Louise Nuttall
I am a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Huddersfield. My teaching and research lie in stylistics, cognitive linguistics and the study of reading and readers.
Location Huddersfield, UK
Activity
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Hi Michele. In all honesty, I don't know - but I haven't heard of any research of that kind. It would be interesting though!
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I think you are right, Karen. I certainly hear a very clear voice when reading books written in a clear dialect, or when a particular accent is reproduced in the spelling (I'm thinking Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting). And I do think that contributes to the feeling of being immersed in the story - I tend to seek out these kinds of books for this reason, I...
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Hi Jean.
I think you are right - so much about the nature of reading depends on the kind of text (or even the specific text) you are reading. That is part of the reason why it is so challenging (and fascinating!) to study. In response to your question about bodily responses to reading at the end there, we could perhaps add another bullet point to Peter's list... -
Hi Mark,
Thanks for this - really interesting. There is lots of research going on at the moment into the nature of absorption or immersion during reading. Your comment about flitting back and forth between an analytical and absorbed reader chimes along with some of this research (and I think Peter will be interested to read this!). To follow on from your... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Breg Degeus
And in fiction we often get 'multiply-embedded minds' too - character A believes that character B doesn't know that character C cares about character D....etc.
- This is a term from a book called Why We Read Fiction, by Lisa Zunshine (2006). She argues that we can only cognitively manage a certain number of these during reading! -
Louise Nuttall replied to Pippa MW
I think you are right, Pippa. I wonder if this self-projecting aspect of mind-modelling might explain why all different kinds of people with varying lives and individual personalities can often identify with the same fictional character.
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Louise Nuttall replied to Lottie Woodward
Hello Charlotte.
I know that some researchers have begun testing whether reading fiction helps to develop our Theory of Mind (e.g. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/377). Whether or not other aspects of our environment and experiences can have an effect is another interesting question and one that I don't think we yet have an answer to! -
Louise Nuttall replied to SANDRA C. O.
Hello Sandra and Eleanor. I agree that I probably wouldn't describe Dickens' characters as impersonated in my experience of them, but there is certainly something very memorable about them all the same. Perhaps they are better described as portable characters, as described in the section on 'Portability' coming up. See what you think!
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Louise Nuttall replied to Olivia Louks
Hello both. The idea that it is the seemingly irrelevant details that sometimes contribute to rich, lifelike characters is really interesting! One explanation for this, I suppose, might be that we are used to sorting through all sorts of information, anecdotes, comments etc. in relation to the people around us in everyday life!
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Louise Nuttall replied to Debbie Hall
Hello Debbie and Deborah. An example which comes to mind is Alex in A Clockwork Orange. He very much came to life for me (perhaps a bit too vividly at times) and we share very little in common! I think the richness and consistency of Alex's voice and the direct access to his thoughts and feelings might have something to do with it. I'd be interested to hear...
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Louise Nuttall replied to Chris Longmuir
Hello Chris. I think this is a great example of impersonation. If we take impersonation to refer to something we do in our minds as readers then this applies equally well to representations of real and imaginary people (even if the impersonated representation of the girl we end up in our head with is nothing like the living, breathing version!)
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Louise Nuttall replied to 佳梁 徐
Embedded enactors! What about: B's understanding of A's knowledge of B's suspicions about A's mind..?
(Lisa Zunshine talks about embedded minds in her 2006 book 'Why We Read Fiction'- for anybody who would like to read more!)
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Louise Nuttall replied to Trish Prince
Hi Trish. For me, the term is most useful when you consider novels which switch between different time periods/locations in relation to the same character (particularly good examples are science fiction stories involving time travel e.g. Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife). Multiple enactors as they are described here are a matter of language...
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Louise Nuttall replied to Hazel Wells
Hello Hazel. Yes that makes sense! Lots of people are talking about their enactors in terms of attention, e.g. 'focusing' on a primary enactor and then being 'distracted' by another. I find it quite useful to think of a single enactor (me here and now) in the foreground at any one moment, and the rest contributing to a rich background of varying degrees of...
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Hello Dawn. The way in which we blend all of our various personas into a coherent sense of self/personality certainly complicates our sense of the best example of a person! This links very nicely with the next section on 'enactors in worlds' which is all about the multiple versions of characters we are presented with in texts.
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Hi Sandra. You are right to associate 'best example' with knowledge as opposed to moral judgement. The richness of the information we have about a person (or the directness of our access to this information) seems to be a big factor in person-ness for lots of people here. But as you say, lots of our knowledge of others (whether it be folk psychology or...
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Louise Nuttall replied to Jan Spencer
I think it is especially interesting how this can work in either direction- with a later reading causing you to lose something which you previously enjoyed the first time around. Similar to Sarah's experience I found Catcher in the Rye incredible when I was 17. Now I find it very hard to get through.
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Louise Nuttall replied to Rachel Wrangham
This also might be of interest for anyone interested in the consequences of intermentality. Let me know your thoughts!
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news_articles/2011/groups-mind.aspx
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Louise Nuttall replied to Christina Sauer
Hi Christina,
I'm glad it helped. This sounds like a really fascinating case of impersonation and is raising lots of interesting questions in terms of who is responsible for characterising an individual- a reader, an author or the other characters? I hope next week begins to answer them! -
Louise Nuttall replied to Rachel Wrangham
Ah ha! I see what you mean Anne.
I interpreted Palmer as referring to the townspeople as opposed to the town itself as you say. I think this is what he means- (even if he has not made it so clear) - it is the collective mind of its inhabitants as opposed to the place that he describes as intermental functioning.Rachel:
I think that's very true. I think... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Rachel Wrangham
I agree that a town cannot literally have a mind of it's own, but I think the key phrase is 'within the Middlemarch story-world'- i.e. for the reader, the town actually does have a mind, and it must have in order for us to make sense of the story.
What about when people (in real life now) describe a mob/crowd as angry or excited? Can anybody else think...
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Louise Nuttall replied to J H
Hi Jennifer, I agree with you on Count Fosco in The Woman in White- there is something so menacing about him which I've never been able to put my finger on (or forget)! He's a strange example isn't he though? As you say, he is almost incredible and maybe a bit caricature-like.. Perhaps he could be compared with some of Dickens' characters in this respect? -...
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Louise Nuttall replied to Sarah Leavesley
Hi Sarah, this has got me wondering about the elements outside the text you suggest. We certainly value fictional texts as 'literary' more so if other people talk about them in this way. Perhaps a similar effect might be seen for the real-ness of characters.
This might also be connected to genre- is there an inherent difference between our experiences of... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Christina Sauer
Hi Christina,
Do you think it is the indirectness in the representation of Udayan's character (ie. through the eyes of others as opposed to through direct access to his thoughts) that makes his character the more attractive of the two for you?This is an interesting thought, and might tie in with Peter's earlier idea of mind-modelling as an active process...
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Louise Nuttall replied to Marie Davenport
Brilliant. This is very close to my own enactor experiences right now!
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Louise Nuttall replied to Janet Bott
Hi Janet, 'epistemic, deontic and boulomaic' are all types of modalisation:
- Epistemic modalisation involves a switch into a world based on knowledge/belief (e.g. I know I will be tired tomorrow).
- Deontic modalisation involves a switch into a world that ought to be (e.g. I must finish reading and have some tea).
- Boulomaic modalisation involves a switch... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Samantha Clark
I really like this clip- what a brilliant example of multiple enactors, modalisation and, at the end, a compression!
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Louise Nuttall replied to Ankit Sapra
I really like the App metaphor as well. It captures the feeling of one enactor being in the foreground of attention at any one moment, with others the background, ready to be accessed at any time.
Taking this further, like a smart phone, this mental operation requires a lot of memory (and other cognitive resources), and sometimes when there are lots of... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Lisa Poort
I think you might have a point here! 'Best' does have some value connotations which have certainly influenced many of the comments seen so far! I have been working with the notion of the 'best example' of a person (meant in the sense of a prototype) for some time now and I've never really thought about it in this way. Hearing fresh reactions to concepts such...
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I think this is a really good point Christine- of course this possible evolutionary advantage extends to our sense of self as well..perhaps we are the best example of a person for our individual selves as a matter of survival! It is especially interesting to think how this sense of self (and person-ness) influences our experiences of fictional characters...
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An interesting question! I would suggest that neither the writer or the reader are more 'important'- rather it is the interaction between the two which creates the experience of reading. More specifically, it is the interaction between the linguistic choices of a writer (for example their descriptions of a character's behaviour) and the mind of the reader that...
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Hi Loretta,
Thanks for your thoughts! I think you might be mixing up the 'best example of a person' in the sense it is meant here with your idea of the best kind of person. What we are talking about here is more related to your prototype or general sense of what a person is, rather than an assessment of what they should be. For example, if you were asked to... -
Hi Ian,
The course is intended for anyone who enjoys reading and is curious about the way it works, so it sounds like you are in the right place! -
Louise Nuttall replied to Elisabeth Chown
Hi Elisabeth,
The Book Thief is also one of my favourites! The fact that we know it's fiction and yet still have emotional responses (especially in a book like the Book Thief where the fictionality is made so apparent to us- Death being a character etc..) is sometimes referred to as the 'Paradox of Fiction' and it's one of the things we try to explain using... -
Louise Nuttall replied to Zbigniew Fibinger
Hi all. Thanks for pointing this out- it should be resolved now. If you click on the link in the welcome email it will take you to the corrected pre-course survey.
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Louise Nuttall made a comment
Hello!
First of all, it is brilliant to see so much interest and enthusiasm in the course! Second, thank you all for pointing out the problem with the pre-course survey, and apologies for any confusion. I believe it has been resolved now- if you click on the link you received in the welcome email it should take you to the corrected survey.I you have any...
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Thank you Julie, I will let her know.
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Louise Nuttall made a comment
Hello everyone!
As it says above, I'm a researcher in cognitive poetics and fictional minds at the University of Nottingham. From reading your comments we seem to have a wonderful variety of participants on the course- students, teachers, writers, and most importantly readers! I'm so excited to see so many people from across the world all coming together to...
