is an objective re-exposing of discourse analyses which are available in every society. The researchers of the present study, assuming that the above assumptions are exemplified in Parvin Etesami’s poems, seek to examine the cognitive poetics and discourse analysis in some of her poetic vocations. The researchers of this article try to show the instances of cognitive poetics and discourse analysis in Parvin Etesami’s poems. The findings of the study show how the textual structure of language can show the hidden power relation and its misuse, hegemony, and social inequality.

Words and their relations have always been a considerable point among the critics especially those who are specialized in the cognitive poetics. This branch of literary studies is, more than anything, concerned with the similarities and relativities between things and to re-acknowledge their super-structure patterns. Naturally, this is attainable only by analyzing the literary texts. Analysis of the texts itself is also inter-connected with speech act of the author or the poet, and the inductive act   among readers.  Perceptions of these concepts can be found in two ways of speech and epilogue that each causes other’s line of actions. Hence, it can be asserted that every literary text is an objective re-exposing of discourse analyses which are available in every society. The researchers of the present study, assuming that the above assumptions are exemplified in Parvin Etesami’s poems, seek to examine the cognitive poetics and discourse analysis in some of her poetic vocations. The researchers of this article try to show the instances of   cognitive poetics and discourse analysis in Parvin Etesami’s poems.  The findings of the study show how the textual structure of language can show the hidden power relation and its misuse, hegemony, and social inequality.

From a philosophical perspective, one could say that during the history of literary criticism within the twentieth century, there have been two principal views on the nature of literary texts: One considers literary works as self-contained esthetic objects, which ambiguity, indeterminacy and uncertainty constitute an indispensable part of them; the other seeks to examine literary works as to reveal a single specific reading which represents historical consciousness in its different aspects, political, social and so on and so forth. Among various literary criticisms, cognitive poetics belongs to the first attitude to literary works, as it does not intend, by reducing literary texts to the historical, political and/or social context, to obtain one single interpretation. Rather, cognitive poetics, by describing the cognitive operations involved in the process of reading which experienced readers trigger in their mind while confronting literary texts, aims to study how different interpretations of one single literary text are formed. The formation of interpretations by readers is a cognitive operation which takes place through the unpacking of the text and recombining it into a meaningful integrated whole.
Theoretical Framework and The present article, in a descriptive and analytic manner, and within the framework of cognitive poetics, aims at a study of one poem by one of the Persian blank-verse poets through an analysis of the possibilities this framework could provide for the fact that how literary works are interpreted by different readers. The theory, which is thus put into practice from within the cognitive poetics framework, is called the conceptual blending theory put forward by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner (2002). Generally speaking, according to this cognitive theory of meaning construction, every poetic text could be considered as a conceptual blend, or a set of conceptual blends, which is created through a number of cognitive processes such as selective projection, mapping, compression, decompression, as well as the construction of networks called integration networks. And for a reader to reach a particular interpretation among the possible interpretations, it is necessary for him to repeat all these cognitive operations again in his own right in the mind. Difference in the reconstruction of the integration networks operating behind the conceptual blends, and also in the cognitive operations which lead to the reconstruction of the Integration Networks, brings about different interpretations of one and the same text. It turns out that the conceptual blending theory, taken in conjunction with some elements from another theory within the cognitive poetics framework, namely the conceptual domain theory proposed by Ronald Langacker (1987), provides a powerful theoretical tool for the description and explanation of how different readings of one and the same text emerge. Furthermore, the conceptual blending theory offers another instrument, called optimalty principles, which can be used to assess the extent to which one particular interpretation enjoys a well-formed semantic structure, a theoretical tool that could also provide reasons for preference of one reading over the other.
The analysis of the selected poem, through the application of the theoretical instruments provided by the conceptual blending theory, theoretical instruments such as schema induction, vital relationships and their different kinds of compressions, together with the exploitation of a number of concepts taken from Langacker's conceptual domains theory like profiling, demonstrate that how and through what cognitive operations readers construct different meanings of one and the same text. Thus, during the process of meaning construction, through the operation of one particular cognitive function or the omission of it (for example, compression of vital relationships or selective projection of different conceptual structures), readers may reach different interpretations of the same text. In general, the possible interpretations of the poem selected for analysis in this inquiry can be subsumed under two categories: Those interpretations that occur within the conceptual domain of love. In each one of these readings, it is the conceptual domain of love that is activated from the long-term memory into the working memory, only that in each case a different part of the complex, intertwined network of the conceptual domain of love is profiled. In these interpretations, according to the readings the experimental readers have provided the researchers with, three patterns can be distinguished, which may designated as "modest", "boastful" and "passionate" or "romantic". The interpretations of the other category, instead of the conceptual domain of love, activate other ones, and thus are potentially infinite.
Conclusions and Suggestions: To conclude, the conceptual blending theory, in a sense, can be regarded as the cognitivist account of the poststructuralist theory of unlimited interpretation, providing the relativist notion of reading with a description and explanation which are based upon empirical data. In addition, the present research demonstrates that poetic texts are capable of ambiguity, polyphony and the possibility of different, even contradictory interpretations, and since the selected poem displays these features, it acquires one important criterion of poeticality. In addition, although the conceptual blending theory allows different interpretations of the same text, by applying its optimality principles, it chooses some of them over the others as optimal readings, and does not give all of them the same credit.

This paper examines the interaction between the visual and the verbal modes, that is, the multimodality of transferring the meaning in Persian visual poetry in terms of cognitive base of different types of integrations which occur in the brain after different sensory channels transferring the visual and verbal data. Although contemporary poetry is multimodal, the visual poetry is considered a type of poetry that has both the verbal and the visual as the dominant, mixed modes that tend to construct the poetic meaning. Different arrangement of words and images, which has a neurological ground, requires different kinds of cognitive processing and will therefore induce different feelings, impressions, and connotations. Consequently, the general meaning of a multimodal text goes beyond that of the combination of the two modes.
Drawing on cognitive semiotics, this paper demonstrates how the multimodal poem is conceptualized through embodied experience. Furthermore, it shows how various types of visual/verbal synthetization in a poetry text are differed by a number of distinctive features. Moreover, it is shown how the meaning-making process and the resulting affection become possible in each type of visual poetry. Through modifying Aarhus’s model (2005, 2012), itself based on Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual blending theory, this research puts forward twelve different types of interaction between the verbal and visual modes, which, in this paper, are mentioned just the three super basic classified categories due to the limitation of the journal’s space. In fact, the three super categories are:It is about the general relations among the two or more modes or media. In this kind of relation, each mode/medium comprises separable and individually coherent texts in different mode/media to improve the meaning space at the end. It is divided into two sub-groups, which are Mode-adjacency and Multimodality.
It is a kind of transformations from one medium to another. An inter-medial text could be divided into Duplicating and Iconicity (Image iconicity, Relational diagram iconicity and Structural diagram iconicity). Duplicating could not presents an indissoluble connection of diverse modes as a fusion of different modal processes, while in the second one (Iconicity), the verbal and visual modes are fused together to represent the similarity or adjacency. The Duplicating could also be based on similarity or contiguity as well, that is the whole or a part of the text could be duplicated due to similarity of the verbal mode to visual mode or the contiguity of both together.
The third and the last type of relation between verbal and visual modes is mix-modal text, which is the combination of modes in a way that the complex signs in different modes would not be coherent or self-sufficient outside of that context. It is divided into four groups which are called in this research Counter-iconicity (Counter iconicity of mis-matching and Paradox-counter iconicity), Mode-situational inclusion, Mode-overlapping and complementary relation. Cognitively, these three basic types are processed respectively as following: bottom-up, top-down and integrated processing. Furthermore, these types are based on the structure of human brain and the functions of neurological cells, to study multimodal, especially visual poetry. Since both brain and literature contain similar patterns, it is inferred that each type of verbal-visual interaction that is constructed through a particular cognitive process will necessarily form specific emotions and impressions.

This paper presents an analysis of a short story named farewell [veda'] from a cognitive poetic perspective. The analysis uses Text Worlds Theory as developed by Paul Werth (1999). Text Worlds are mental representations which spring from the discourse world . World - building elements denote the basic deictic arrangement of the text world and provide some sense of setting. What the text is actually about is composed of function- advancing propositions. Once the boundaries of the text world are established and the discourse is progressing, further conceptual layers may be created. These layers are known as sub worlds, which are of three types; deictic, attitudinal and epistemic sub worlds. The analysis of "Farewell" showed that although the extension of deictic and attitudinal sub worlds were limited, but the epistemic sub worlds extended considerably in this story, which resulted in remotedness and hypotheticality and deep layers of meaning within the text.

In the field of cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics, researchers have emphasized metaphor’s important role in conceptualizing world experiences. In this respect, body parts have always been considered as a source domain in structuring various concepts in most languages and they’ve been exploiting the cultural models of each language in this deed. So, in order to investigate the interaction between metaphor, body, and culture in Persian, the present study tries to analyze some body-part metaphors including del (heart-stomach), jegar (liver) and chechm (eye). The data was collected from Sadi’s Bustan which is the demonstrative of Persian culture and has a great deal of body-parts metaphors. The analysis of the metaphorical expressions was carried out within a theoretical framework based on insights from cognitive linguistics and poetics. The data analyzed shows that Iranian cultural models, derived from Iranian traditional medicine and Persian spiritual belief systems such as the Sufi worldview and Islamic religion are some factors that affect the structure of cross-domain conceptual mappings.

In this study "The First Snow" among series of stories by Guy de Maupassant will be analyzed in the Text World theory framework. Text World theory is a Cognitive approach which is used to understand literary works. The main question is to distinguish the principal characteristics used by the author and mental representations created by the reader. The present research shows that this story has mainly narrative structure and the descriptive axis turns around personification. Deictic and attitudinal sub-worlds constitute the majority of sub-worlds in this story which indicates that the author regularly places the reader in different situations; and also character's thought, attitude and desire have a great contribution to developing story by the author and forming mental worlds in reader's mind.

Cognitive poetics answers to the fundamental questions on the cognitive tools of art, language and literature. This is the strong point of this approach over the other approaches, especially literary theory, which has limitations such as inability to understand how different meanings are created and various interpretations of literary texts are possible. This paper explores how to connect the text world to the reader’s world to interpret the text and extend the reader's mental spaces in the understanding of literary texts as the research field. The main aim is the application of a model for the free reading of such interpretation, which is left to the person who relies on the opinion of cognitive poetics. Analysis of the story of Shazde Ehtejab (Golshiri, 1384/2005) is to check the elements in building the story. The questions are: 1) Which of the building elements of the story of Shazde Ehtejab can be identified by the Text World Theory? and 2) How does the identification of these elements help to interpret different text worlds? The answers to these questions (three layers of the text -“text world”, “discourse world” and “sub world”) are identified based on the Text World Theory, which is involved in building of the story. Then the link between the micro-text worlds in the form of included text world that has emerged in the mind of the Shazde and formed the original text world of the story, would be shown. The contrast between the characters and the mental spaces that are occurred through their thoughts, and form the smaller text worlds within the Shazde’s original text world, would be effective in systematic interpretation of the text.

Cognitive poetics includes a theory of analogical mapping، which shows employing different skills of finding similarities، relationships، and structural systems. Microstructure could be considered as parts or constrains of sentences in a discourse، while macrostructure is a large-scale statement of the content of a text. If some common schemata cover these both structures، this part-whole relation will map the macrostructure of the text through some paratextual and cohesive elements on all texts of the stories in a collection، and will create an untold story، a macrofiction. In fact، this untold story has a main role in the interpretation of the “Conference of the Birds”. The aim of this study is to investigate how the macrostructure influences the structuring of each story of the world text of the “Conference of the Birds” (1177)، a well-known Persian poem، by cognitive poetics approach. The author is going to demonstrate how the macrostructure leads to creating a macrofiction، which offers a new reading of the text. Moreover، it examines how macro-fiction and system mapping may interact in a literary text like the “Conference of the Birds” and what is the result of their interaction. This study posits، firstly، how the concepts of variety (multiplicity) and unity (oneness) assume to construct the macro- and micro-structures of the “Conference of the Birds” through the system mapping، and how the text leads to a new structure، called macrofiction. Secondly، how macrofiction could have an effect on the reading of the text. Consequently، the concept and structure of the “Conference of the Birds” are in harmony، so the variety and a large number of the birds who desire to reach phoenix (Simorgh) are represented in the course of different and various stories concerning the same pattern. As a result، studying the text world by this approach could provide a suitable device for analyzing a text and its macro-structures through conceptual mappings as a step forward in the area of literary critic.

In the field of cognitive linguistics and cognitive poetics، researchers have emphasized metaphor’s important role in conceptualizing world experiences. In this respect، body parts have always been considered as a source domain in structuring various concepts in most languages and they’ve been exploiting the cultural models of each language in this deed. So، in order to investigate the interaction between metaphor، body، and culture in Persian، the present study tries to analyze some body-part metaphors including del (heart-stomach)، jegar (liver) and chechm (eye). The data was collected from Sa''di’s Bustan which is the demonstrative of Persian culture and has a great deal of body-parts metaphors. The analysis of the metaphorical expressions was carried out within a theoretical framework based on insights from cognitive linguistics and poetics. The data analyzed shows that Iranian cultural models، derived from Iranian traditional medicine and Persian spiritual belief systems such as the Sufi worldview and Islamic religion are some factors that affect the structure of cross-domain conceptual mappings.