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PALA Conference
(New York July 25-28 2004)

IGEL 2004

Abstracts

NB. Participants will receive a conference booklet containing the programme and all the abstracts at registration at the beginning of the conference.

In this study, autobiographical memories about crucial life experiences and about reading of fiction texts were collected and analyzed. Content correspondence, this is the correspondence or similarity between a personal life experience and a text's content, was employed as a key for the exploration of the connection between life and fiction. Respondents (age range 64-89) were interviewed twice: during the first interview session they were invited to tell their memories of pivotal life experiences (PLE's); during the second session we focused on memories of reading fiction texts that somehow were related to the PLE's stated in the previous conversation (PLE-related reading behaviour). This paper concentrates on two aspects of the analysis. The first starts from a text-analytical perspective and shows that statements referring to aspects of personal experience, statements referring to reading experience, and generalizations about the topic under discussion are interwoven in the narrative accounts of PLE-related reading experiences. The second analyzes the respondents' relationship with their memories and their subjective perception of the reported content correspondence. From the data it appears that people have distinct ideas about how the presentation of such events matches their own opinion and experience and whether or not they like reading about something they have lived through themselves. This seems to be connected with the experienced kind of relationship that the respondents established between their own world and the fiction world in terms of similarity identification, dissimilarity identification, or wish identification.

Entering the Dutch Poly-system: the Case of Virginia Woolf

In 2002, a collection of studies was published under the title The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe, edited by Mary Ann Caws and Nicola Luckhurst. It appeared in the prestigious series "The Reception of British Authors in Europe". The contributions describe Woolf's reception in eleven European countries/language communities from Sweden to Galicia on the basis of translational and critical history. The volume offers a treasure of information and documentation, however, apart from the fact that a couple of languages among which Dutch are lacking, there is no theory or concept of "reception" underlying the approaches, which are, consequently, rather heterogeneous and sometimes incomparable.

From the current theories of the "literary system", Even-Zohar's polysystem theory is the only one so far that explicitly pays attention to the question how works from a source literature enter a foreign (target) literary system. This paper attempts an operationalization of some basic ideas of this theory. Patterns of Woolf's reception in the Dutch polysystem will be traced by uncovering of what Rosengren called "frames of reference" in literary criticism. Additional information is derived from a content analytical approach to the critical reception of the works themselves. To find the characteristics of Woolf's reception profile, it will be contrasted with profiles of a few authors from the same cohort, such as Joyce, Mansfield and Kafka.

Caws, Mary Ann, and Nicola Luckhurst (Eds). (2002). The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe. London/ New York: Continuum.

Even-Zohar, Itamar (1990). "The Literary System." Poetics Today 11, 1, 27-44.

Rosengren, Karl Erik (1987). "Literary Criticism: Future Invented." Poetics 16, 295-325.

Reduction or Expansion? Evolution Meets Literature [keynote]

Intimate Relationships and Age Gap: the Influence of Fiction

Love affairs characterized by an explicit age gap between a man and a woman may not be taken equally by different societies. Besides, people's attitudes might differ according to who is older or younger, as in some cultures it is common to see alliances between much older men and younger women, whereas the opposite is socially criticized. As literary texts reflect to a certain extent cultural backgrounds or critically reflect on it, they might push readers towards accepting or condemning certain behavioural patterns.
The present empirical study aims at investigating readers' reactions towards age gap relationships in real and fictional worlds. In addition, it aims to demonstrate whether the audience's worldview is influenced by literary texts and whether their attitudes change after reading.

The research is carried out among students from the Humanities in Brazil and Ukraine. Our initial hypothesis is that, as these students are constantly in touch with written texts, their attitudes will be affected by the literary passages. The participants will answer questions before and after reading extracts in which relationships marked by an explicit age gap are described as they depict involvement between an older man/older woman and a younger woman/younger man. As the investigation is carried out in these two countries, presumably different in their national traditions and mentality, the results may also enable us to investigate cultural differences and/or similarities in relation to this issue.

Reception of Literature between Intradiegetic Space and the Real World: Madame Bovary by G. Flaubert (Poster)

My paper is structured in two parts: A. an analysis of Emma Bovary's response to literature and B. a study of real readings of the book.

A. The main character of Flaubert's novel, Emma Bovary, is influenced in her attitudes and actions by her reading. I distinguish five categories of texts in her reading (religious texts, popular literature, romantic novels and poems, magazines and newspapers, and texts which involve music - such as opera) and I analyze how she responds to each type and the way that she is influenced by it. I discuss the differences between her attitude to literature and those of her husband and other people. Literature is treated as an act of communication (between Emma and others), but her reading is often selfish and self-sufficient, as she seeks in books only for what she wants to find. Once she stops believing in the world / values of literature, the disaster begins and she loses herself.

B. "Real" reception of the novel concerns 1. reception of some fragments from the novel and 2. reception of the whole novel. The subjects who had not read the novel answered the first set of questions and those who had read it answered the second set. This study shows that readers have a common key for interpreting certain situations from a novel. Most of them found in the first talk between Leon and Emma the beginning of a love affair, in spite of the fact that they were having a cultural conversation and that Charles Bovary and Homais took part in the conversation as well. Although a variety topics are discussed at the dinner, most of the subjects found the discussion between Emma and Leon the most important. This shows the tendency of readers to concentrate on issues involving love and also their desire to read love stories. The emotional aspect is more important than, for example, the social when readers are asked to identify the theme of the novel.

Regarding the reception of the whole novel, I analyze the subjects' focus on the main character (or characters) of the novel, or on action or other aspects, the readers' attitude towards the characters and their opinions about the influence of books (media) in the novel and in real life. The subjects express their identification with and differentiation from the character(s) and the possible influences of the novel on real life. Readers consider that according to this book, love has different definitions, and many state that the book shows us that women love differently from men. The majority of them would recommend the book to a friend, but only depending on the friend's personality or situation. I will show in my paper what readers can learn from this book (a number of things, depending on their points of view). In spite of the large number of messages found in the book, I recognised most of them to be appropriate.

Literary Studies, Reading Minds and Interdisciplinarity: The Paradox of Cognitive Irreducibility? (Workshop: Perspectives on Three decades of Cognitivist Efforts)

As necessary background to the subject of literary studies vs. cognitive science I will discuss how we conceive of interdisciplinarity in the 21st century in the humanities in general and for literary studies in particular. On this matter I will reconsider Mark Turner's 'manifesto' from 1991 on (how we might be) professing English in the age of cognitive science and compare with more recent views (e.g. Fuller 2003, Sperber 2003, Hacking 2004) on how knowledge domains are constituted, how we are cosmetically disciplined in both the humanities and the sciences, and how we might apply 'our' discipline(s) in different fields of investigation.

Cognitive linguistics may be a form of reductionism if 'applied' to literary studies and if idealized cognitive models were to equal idealized cultural models. But the world is not enough for theories about literature: a cognitive poetics or stylistics will take into consideration the irreducibility of reading and writing strategies, an analysis of language in literature that both investigates stylistic foregrounding and the mind's processes involved in representing and processing the literary-linguistic sign. Furthermore, if we ground our textual efforts in a cognitive semiotics - linguistic and cultural - we will be able to proceed in literary studies both synchronically and diachronically, and where both aspects of poetics and politics can be analyzed in an unrestricted empire of signs.

I propose to outline and discuss here what cognitivist efforts exist and how they have been understood (especially) by literary scholars and where these cognitivist possibilities might be taking us. I will suggest that the important semiotic turn in cognitive science has gone relatively unnoticed among scholars since the cognitive turn in linguistics and literature studies - and that a grounding in cognitive semiotics will provide a distinct methodological tool for discussing the implications of the attacks on cognitivism as reductionism.

The Complementarity of Emotion and Cognition (Panel: Emotions and the Community Building Function of the Media)

You cannot have one without the other. Emotion cannot take place without at least some minimal knowledge or understanding of the evoking situation and cognition always takes place against the background of bodily processes. So the issue can be transformed into a new question: What kind of cognition goes with what kind of emotional or bodily process? Mainstream ACTION theory, linking cognition with bodily excitation (COGNITION + AROUSAL = EMOTION), can be traced from functionalism (Darwin) and brain centralism (Cannon) to behaviourism (Duffy) and cognitivism (Arnold, Frijda, Oatley). Its main premise is that survival (i.e., adaptation) requires appraisal of a situation and a readiness to respond supported by bodily arousal. Emotion conveyed in the Action context is generally posed (i.e., purposive) and embodied in the signs and subject matter of words and gestures. A contrasting set of REACTION theories encompass James's peripheralism, Freudian psychodynamics, and the existential-phenomenology of Binswanger. REACTION or experience theories maintain that people respond to the multilayered (i.e., polyvalent) meanings of situations in personal ways reflecting past experiences. Emotion in the Reaction context is spontaneous and indirectly revealed in choice of subject matter and mode of expression.

How can these perspectives be reconciled in a manner that is relevant to both aesthetics and social communication? I have described elsewhere (Cupchik, 1995) how the desire to modulate bodily states of pleasure and arousal can lead people to choose stimuli that embody particular formal qualities (e.g., evoking positive feelings by watching sentimental films or stimulating excitement by watching music videos or mystery films). Alternatively, people can express or project their pent up emotions onto books, films, plays, and so forth, whose subject matter is personally meaningful. These two perspectives can be reconciled when a person (or people) reflect(s) on the personal meaning and collective implications of actions described in cultural products. Such a transcendent act which leads to the renewal of self and society. Intersubjectivity is the unifying process in both the aesthetic and social realms which favours abstract understanding and a greater depth of feeling.

Romance Novels: Bridging the Gap Between Readers and Scholars (Workshop: Do Empirical Studies In Literature Practically Affect Society?)

Wildly popular, yet widely reviled, romance novels present an interesting arena for exploring the intersection of academic studies and the habits of readers. While reading of "highbrow" literature is on the decline, readership of romance novels remains steady at a high level. Although largely ignored as a domain of academic scholarship, studying romance novels requires us to confront the ways that academics impose value systems on the public. There are many intriguing questions about the reception of this popular literature.

Some facts from the main publisher of romance novels:

• Last year Harlequin sold more than 160 million books worldwide - more than 5.5 books a second.
  
• Harlequin books are sold in more than 100 international markets and translated into more than 23 languages around the world.
  
• If you set out to read all of the Harlequin books sold over the past 10 years, and averaged about two hours per book, you would be reading for the next quarter of a million years.
  
• Approximately one in every six mass-market paperbacks sold in North America is a Harlequin or a Silhouette novel.
  
• More than 50 million women read Harlequin books worldwide. (These facts are from the eharlequin.com website.)

How are we to understand this phenomenon? Why have these novels had such an enduring and sustained appeal to such a large number of readers? What types of meanings do readers find in the novels and how are the messages resonant in today's world? In what ways have these messages changed over time? Why has there been so much opposition both from academics and the general public? Finally, as academics direct increased attention toward this phenomenon, how will readers be affected? Will increased respect for the novels lend increased respect to the women who read them?
In this presentation I will attempt to provide answers to the above questions in two ways. I will explore how traditional myths are developed in line with contemporary issues of concern to women. I will do this by charting how the Cinderella tale is revisited in the romance novel. I will also present an analysis of a survey of the contemporary romance reader to look at what she views as the important components of the romance experience. I will explore how these factors arise in romance novels and how they connect with women's position in society.

Emotions and the Community Building Function of the Media (Panel: Emotions and the Community Building Function of the Media)

If the area of communication studies includes what people need in terms of communication and particularly media input, then communication research should include the hitherto largely neglected emotional dimensions and drives in its analysis which have increasingly become an integral part of research in neighboring disciplines. With this in mind, this paper examines the background for the emotional communication offered by media. The attention is given to the potential role of media as a source not only of shared conceptions but also and in particular of shared emotions. The examination therefore focuses on the role of the media in the community-building emotions and the emotionalization of the masses. This paper outlines a possible starting point for a consideration of emotional aspects as important variables in the analysis of medially transmitted communication processes. The focus in this analysis is not the detailed illustration of the idiosyncratic moods and single emotional states of individuals, but the explication of the role of mass media in the development of an emotional communicative process. Hence, the topic of this essay is the analysis of massive emotional phenomenon (i.e. many people experiencing the concurrent and similar feeling of being "moved" [1]). It is argued that a combination of the aspects "needs and emotions" and "mass media and the active audience" is relevant in understanding the role of the mass media in the emotionalization of the mass.

According to the Uses-and-Gratifications Perspective, media audiences are active communicators rather than passive recipients. In this sense, Elihu Katz, Jay G. Blumler and Michael Gurevitch described the fundamental goals of this approach, which lie in the following factors: "In the mass communication process much initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member." (Katz, Blumler, Gurevitch, 1974: 21) Their position is that media researchers should be studying human needs to discover how much the media does or does not contribute to their creation and satisfaction. Here, an important variable is added. It is argued that media researchers should be studying human needs in combination with human emotions, hence the emotional aspects of gratification in order to understand the impact of the media in an increasingly mediated environment. A central human need, the need for affiliation with a social community and shared collective experiences with other humans is thereby focused. Humans need the connection to other humans (see Lueck, 1993, 23-25; Mann, 1972, 50-51).

Through the examination of case studies, it will be illustrated that through the media, communicative processes are started that lead to directly observable emotional processes. Media as "communication networks" spread not only information, but also and above all feelings. They "co-design" these in a very substantial way and become determining factors in the interaction of the designation of information and its reception. Implications for the production and reception of media will be discussed in order to comprehend the role of emotions in communicative processes.

1. A similar, but global "levée en masse" was expressed in the Diana cult. See Mohammed Rassem: Das Märchen Diana. Zum Zeitgeschehen. In: Zeitschrift für Politik, Jahrgang 44, Heft 4. Köln, Berlin, 1997, p. 413. See also Florian Roetzer: Die globale Massage oder Das Geheimnis der Lady Di. Alles, was Sie schon immer über Meme, Aufmerksamkeit, Medien, kollektive Hysterie und das Magma der Informationsgesellschaft wissen wollten. In: http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/ inhalt/glosse/2238/1.html, 23. Dezember 1997. See also Katrin Döveling, Master's thesis: Emotionen in sozialen Handlungszusammenhängen: Am Beispiel der Trauer anlässlich des Todes von Lady Diana Spencer/Windsor, 1999.

Revolving Strategy of Aiming at Equilibrium. In Consideration of Reflexive Stability (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

IGEL has grown up. This seems to be the fate of every scientific discipline as Thomas Kuhn has maintained. The empirical study of literature has become a research-driven 'normal science' (cf. Steen 2002). Finally "the consistency of the overall definition of literature as a domain of discourse" (Steen 2002: 2) is thus ensured -- again. This development towards a revolved maturation rises the question as to what makes the empirical study of literature still progressive.

The revolved maturation of the empirical study of literature leads to an equilibrium referring to an overall definition of literature. However we thus deny the system-dynamics in a social interactive use of literature(s). Even if though we deny the cultural presuppositions and contextual interdependences by segregating literature from a reflexive stabilized process of managing differences which recipients perform in dealing with varying media, varying communication forms and varying social constraints/benefits. What makes literature poetic depends on the contingency of a socio-cultural consent which can be conceptualized as a dynamic relational network of sense-generating schemes which can only be dealt with if we employ a holistic approach focussing on media culture societies, an approach that defines social units as well as individual social identities by guidance of medial offered self-observance (sensu Schmidt).

According to a conception of literature as one mode of communicative expression and in consciousness of the considerations made above it seems to be doubtless that we face severe methodological problems in various fields of empirical research. As one of the urgent challenges in this case, a methodological awareness should be developed referring to processes of reflexivity, which might lead us at the path to a more complex view at terms of constitution of socio-cultural orientated self-organization. Conceived in the expansive ambit of this processes, I would like to outline alternative frameworks and relate those to a reconstruction of a methodology which is judged by it's capacity of dynamic problem solving beyond the traditional divide between quantitative/qualitative research.

This aim implies a reorientation of methodology as central key referring onto strategy in research thus far a systematic measurement of reflexivity as structure exists. Consecutive to these goals I try to visualize the consequences of affirmation as a modification of elementary instruments.

The Aesthetics of Protest in the Media of 1968 in Germany

The protest movement in the 1960s is the first German movement that systematically adapts its forms of public protest to the conditions of mass media. Beneath the organisation of oppositional publicity in their own journals, handbills, posters etc., the social movement of the 1960s uses modern mass media systematically as platform to express public protest. In doing so, the protagonists direct their protest not only towards political leaders but also towards a large mass media public whose attention can be used strategically as a political tool of power.

In this paper I would like to discuss the interaction of the symbolic and visual representation of protest in the 1960s in Germany, as it is generated both by the social movement and mass media. My presentation follows the argument that there is a strong and paradoxical interrelation between the social movement and mass media. As a result the protest movement in the late 1960s thus is exposed as an ambiguous media movement: as a revolt against the media and as a revolt within the media.

First, I would like to sketch a new habitual dimension of symbolic protest as it relates to the socio-cultural conflict of the 1960s, which is first of all communicated in visual forms: the visual arrangement of manifestations, happenings, and other collective and public actions as well as the individual representation of protest in expressions of lifestyle like clothes, hairstyle, and other habits. As individual forms of self-representation are involved in the symbolic protest, Habitus (sensu Pierre Bourdieu) gains a new role in the forming of a collective identity of the social movement and its participants.

This new habitual and symbolic dimension of protest also provides to visual mass media a new dimension of visual representation (and perception): protest against socio-cultural values and conventions can be represented in the media as media events that polarize and attract the public attention. Consequently, the symbolic protest fits perfectly with the modernization of visual aesthetics in the media, which is reinforced by the competition of the media that is mainly provoked by television in the 1960s.

The strong relationship between mass media and the protest movement will be demonstrated by use of some significant examples. In showing the representation of protest actions and prominent protagonists of the movement in the print media and television, for example the political leader Rudi Dutschke or the centre of the happening movement, Kommune 1, I demonstrate the aesthetical interfaces between the media and the movement. Accordingly, it can be shown that the assimilation of their symbolic protest forms within the visual media accelerates the disintegration of the protest movement: the public focus on the habitual dimension of the protest marginalizes its political impact.

Foregrounding and refamiliarization: understanding readers' response to literary texts (Symposium on Foregrounding)

Foregrounding theory has been tested empirically and found to relate to such qualities as surprise, importance, feeling and refreshing and changing readers' mental representations (Cook 1994, Miall & Kuiken 1994, van Peer 1986). Little work, however, has been done on the post-processing aspect, especially the refamiliarization that often takes place, in previous research.

The present study aims at investigating the effects of foregrounding on the process of defamiliarization of Brazilian students of literature, and on the way they develop refamiliarization. It also describes which refamiliarizing strategies these readers make use of and what the role of feeling is in this process. The participants respond to four different texts divided into an equal number of segments. The purpose is to verify which segments provoke comments and what the content of the comments is. The results of this study will provide a better understanding of readers' response to literary texts and, consequently, promote an environment where the teaching of literature may be able to help students develop both a cognitive and an emotional relation with literary texts.

"You Naïve Idiot! Couldn't you see she's a liar?!" The Effect of the Reader Construction 'Unreliable Narrator' on the Interpretation of the Narrator's Information

This study explores the effect of readers' cognitive representations of unreliable homodiegetic narrators on their interpretation of the narrator's information. It mainly builds on psychonarratology (Bortolussi & Dixon 2003) and recent theories about unreliable narrators.

Basically the same rules apply to the homodiegetic narrator as to other characters in the diegesis: readers will construct a cognitive representation of the character based on attributed traits. It is a crucial point in this study that readers' interpretations of the homodiegetic narrator's information are dependent on such narrator representations.

Bortolussi and Dixon propose that readers intuitively assume that the narrator is reliable. One can say that readers' representations of the narrator automatically include the trait reliability. Building on this assumption readers will intuitively believe the narrator's information to be true.

Readers, however, can also be led to construct a representation of the narrator that includes the trait unreliability. The construction of an unreliable narrator has implications for the construction of meaning. The present study will show that readers' interpretation of the narrator's information is dependent on the representation of the narrator that they have, so to speak, already constructed. When readers have discovered the narrator's unreliability they will change their reading strategy by starting to doubt new information that they would otherwise automatically believe to be true. Hence the reader's judgement whether the information given by the narrator is true is not only dependent on the information itself but also of the reader's representation of the narrator.

Effect of Story Detail on Transportation and Identification with Characters

Readers are often swept away by narrative worlds, and can strongly identify with characters in those worlds. An individual who is transported into a narrative world is cognitively and emotionally engaged, and may also experience visual images (Green & Brock, 2000; Green & Brock, 2002). Similarly, these readers like or identify with major characters in the storyworld. We propose that rich descriptive detail may be an important means of allowing individuals to become transported or immersed in a text. Details may increase the realism of the story and provide fodder for mental imagery. As an alternative hypothesis, it is possible that details are not truly necessary for transportation or identification; suspense and an engaging plot may be enough to engage readers. Indeed, text processing experiments suggest that minor details may be forgotten quickly. To test these ideas, we manipulated the amount of detail in a classic text. As Bortolussi and Dixon (2003) note, textual experiments are useful for assessing causation.

We used the first chapter of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The passage concerns two mutes, best friends who lead ordinary lives until one of them becomes mentally ill and is sent away to an institution, leaving his friend in despair. The story is written in a simple, straightforward style, but includes much detail about the physical settings and the daily actions of the characters.

Forty-four undergraduates were randomly assigned to read either the original story or one that eliminated most descriptive details, but retained all key plot elements. (The shortened story was about one-third the length of the original.) We measured transportation and identification with self-report scales. Results suggested that individuals who read the more detailed story were indeed more transported into it, and identified more strongly with the main character. Individuals who read the shorter version were somewhat transported, but significantly less so than those who experienced the full story.

Reader-defined Genres: The Contrasting Influences of Ludic and Literary Fiction

If genre is conceived as a frame of reference for reading rather than as an array of distinct textual features, genre taxonomies may be articulated by examining how people read a text. Consistent with these assumptions, 163 students in Psychology and in English Literature were asked to list four fictional texts that they had read during the preceding year and then to rate their orientation toward each one. Cluster analysis revealed six distinct reader-constructed genres: purely ludic reading, ludic reading with self-understanding, educational literary reading, literary reading with self-understanding, reading as an instrumental responsibility, and reading with mixed motives. Of particular interest in this taxonomy was that both ludic reading and literary reading took forms that emphasized self-understanding.

To investigate these contrasts further, we analyzed readers' ratings of their reactions to conventionally defined fictional genres (e.g., romances, fantasy, short stories, poetry). In separate analyses of readers who frequently read popular fiction and readers who frequently read literary fiction, we found evidence of two different forms of influence. For readers of literary fiction, shifts in self-understanding (i.e., changed mood, increased sensitivity, remembered values, and a different sense of self) were associated with using fiction to "escape into a different world" (r = .50, p < .001). In contrast, for readers of popular fiction, shifts in reader self-understanding were associated with using fiction to "learn about other cultures" (r = .55, p < .001).

These findings suggest that, despite conventional judgments about popular and literary fiction, readers use texts from both global genres in personally meaningful ways. However, the forms of personal meaning may be quite different in each case. For some readers of literary fiction, reading may provide an "escape" that is accompanied by shifts self-understanding. For some readers of popular fiction, reading may provide an exploration of "other cultures" that is accompanied by shifts in self-understanding.

The Power of Emotion -- Attention Regulation and the Media (Panel: Emotions and the Community Building Function of the Media)

The paper will discuss the attention regulation effects of emotion in the media. The hypothesis shall be developed that media exercise power on our perception by instrumentalizing emotional attention mechanisms for their purposes.

A number of scientific papers about emotion in media communication argue that emotions play a central role in media effect processes (Vitouch 2000, Bente & Fromm 1997, Vorderer 1996). The aim of this contribution is to describe how attention regulation is used by the media. The model of emotional communication from Bartsch & Hübner shall serve as a theoretical framework.

The basic idea of this emotional communication approach is that emotional processes of communication can be described on three interrelated levels of complexity. Level one is composed of the reciprocal activation of emotional brain systems. Level two is composed of the reciprocal activation of emotional scripts. Level three is composed of the symbolic negotiation of emotions.

According to the level model of emotional communication the purposeful use of attention mechanisms by the media will be described on all three levels.

-- level 1 (innate stimulus-response-patterns)
The media use emotional key stimuli to direct the attention on their contents.
The following innate brain mechanisms constitute a simple but effective attention mechanism: orienting response, fixation of attention on emotion elicitors, preferred information storage in the long-term memory

-- level 2 (emotional scripts structures)
The media use the expectation structure of emotional scripts. Incomplete scripts stimulate active information search. For example suspense- and cliffhanger-effects are used to fix viewer attention on media contents. Furthermore, emotional scripts can also be influenced actively by the media because every activation of a script contributes to it extension and modification.

-- level 3 (the symbolic negotiation of rules and norms)
The media make use of the circumstance that the exercise of normative control on emotion is a psychologically demanding and exhausting process. Particularly evasive genres like action films and comedies are known to make up justifications for emotions and attitudes on more or less plausible grounds, which in other contexts would be considered immoral or unacceptable.

Literature's Influence on Artists' Worldviews (Workshop: How Literature Enters Life)

Between Secularization and Religionization

The project on language described below is one of the five themes of the research program 'Between Secularization and Religionization'. This program focuses primarily on the dynamics of practices of signification and identity formation of churchgoing and non-churchgoing Dutch in the Netherlands. It intends to highlight the particularities of such dynamics by studying changes over the last fifty years in religious experience, language, ritual forms, moral orientations and identity formation. To all projects the use of qualitative research methods is central, including participant observation, interviewing key respondents, and the recording of life histories.

Project on language

The multidisciplinary project on language investigates changes in language use when people talk, write or read on worldview issues and signification, and how this relates to the construction of possible worldviews. It focuses, in particular, on the repertories of signification amongst readers of popular books, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, et cetera. The method consists of interviews with artists from different disciplines. Artists seem to have several ways in which they communicate about their worldview. This means that there seems to be a close connection between the artistic work and the way in which an artist thinks about the meaning of life. Books especially seem to be of importance for the construction of their worldview. The artists are non-churchgoing, or to say it differently, they do not belong to a community and therefore need to find their own sources to create or construct their worldview. Books appear to be one of the most important resources to do so.

The protocols of the interviews are analyzed on several levels. First on the level of language: Why do people use words like 'longing', 'energy', et cetera, and what is the source of these words? Second on the conceptual level: How do respondents speak about concepts or themes such as moral, experience, death, guilt, et cetera. And third on the level of the narrative structure: How do people talk about their life (life history) and the books they have read (reading autobiography)?

Hawking Terror: Newspapers and The Discourse of Vengeance in the French Revolution, 1789-1794

Journalists in revolutionary France were infamous for escalating political tensions by way of dangerous and acerbic rhetoric, a historical fact that scholars have largely accepted at face value. Yet how does one measure such a fact? One method, the approach that I chose, was to select a representative body of newspapers ranging from 1789 to 1794, and to count the number of times that journalists engaged violent language. Since over 500 journals and papers had opened by the fall of 1789, I found it necessary to limit my investigation to those papers issued in the city of Paris. I further narrowed the field to the extremist papers, choosing two from the Right-de Rozoi's Gazette de Paris and Gautier's Journal de la Cour et de la Ville -- and two from the political Left -- or Marat's L'Ami du Peuple (and Marat's other journals) and Hébert's Le Père Duchesne. Next, I considered specific discourses that were common to each of these journalists and finally settled on the discourse of vengeance. By examining every publication, counting the number of times that each writer mentioned vengeance, and charting the increase, I was able to trace a steady rise and a direct correlation to changing political conceptions.

My findings suggest the following: In 1789, the Rightwing press mentioned vengeance only rarely, three times in the Gazette de Paris, and two times in the Journal de la Cour et de la Ville. A similar pattern occurred in L'Ami du Peuple with a total of nine in the same period (Hébert's Père Duchesne did not commence operations until the following year). Beginning in spring of 1790, the Gazette de Paris saw an increase to thirty references with twenty-eight in the Journal de la Cour et de la Ville. On the Left, L'Ami du Peuple made reference an average of twelve times a month, or nearly every other day, while Hébert, attempting to calm the tense political atmosphere, utilized this discourse a mere twelve times for the entire year. In 1791 references rose in the Gazette de Paris to over 237 and in the Journal de la Cour et de la Ville to well over 165. Marat's L'Ami du Peuple by now referred to vengeance nearly daily, a pattern that continued until his death in 1793. The Père Duchesne, too, stunned by the king's flight to Varennes, deserted its moderate tone and engaged the discourse of vengeance in same frequency as L'Ami du Peuple. By 1792, all of these papers were engaged in a daily thwacking back and forth of this discourse, hoping to capture the hearts and minds of the populace.

The Teacher's Teaching of Literature and the Student's Concept of Reading

The study investigates the relation between the teacher's conception of learning and knowledge within literature teaching combined with the student's conception of reading literary texts.

The percentage of young people opting for Danish upper secondary school has tripled over the last 30 years, resulting in a much wider range of student backgrounds to every class. In spite of the effects of this, teaching has not changed radically.

The teaching of Language and Literature has a central position in the students' access to cultural tools so that they can see their lives in a wider and more reflective perspective.

Conceptions of reading

The phenomenographic analysis of student interviews combined with questionnaires gave these results concerning their conceptions of what can be achieved by reading fiction and poetry.

1. Reading provides factual knowledge (knowledge about literary history, methods of literary analysis, knowledge of historical events, basis of essay writing)
   
2. Reading offers an escape from reality
   
3. Reading enhances language awareness and expression
   
4. Reading allows the reader to identify with and understand other ways of conceptualising the world - and to act subsequently
   
5. Reading leads to enhanced personal insight and the ability to see ourselves as others see us
   
6. Reading gives rise to change, not just of yourself as a person, but of your understanding and interaction with others

The major results of the investigations are:

• A teacher's definition of the subject of Danish combined with his/her teaching practice is decisive for the student's development in learning and reading
• A transmissive teacher seems to breed reproductive, passive student behaviour
• A dialogic, interpretive teacher who aims at enhancing the student's metacognitive development and domain specific conceptualisation seems to produce active, probing student behaviour

Literature -- thinking and talking about the reading of writing (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

The historical evolution of technical devices and cultural techniques has evidently expanded quantitatively and differentiated qualitatively what people refer to as literature. To meet concerns of the growing complexity and dynamics in mass- and media-societies, literary studies have adopted a systemic view on literature as a self-constituting interrelationship between production, distribution, reception and elaboration of literary media offers (texts). Both the definition of literature as a collective form of communication and the distinction between literary texts and other texts/ media offers consequently had to change from an a-temporal essentialist point of view to a temporalized conventionalist point of view.

To deal with complexity and dynamics in the socio-cultural constitution of literature are but preliminary stages to the demands of a post-dualistic philosophy of science, condensed in the notion of reflexivity. As far as the action roles "reception" and "elaboration" in the systemic processing of literature are concerned, the empirical studies of literature still hold a mere autistic view on connecting literary experience to its scientific exploration. Experiencing literature is mostly accessed as a specific correlation between a set of variables on the literature-side (conceptually framed by science, education and critique) and a set of variables on the experience-side (conceptually framed by certain expansions of the reading process). The empirical, pragmatic and functional intentions of the conventionalist view have been played down by maintaining this two-digit design of expounding problems.

Literary studies as media culture studies should not only be able to specify the reception/ use of and elaboration on literary media offers as a specific -- i.e. selective and comparable -- case of media communication. It should also open the perspective for the hidden implications in the traditional observing of literary experience and redefine the relations between experiencing literature, experiencing literature as literature, reflecting upon literary experience and reflecting upon literary experience as literary experience. I hope to show some actual empirical findings about the functional differences between the media-cultural stamped literary experience and its reflexive references to the individual/ collective sphere of cultural stabilizing.

From the Death of the Author to the Birth of the Star: Some Theses towards the Integration of Literary Studies into Media Culture Studies (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

Ever since Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the author and Michel Foucault had him disappear, literary scholars have anxiously been seeking sanctuary from the contingency experienced in the wake of the abolition of the author as last authority. With the discovery of intentional fallacy, doors had been opened letting in the cold draught of existential fear: If literary studies could no longer be justified by their search for authors´ intentions, what alternative assignments could be found to avoid the death of the literary scholar potentially rendered obsolete by the death of his subject? One possible and nearby solution seemed to be a variation of subject under study. Now that questions for authors´ intentions began to be banned from literary discussions, literary scholars were turning their heads into other directions. The concentration on the author was replaced by a concentration on the text and textual immanence. Another turn of head pointed towards the reader as potential saviour for the literary scholar´s profession.
Nevertheless, making text and reader focal points in the theoretical departments of literary studies were not turns as crucial as they might have been imagined. First of all, work in progress was still business as usual, and even where attempts could be noted at putting New Criticism, poststructuralist theory or Wolfgang Iser´s approach into practice, the sole success of these enterprises seemed to be the delayed death of a still ailing profession. Listing variants came down to opening up new schools for relativistic hermeneutics. Even where efforts were made to view literature as a social system, the foundations of literary studies remained unaffected by virtue of contextual isolation.

It is isolation from context that can be pinned down as the general malady of traditional literary studies as well as the cause for their dooming failure in media culture societies. To be able to deal with life and literature in media culture societies, literary studies have to be transformed into media culture studies instead of getting away with temporarily turning their heads while standing still in ignorance of their media culture environments. Literary scholars have to acknowledge the fact that they are not dealing with literature, but observing experiences with phenomena that have been termed literary by sociocultural convention. Integrated into media culture studies, literary studies allow observations of experiences with phenomena labelled literary without their segregation from relevant media culture society contexts. The scope of literary studies is constituted through the management of difference in media culture societies, and literary studies as media culture studies have to take this into account by observing the positings as well as presuppositions involved in the constitution of literary phenomena as scope for analysis.

The need for intermedial literary studies can be exemplified by looking at the expansion of the star phenomenon into the literary system. From the cult of the author to literary adaptations (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings), literary postproductions (especially popular with soap opera audiences) and media star (auto)biographies: Traditional literary protagonists are merging with media stars and vice versa. Audiences demand and expect personalization, which, in media culture societies, manifests itself par excellence in the star-system. Recipients build up self-concepts in orthosocial as well as parasocial interaction, relating relations in difference and, in doing so, do not care much about whether or not their relevant others are classified as fictional.

Anyone who reads Harry Potter today does so in a media culture society context dealing with and capitalizing on Pottermania. Anyone who reads Goethe today does so in a media culture society context dealing with and capitalizing on Pottermania. Readers and non-readers are made aware of shifting editions, and even the ones who choose not to read the books or see the Potter movies are confronted with actors and scenes from the films via other media. Albeit an extreme one, the example of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter illustrates that, generally speaking, reading as well as distribution and writing processes take place in media culture society contexts today. Cutting off literature from other media and literary studies from media culture studies means ignoring their ties in production, distribution and reception/usage at the cost of theoretical complexity. Therefore, literary studies can only actively counteract their own abolition by studying literary phenomena in media culture society contexts. This time, a single turn of head seems not enough

Tempted by the well-made tale: fictionalized crime cases and their effects on readers in early nineteenth-century England

Around 1830 a new genre of crime fiction appeared on the English market that was considered both an affront to literary standards and a danger to public safety by contemporary literary critics. Most of these novels were based on historical crime cases published in the Newgate Calendar, a popular collection of trial reports and confessions of criminals that were read both for edification and entertainment. According to the critics of these so-called 'Newgate novels,' the combination of historical subject matter and fictional form misled readers to believe that they were dealing with truthful depictions of criminal life, and they feared that readers would sympathize with the criminal heroes and even be tempted into imitating them. The question that arises here is which factors determined the readers' attitude towards the ontological nature of these texts, and why were these fictionalized reproductions considered more harmful than the historical sources?

Recent reception research has indicated that it needs a more differentiated approach to fictionality that transcends the traditional dichotomy of 'fact' and 'fiction' in order to account for the reactions of readers to hybrid genres. A theoretical model that combines three perspectives on a work (i.e. on its formal, semantic and pragmatic aspects) provides a good starting point for such an approach (cf. Nickel-Bacon, I., N. Groeben, et al. (2000). "Fiktionssignale Pragmatisch." Poetica 32: 267-299). An analysis of the critical reception of a number of 'Newgate novels' (by Edward Bulwer, W. H. Ainsworth and Charles Dickens) will show how this theoretical model can be effectively integrated into historical research, thereby taking into account early nineteenth-century concepts of fictionality, the social context in which the fictional works were conceived and received, and the identity of the readership.

Tomkins's "cognitive system" and Proust's memory

"The world we perceive is a dream we learn to have from a script we have not written." (Silvan Tomkins)

Purpose one of my paper is to demonstrate, using passages from Marcel Proust's Swann's Way,[1] that the human body as a "cognitive system" is the connector-mediator between writers of fiction and readers. My second purpose is to increase awareness of little known philosopher-psychologist Silvan Tomkins as a resource for cognitive theory based literary research.

Proust is a philosopher-psychologist in fictive form, a literary cognitive scientist whose novel, A la recherche de temps perdu, is an ideal (and idealized) study in human cognition. For my purposes, Proust's novel concerns memory and imagination. Polemically, its translation succeeds because the human body as a cognitive system remains essential regardless of language. Thus, Proust provides explicit opportunities for affirming and elucidating Tomkins' theory.

With degrees in play-writing, psychology, and philosophy, Tomkins' "human being theory," derived largely from clinical research into primary human motivation, is a stunning synthesis of art and science. Resisting specialization, Tomkins pursues a panoptic theory of personality through a non-prioritized account of the variables in the "biopsychosocial matrix." By combining cybernetic discourse with "script theory" (scripts are a human analogue to computer programs), he conceives cognition as an information management system comprising specialized mechanisms, structures, and "feedback circuitry" in the perceptive, motoric, and mnemonic modes, all united by a hypothetical "central assembly." Human cognition is systematic and unconscious simply because most 'sub-systems' function automatically: the senses know how and when to 'input data'; the body knows how and when to breath, to reflex; vitally, the brain knows how to store information, to remember. Being apperceptive, however, humans are not automatons. Thus, Tomkins locates consciousness in a "hypothetical subcortical center" where competing "perceptual and memory messages" are prioritized, and "admitted messages are in the form of imagery and . . . what is consciously experienced is imagery created by decomposition and synthesis of sensory and stored messages. It is this skill in analysis and synthesis of information that eventually supports the dream and the hallucination."

Proust intuitively revelled in this skill to dream, hallucinate, imagine, script and translate into poetic imagery his memory manipulations to induce a 'dialogue of consciousnesses' with readers through analogical experiences immanent to the dynamic "biopsychosocial matrix."

1. From: Proust, Marcel. Swann's Way. (In Search of Lost Time v1). Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Revised by D.J. Enright. New York: Modern Library, 1998. Focussing on: "Transition from joy to sadness" and "Does reality take shape in the memory alone" (p. 257-264) of "Combray," Swann's Way.

Reading in a New Landscape [Keynote]

Today's readers live in a cultural landscape that involves massive choices among books and many other media. How do contemporary readers negotiate this landscape? How do they select what appeals to them and find ways of ignoring the rest? How does reading survive amidst a welter of many technologies? New work with readers in their twenties suggests some provocative answers.

Foregrounding and the Sublime: A proposal (Symposium on Foregrounding)

the ethereal waterfall, whose veil / Robes some unsculptured image
-- Shelley, "Mont Blanc" (26-7)

The sublime was theorized by Burke as dependent on terror and a sense of obscurity; for Kant it signified the affirmation of reason amidst the defeat of the imagination. Thomas Weiskel argued that the basis of the sublime lay in an oedipal reaction. In each case the distinction of the sublime is that our response is supposed to foster self-preservation, whether at the level of the body or the mind. What has not been noticed is that the sublime also depends on foregrounding.

All commentators speak of the moment of sublime experience being one of amazement, of being overwhelmed by the strikingness of the sublime appearance. Weiskel, for instance, developed a three-phase model in which normal perception (the first phase) is disrupted by surprise or astonishment at a sudden disproportion or excess; the mind then constitutes a new relationship with the object, which is said to be symbolic of the transcendent order (23-4). The defamiliarizing moment is, of course, central to the modern conception of the response to foregrounding. This account puts it at the heart of the response to the natural sublime.

If the poet is to embody this sublime experience in language (i.e., in the poetic sublime), we would expect the resources of linguistic foregrounding to be central to this effort. However, this is not only a matter of finding a language adequate to the sublime, but a question of how sublime experience itself is communicated bodily to the reader.

In this paper I will demonstrate the resources of foregrounding called upon by Shelley in his poem "Mont Blanc," and consider how these enable us as readers to enact his experience through striking figurative, phonetic, and metrical features. I will suggest that in this way the sublime enables us to participate in the powers of nature that are represented. As Shelley remarked in a letter on his first experience of seeing Mont Blanc, "all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own" (History of a Six Weeks' Tour 150). I will show how a focus on foregrounding leads to an ecologically more fruitful reading of the sublime.

How Readers Respond to Ambiguity

The concept of ambiguity has attracted many scholars in different fields: linguistics, semantics, pragmatics, and literature, yet empirical research on literary response to amiguity is very rare. In this paper we examine the effect of ambiguity on readers from a phenomenological perspective. Starting from the assumption that ambiguity of effect is a major feature of the 20th century American and British short story, a short story by Graham Greene, "The Innocent, " was selected as representative of the genre. Thirty volunteer undergraduate students from the English Department at the University of Alberta participated. Several reading activities were assigned to the readers: pre-reading, reading, and post-reading activities. Participants were also asked to mark three passages they found particularly captivating and tape-record their comments.

This project has several objectives. (1) To see what readers would anticipate from the story's title. (2) To ascertain how much readers would add to reconstruct characters or events in the story to make it readable when responding to ambiguous passages. (3) To examine how far ambiguity invokes the personal experience of readers, and whether this assists in story comprehension and appreciation. (4) To determine the degree of involvement or detachment readers would experience when faced with different types of ambiguity.

Workshop: Do Empirical Studies In Literature Practically Affect Society?

This workshop aspires to explore examples of the practical application of empirical studies in literature and discuss their political implications. Reality constructions in contemporary societies worldwide depend more and more on media and communication processes. Consequently Empirical Studies in Literature (ESL) are concerned with social and cognitive phenomena which are directly connected to other areas of societal life such as education, economy and cultural politics. This fact raises questions regarding the ethics and responsibility of IGEL as a research institution. As IGEL-congresses demonstrated during the last 15 years, ESL cover a wide array of questions and approaches which sometimes differ significantly in epistemology, theory and methods. Moreover, empirical literary research is conducted under different political, economic and cultural conditions and is shaped by the interests of individual scholars as well as by national funding policies. Thus, the question remains whether we can find a common denominator, which would define the practical goals of our research.

STRUCTURE OF THE WORKSHOP

The four contributions will introduce thought provoking examples of the practical relevance of ESL in a 15 - 20 minute presentation. The examples will focus on literary education and canonization and serve as a stimulus for further discussion at a roundtable. Questions posed by the workshop could be the following:

• What could be the political and practical agenda of IGEL as a corporate social actor?
  
• What practical applications of ESL do we endeavour?
  
• Are specific research strategies more efficient than others to achieve particular goals?
  

The workshop is open to all participants of the congress.

Immediately following the Second World War, the Australian government instituted a revolutionary immigration policy that would forevermore change the nature of Australian society. In the years from 1947 to 1954 some 170,000 refugees - so-called "displaced persons" - arrived in Australia under the auspices of United Nations International Refugee Organization resettlement. Breaking with previous policies of British-dominated immigration, Australia's Displaced Persons Mass Resettlement Scheme was a bold initiative that had far-reaching effects beyond the post-war years. The arrival of these 'new Australians' was a seminal chapter in Australia's history that paved the way for the multiculturalism that marks Australian society today.

Although the immigrants were penniless on arrival, they quickly arranged themselves into communities and organised a social infrastructure for themselves. Working within their own communities, the immigrants established cultural organisations, dance troupes, choirs, newspapers, presses, churches, meeting halls, and schools. With this a lively literary life also flourished and a distinct literary culture emerged, a culture that included writers' clubs and associations, recitals and festivals, competitions, and the production of periodicals and books.

My current research project studies the literary culture of this particular group of Australians, and writers who came to Australia as 'displaced persons' immediately after the Second World War. This study has involved empirical work: I compiled data-bases, contacted over 700 community organisations across Australia, liaised with some 80 key individuals and found close to 300 writers. I recorded structured, formal interviews with some 60 authors. In analysing this unique literary culture, my focus is upon the production and consumption of the writing and institutional factors such as bilingualism, implied audience, readership and market-place, means of publication, community infrastructure and support, international links, and relationships with the mainstream cultural establishment. My concern is thus with the material base of such culturally diverse writing and reading, the socio-historical conditions responsible for the emergence of this body of multicultural writing, and the forces which have secured its continued existence.

My aim now is to begin to theorise how this literary culture has functioned. In this paper I propose to explore the usefulness of empirical models in explaining multicultural writing in Australia. Arguing that my case study functions as an identifiable and self-contained literary system within Australia, I will argue the value of empirical and institutional frameworks for understanding and charting the dynamics of culturally diverse textual production in contemporary Australia.

Beyond Canons and Other Limits: Towards a Multicultural Society (Workshop: Do Empirical Studies in Literature Practically Affect Society?)

Although it may seem easy to dismiss the question of the impact of empirical studies in literature on society, considering them as an academic enterprise with little effect on the world, there are reasons that show how they are related to important change.

If we keep in mind the vast presence of literature teaching in schools all over the world and its strong ideological potential, the shift from forms of teaching that aim at rendering the act of reading rather uniform, to a type of research that accepts differences in the readers' constructions, is of significant weight in our recognition and acceptance of differences and deviances in different cultures and in different individuals. This is particularly important in a multicultural society. Today reading attracts our attention because the number of potential readers in our society is high and visible. In past societies, when only a very small group of people were able to read, reading was likely to be more uniform. If the act of reading is uniform, it is not evidently necessary to do empirical research with different people in order to study it. On the contrary, in contemporary society, in large parts of the world most of the population are potential readers: a high number of readers inevitably leads to different outcomes of the acts of reading. It is the great wealth of human relationships to texts that makes it necessary to produce new research methods, that help us to understand how a text works with a large number of culturally different readers.

In a multicultural society the concept of canon is bound to change radically: different cultural models coexist. Therefore, every time the word "canon" is used, it is now necessary to specify to what group of people this canon applies. For this reason the control over a canon loses part of its appeal. Instead of using literature in order to foster his/her interpretation of the world, the empirical researcher studies human literary behaviour, without implying the superiority of one model over the others. The empirical researcher's aim is not to evaluate or to propose hierarchies, but to describe and try to understand what happens in the world.

Cross-Cultural Issues in Interpreting American Poetry (Poster)

Poetic text interpretation integrates language learning with culture work. Poetry is the soul of a nation. Poetic texts are the best mirrors of human cultures and it is through them we can discover and identify the culture specific conceptual configurations characteristic of a particular people. Text interpretation is context-dependent because the linguistic codification as well as the decodification are exposed to the impact of all kinds of non-linguistic factors including the poet's and reader's personal, social, cultural, and ideological contexts.

It is assumed that poetic images which embody the HOME concept are affected by the cultural models. The research focuses on revealing specific cultural models that underlie the conceptual plane of poetic images which embody the HOME concept.

I am analyzing American poetry of XX-XXI centuries and comparing it with Ukrainian poetry of the same period. The project's fulfillment requires comprehensive survey of cognitive approach to the study of poetry, proceeding further with the field experiments on text interpretation in Cultural Studies. A mixture of empirical qualitative (questionnaires) and quantitative methods (field experiments and statistics) are appropriate in this research project as they will enable to verify my hypothesis on the informants and native speakers.

The research will be done in the particular area of cross-cultural differences in poetic texts of American and Ukrainian poetry, cross-cultural comparisons of reader response, and in the general area of literary text designs.

I will focus on the following aspects:

• Cultural differences between American and Ukrainian images which embody the HOME concept
  
• Cultural HOME concept in American poetry and the ways of its interpretation into Ukrainian
  
• Cultural HOME concept in Ukrainian poetry and its interpretation into English
  
• Human values shared both by Americans and Ukrainians

It will throw light on the common and distinctive features of American and Ukrainian cultures which will be helpful for mutual understanding between peoples.

Real Readers, Cognitive Theories, and Literary Texts [keynote]

Entertaining Media and Language Learning in 3 and 4 Yrs. Old

Over the past 4 years an interdisciplinary research team conducted a series of 7 studies to investigate the use and impact of entertaining audio tapes and interactive story books on language learning of 3 and 4 yrs. old children. 2 theoretical models are introduced to simulate the assumed causal relationship between the entertaining potential of the media, the entertaining experience, the selection of media, the frequency of the media usage, the allocation of attention towards the media content, and the impact on language learning. Additionally, a sample of specific language impaired (SLI) children was compared to normal language developers.

A variety of methods had been used to investigate the postulated causal relationship including laboratory and field experiments, longitudinal studies, and diaries. Observational methods and surveys with the child and his/her parents were combined to operationalize media experiences during and after usage. Parental attitudes and prior exposure to media were controlled. Measurement of language learning as the major dependent variable involved tests and spontaneous sample of free speech.
Although some results reveal inconsistencies and low reliability of the children's self-reports, empirical evidence that stems from observational data and the parents reports confirms the postulated causal relationship.

The presentation will give an overview of the research activities, focusing on the theoretical assumptions and the rationality behind the methodological variety applied. Major results will be presented and discussed in the realm of the Entertainment-Education paradigm and with respect to the very young audience addressed.

Arriving at a History of Reading [keynote]

In his 1986 manifesto "First Steps Toward a History of Reading," Robert Darnton sketched out an agenda for a nascent scholarly field. In less than twenty years, the historiography of reading has advanced more quickly than even Darnton expected. Scholars have invented new techniques and discovered new sources useful in recovering "the ordinary reader in history." And they have produced a remarkable string of surprising discoveries, often quite different from what literary theorists predicted.

Winston Churchill and the Literary History of Politics

All politicians are authors. They all publish texts (oral or print) with the aim of winning an audience. They all construct narratives, ranging from grand historical myths to homey anecdotes, and these narratives are derived largely from literature already familiar to both author and audience. Given that, might it not be useful to write political history as literary history, employing the methods of book history? An ideal subject for such an experiment would be Winston Churchill, one of the most successful middlebrow authors of the twentieth century. His published works, his correspondence with his publishers and literary agents, and his literary sources all point to the conclusion that Churchill fashioned his political career much as a writer fashions a book, with both an artistic vision and a keen sense of his audience.

Introduction to our round table: "Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround"

Points of no return

In the last 30 years literary studies have been caused to quit a number of substantial convictions. In the course of this process, the following insights haven been theoretically gained:

1. The concentration on literary texts is not enough; it has to be replaced by an orientation on the social system literature.
   
2. Meaning is not deposited in the literary text itself. Instead, it is attributed to the text in the process of systems- and context-specific receptions and elaborations of text material by recipients.
   
3. Literature has to be regarded in the systemic context of other media offers in their respective media systems.
   
4. The author returns. The star system in other media is going to invade also the literary system, stars operate in a multimedia way.
   
5. The homogeneity of culture has gone. Instead, culture programs have been remarkably differentiated and have lost their normative character. Consequently, cultural studies have realized that the description of a culture presupposes/implies a culture of description. Reflexivity is the fundamental mode of culture as well as scholarship.
   
6. Studies of literature have rather automatically become part of media studies regarding the interaction of print media offers with other types of media offers, and part of media culture studies with regard to the reflexivity of observation and description of cultural phenomena.
   
7. The preoccupation with semantic phenomena has been replaced by an equal treatment of the three attractors of all human activities, i. e. cognition, emotion, and morality.
   
8. Instead of evaluating fiction/fictionality as unique literary phenomenon it is regarded as an instrument of difference management between literature, journalism, advertising and public relations.
   
9. Fiction/fictionality can now be observed as a mode of contingency treatment, viz. as visibilisation instead if invisibilisation of contingency.
   
10. Literary scholars try to solve self produced problems with self produced problem solving strategies (methods). Empirical studies of literature try to reveal the empirical presuppositions of these solutions regarding literary phenomena.
    
11. Literary studies have to find new methods east of the traditional dichotomy quantitative/qualitative respecting the reflexivity of all scientific endeavors.
    
12. Genre theory, processes of canonization and evaluation of literary phenomena can only be treated with regard to the media system as a whole.

In our polylogical round table like presentation we shall try to demonstrate what might happen if these insights were realized in literary studies. Each of us has chosen a case study in order to illustrate

• the reason for one of the insights described above
  
• the reaction of literary scholars on theses insights, mostly realized in terms of an evasive movement
  
• the cost/benefit calculation
  

Literature as mode of observation (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

Literary studies should complete their analytical arsenal by enlarging the focus of interest from semantics/narration/content with a focus on observation as the processual mode of literature. Literature itself started to realize its own observational mode in the 18th century. From that time on it provided society with a specific kind of self-observation in terms of alterity/contingency labeled with the contemporary term "fictionality".

The society reacted on this development with a marginalization of literature (key-word: ivory tower) by sharply opposing literature to all "relevant" social systems (economy, politics, science etc.), i.e. by separating literature and society.

Literary studies reacted to this development by illumining literature as the core of aesthetic education which was proclaimed to be the only way to save the "complete subject" in a period of its progressive fragmentarizing and instrumentalizing in society. Literature thus became the ideological tool of the rising bourgeoisie in its fight against the still feudal political system as well as in its suffering from the self-created industrialization.

This evasive movement of literary studies overlooks that literature as a specific mode of media usage has essentially contributed to navigating societies into a reflexive modernity. Under the heading "fictionality" literature realized and still realizes quite the same as all other media systems, viz. second order observation. According to the mentality conditions of/in the 18th century, this operation could only be formulated as poetic invention of creative subjects. A media culture science reformulates this insight in terms of the complementarity of observation and contingency. Media are now described as instruments of social self-observation which serve the important purpose of individual as well as social constructions of realities.

Identification, involvement, immersion: experiential states during reading (Workshop: How Literature Enters Life)

Experiential states during reading can count as an important mediator of reading effects. Such experiential states can thus be considered an avenue for 'literature to enter life'.
Experiential states during the reception process have been discussed in a number of different forms and within different disciplines, sometimes under different names, such as: immersion, suspense, transportation, identification, or involvement. The exact meaning of those terms as well as the interrelations among the underlying concepts have, however, so far not been sufficiently clarified.
In our contribution we will present data on the development of a questionnaire designed to assess various experiential states during reading. The aim of a first study with 48 participants was the selection of the most suitable items. Drawing on concepts and already existing instruments from research on transportation, presence, involvement, flow, parasocial interaction, and identification, 101 items (for non-fiction texts) / 122 items (for fictional texts) were generated. The participants were presented with five texts (3 fiction, 2 non-fiction) chosen so as to vary regarding the presumed intensity of the reading experience. After reading each of the texts, the participants were requested to complete the questionnaire comprising the fiction / non-fiction items in random order. Item analysis yielded a total of 77 items across 14 dimensions (scales). All 14 scales can count as reliable.

The second study (with 94 participants) was designed to validate the 14 scales and to clarify their interrelations. Validation was achieved for the majority of the scales by a combination of textual variations, instructions, and comparisons with relevant traits such as absorption and need for cognition. As for the interrelation between the scales, three underlying components of the reception experience could be identified and confirmed by structural equation modelling: cognitive involvement, emotional involvement, and an analytic mode of reception.

Are we amusing ourselves to death? Answers from evolutionary psychology (Panel: Emotions and the Community Building Function of the Media)

Nearly all human cultures in nearly all historical periods have been investing immense resources for the amusement of their members (Zillmann, 2000). But why are we spending time and energy on entertainment and amusement? Isn't reception of movies and entertainment counterproductive? Is Postman (1999) right when phrasing "Amusing ourselves to Death"?

Following media psychological approaches that define entertainment as some sort of positive emotion (Früh, 2002; Schwab, 2001; Vorderer, 1996; Winterhoff-Spurk, 2000), this contribution develops an evolutionary perspective on the phenomenon of movie entertainment. To take such a perspective demands to examine the functions of emotions, especially the functions of positive emotions. Evolutionary psychology defines emotions as superior meta-programs to coordinate evolved cognitive micro-programs (Cosmides & Tooby, 2000). Emotions serve as adaptations to adjust a diversity of cognitive mechanisms (emotions as subsystem-synchronisation, Scherer, 2000, 2001; or emotions as modulations of cognitive processes, Dörner, 1999).

Emotional media communication processes are produced by different interweaved modules. These modules are the results of our human evolution that have been developed through ontogenesis in a current cultural environment:

• Module for inner simulation (fantasy, imagination)
  
• Module for externalized simulation (play)
• Module for empathy or "theory of mind"
• Modules for positive emotions

Movie entertainment will be discussed as an emotional "planspiel" organized mainly around evolutionary relevant themes (sexuality, survival, courtship, mate selection, cheating etc.; see Oatley, 1999, Miller, 2001; Schwender, 2001).

Response to and Acceptance of Violence in Literature: Cultural Differences

This study is an intercultural literary response analysis which investigates into the reactions to descriptions of violence in literary texts. The theoretical framework for this research is Bortolussi & Dixon's Psychonarratology, Cambridge 2003.

The sample for the study were 27 Humanitities students from Germany, 24 Humanities students from the USA, and thanks to the REDES network 16 participants from Brazil, mainly Humanities students as well. After a number of general questions regarding violence, such as: "I'm in favor of the death penalty in cases of extreme crimes", the participants were asked to read three short text passages and answer questions that tested their emotional and intellectual reactions to the violence depicted: "The text passage makes me feel anxious" for example. The text passages each contain different forms of violence, enabling a differentiated analysis of the intercultural differences in responding to and accepting violence in literature. The study showed that there are significant cultural differences in this respect, which I will describe.

Reading "Otherworldliness": Cognitive Response to Simulated Worlds and Virtual Realities (Poster)

J. Baudrillard's theorizing of simulacrum and its historical evolution as a social structure reflects our growing preoccupation with the nature and validity of reality and the recognition that simulation becomes an inherent part of social reality. While fiction generally may have always been one of the most obvious examples of "virtual" reality where the participant has to negotiate the liminal modalities of the imaginary space and actual world, it is science fiction that came to represent an ontological genre par excellence. The paper will examine the construction of simulated worlds in contemporary science fiction with a particular emphasis on cyberpunk and its ontological concerns. An 80s movement of radical opposition to traditional science fiction, cyberpunk has drastically reconceptualized the idea of space in this genre through shifting the focus to the "inner" expansion of our universe via mind-altering substances and cyberspace/virtual reality. Space thus becomes a dominant locus of "estrangement" (C.D. Malmgren) in the SF of recent decades.

Organization of space is one of the most important aspects of cognitive construction of fiction that acquires particular significance in cyberpunk, where the reader's resistance to the defamiliarization of the "basic narrative world" (L. Doležel) is further enhanced by a complex hierarchy of embedded simulated worlds. The reader must construct (and sustain) a model of the fictional universe as a point of reference. The paper will focus both on the epistemological necessity and the psychological need of cognitive validation of these worlds as well as the very process of legitimating the ontological structure(s) of the fictional space. The reader's positioning in the fictional space necessitates hesitation, hypothesizing and confirmation (and a possible frustration) with a potential repetition of these steps. Hesitation and hypothesizing may or may not be represented by the characters in the actual work of fiction. Although the process of construction of the narrative world is an inherent attribute of processing fiction generally, the reader's engagement in legitimating simulated ontologies ultimately foregrounds our own ontological anxieties as reflected in the post/anti-Enlightenment world-view.

The paper will draw on some of the key figures in contemporary SF (Ph. K. Dick, Pat Cadigan) as well as the presenter's experience of several years of teaching these authors in a university SF course.

Comparative research into the bestseller system: Donna Tartt's The Secret History as a case study

"Smart Tartt", "Prima Donna" and "Donna mania" are a few examples of the many ways in which Donna Tartt was labeled when her debut-novel The Secret History had reached the status of an international bestseller in 1992. Her publisher, Knopf, paid $ 450,000 for Tartt's novel, foreign rights were sold to 11 countries for more than $ 500,000 and paperback rights went for another half million. In the United States most first novels get a first printing of about 10,000 copies, Tartt's got 75,000. By the end of the century it had had more than 5 million readers in 24 countries, including 770.000 in the Netherlands, which made this country the most successful market for Tartt's book.

In my paper I would like to use The Secret History as a case study to present the results of a comparative research into the bestseller system. My study focuses on the special role of the literary critic in the determination of artistic success. With the twentieth century development of the market as the most important structure for artistic creation and distribution, literary reviewers, as mediators between artist and audience, have taken on an increasingly crucial place in the careers of writers and other artists. They became vital agents to them with respect to the valuation of their work and the establishment of their reputations. The past decades witnessed a flood of research on how these mediators in the field of art and culture shape individual works and whole careers. The shaping influence of reviewers, in particular their legitimizing power, has led sociologists to coin them 'co-producers' of the work of art. They have also been targeted as cultural mediators, tastemakers, gatekeepers, intermediate consumers, ideological labelers, and opinionaters.

However, reviewers are not the only mediators between the artist and its audience. For writers mediators include agents, editors, publishers, tour managers, booksellers, and fellow writers. In my paper, I will describe the network of mediators and their contribution to the bestselling status of The Secret History in the United States and the Netherlands. By doing so, I not only highlight the different stages of a media hype in art and culture but also show its strong international orientation. The underlying and main question is: what is the role of art journalists and reviewers in the process of assigning meaning and value to a literary work when it concerns a bestseller?

Media Hypes in Arts and Culture (Workshop: Do Empirical Studies in Literature Practically Affect Society?)

In my paper I would like to focus on the practical relevance of empirical studies in arts, culture, and media by discussing the topic of media hypes in art and culture.

An important role in the making and mediation of cultural classifications is played by art critics in dailies and weeklies whose job it is to make (quality) assessments with respect to the supply of cultural artefacts and whose activities determine to a great extent which products in a given period are held to be legitimate forms of art, what rank they are supposed to occupy within the hierarchy of art works, and what statements count as proper and relevant ways of characterizing these art works.

In the case of art products that reach the status of 'media hypes' or 'media events' other agents and institutions seem to play a key role in the process of cultural classification and evaluation. The cultural industry with her ingenious and sophisticated marketing tools dictates how these popular art products are mediated to the public. In the complex range of commercial strategies, a critical review in a newspaper or magazine is only one of many options. The question I would like to elaborate on is how the emergence of media hypes in arts and culture affects the role of art journalists and reviewers in the symbolic production of art and in processes of reputation and canon formation.

Textual Imagery and Feelings of Intimacy with the Author in High-School Readers of Short Stories

Paul Valéry, the French poet and essayist, wrote, "Artworks force us to desire them all the more, the more we possess them, or they possess us" (Valéry, 1987, p. 1350). One of the mechanisms of this mutual possession in fictional narrative text is likely to be imagery. Kuiken & Miall (2003) have found that in reading narrative there is a significant relationship between the reader's tendency to experience vivid imagery and the experience of self-transformative feeling. Research has also supported the effect of reading instructions in influencing reading experience (Dollerup, 1979). Our goal was to discover whether asking people to focus on imagery while reading the story made a difference to their felt closeness to or distance from the writer of the story.

We randomly assigned 44 Grade-12 high-school students to read one of two short stories of similar length and difficulty by Heinrich Böll and James Joyce. Half of them were asked to dwell on the images as they read, and the other half were asked to read as they would normally. Readers then completed a post-reading questionnaire to assess the quantity and kind of images that were remembered, feelings of closeness to or distance from the writer of the story, and other measures. Members of the image-sensitization group remembered more images (and the difference was almost significant t (42)=1.835, p =.074). However, this group did not report a significantly greater level of closeness to the author than the routine-reading group. For the sample as a whole, there was a significant relationship between imagery retention and felt closeness to the author. The greater the number of images remembered, the greater the feeling of closeness to the author (r = 0.33, p = .028). These results are interpreted in light of current work on imagery and the reader's experience of fictional narrative.

References

Dollerup, C. (1979). Effect of prereading instructions on readers' responses. Journal of Reading, 23, 112-120.

Kuiken, D. & Miall, D. S. Withdrawing to engage: How literary reading penetrates consciousness. Workshop: How literature enters life, University of Utrecht, June 26-28, 2003.

Valéry, P. A. (1987). Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard.

Reception in a Multicultural Context; Japanese Canadian Internment Literature and Documentary Film (Poster)

After the bombing of Pearl Harbour in the Second World War, Japanese Canadian were labeled Enemy Aliens, rounded up, and either interned in the interior of British Columbia or dispersed across the country to work on road camps or farms. The impact of these wartime government's actions continues to be felt in the present, as Japanese Canadians explore their history in Canada and try to understand their place in a multicultural country.

My paper will focus on the reception and educational impact specific Japanese Canadian texts have had on the identity narration of the Japanese Canadian community, related to the sources of funding, agencies of distribution, and the ethno-cultural background of the authors/directors; whether they are Japanese Canadian or speak from the position of the dominant discourse. Drawing on a variety of Japanese Canadian internment texts written/directed by Japanese Canadians as well as those by the dominant discourse, my paper will focus on the politics of Canadian publication and distribution, analyzing how these politics impact a community's ability to narrate its own identity versus having an identity narrated for them. Additionally, the paper will address the impact this has on the Canadian public education about internment by addressing the political mandates of the various institutions providing funding, taking into consideration the impact of multicultural policy on their existence, not to mention their financial viability.

The literature and film produced by public and private institutions artistically represents the cultural issues/quandaries relevant to diverse communities living in Canada, just as the politics involved in the production and distribution of these texts reflect the struggles of ethno-cultural groups attempting to define themselves in a multicultural context that claims they are equal but distinct. The identification of 'Otherness', whether positively or negatively conceived, maintains the questionable status quo of white-English/French Canada, similar to the way that past policies maintained the hegemony of the dominant ideology.

Culture-comparative Reading Research: Investigation of intercultural recept samples -- by the example of child literature in the German and Chinese comparison (Poster)

Differences in the cultural and linguistic tradition become not very important in the global communication society. It seems nearly, as if the same stories would be told in the global village. But the impression deceives. A more exact view shows that the cultural differences on conditions of the globalization not only continue to exist, but are even produced. What happens, if the same text, its figures, symbols and actions in another culture area are told? My paper will answer this question.

Empirically on the basis of German and Chinese grades, my research examines the different read behavior in China and Germany and asks, how differently reading in both countries is, what for a role the understanding samples play with the meaning assignment in handling texts. In the context of reading psychology and intercultural hermeneutics I am to describe, how cultural difference of the meaning formation develops. On the basis of cognitive psychology and linguistics reader psychology is stated that inference is significant for the meaning-construction of literary texts. With inferences recipients fill the blank point of the text, which seems incomprehensible to the recipient.

In the context of qualitative social research it is discussed, which inferences Chinese pupils would form while handling European literature. The important reading, which shape the childhood for the German as for the Chinese children, will be examined, for example, the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm as well as of H. C. Andersen. Here stands cultural otherness, which is often only gradually distinctive. My empirical investigation is based on the self-developed questionnaire, which is founded on the theoretical model of the meaning formation. The questions should deal with five main fields: Motive structure, genre understanding, figure understanding, space semantics and valuation.

As a form of the meaning formation, the translation comparison serves as important proof for the empirical investigation, wie different cultural understanding actually functions. Each translation is always an interpretation, ei-ther. Therefore it is also meaningful to make a translation comparison in my pa-per. After carrying out the investigation, the results will be evaluated and set with theories in connection. It is to be found out, which will be read from the main meaning levels, like valuation, figures, action structure, psychological motivations etc. which are different in the reception.

My investigation could be a reference in the intercultural literary reading studies, to what extent the same stories are connected with different conceptions and how the different styles of thinking adapt each other from the view of reading psychology.

Media offers as occasions for remembering - an alternative perspective on text and meaning (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

The search for an author's true intention or the fixed meaning of a text has long been given up in literary studies. At least theoretically it is claimed that 'meaning' is not a fixed, isolated property of a text, but that meaning is attributed to texts in the process of systems- and context-specific receptions and elaborations of text materials.

However, in practice it seems that literary studies until today have not yet quite come to terms with some of the consequences this new perspective on literary texts implies: Fictionality and literary status or value can no longer be seen as ontological qualities of texts but quite like 'meaning' depend on sociocultural convention in media culture societies. Literary texts now seem to be just one kind of media offer among a whole variety ranging from other print to electronic media offers. Furthermore, processes of intermediality make it hard to concentrate analysis on just the (printed) literary text while ignoring its relations to other media.

When Hayden White claimed that historians narrate history just like literary authors tell their stories it was mainly historians who feared a loss of authority if history is labelled 'fiction'. But as the line between formerly clearly distinct genres of texts/media offers is blurred, the status of literary studies is called into question just as much.

This might be illustrated by the debate about social aspects of processes of remembering. It is not enough to have literary texts dealing with history at hand or archives of historical documents for such processes to take effect. Texts cannot serve as forms of a 'collective', 'cultural' or 'social memory' representing an objective past, but have to be made use of as causes or occasions for remembering processes by individual users. As remembering (for individuals just as for social systems) is central to notions of identity the specific meaning of a historical literary text or a document depends a lot on who uses it as an occasion for remembering and on their politics of identity and remembering.

Literary studies today play a key role in the intense discussion of 'memory' in the arts and humanities. But it seems a new perspective on media culture societies is needed to observe 'social memory' as a kind of operative fiction, where any kind of media offer can be used as an occasion for remembering and thus can be made part of a complex and reflexive process of constructing and displaying identity.

Standstill through Innovation - the McLuhan Case (Panel: Media Culture Studies: Steps Towards a Turnaround)

Marshall McLuhan's controversial popularity is based on a simple, yet significant change of perspective regarding literary studies. Much more important than the canonised content is, according to McLuhan, the medium by which it is conveyed. Through this shift, McLuhan initially took away the basis of traditional literary studies. There can be no literary studies in their own right without text, without a work of literature.

The increasing number of literary studies during the 70s which came to call themselves 'media studies' illustrates both McLuhan's legacy and simultaneously how this has been overcome. Every mainstream in literary studies which McLuhan has overcome has, for its part, totally absorbed and therefore overcome McLuhan and so returned to 'business as usual'. The prerequisite for making McLuhan productive in the sense of a new empirical approach to the study of literature is to take seriously the theoretical basis for acquiring fresh insights to which his observations challenge us. And it is precisely this that mainstream literary studies has not done, although this can thank him for freeing it from the confines of its subject area.

In his numerous publications McLuhan tried, through the mosaic-like composition of his essays as a collage of slogans, reports and quotations, to link argument and the reasoning in support of this argument with each other. He sought in this way, and according to one of his central theses, to escape from 'the determining power of logic' and the linear dimension of the written word. He therefore manoeuvred himself into a paradoxical situation in which his argument would be false, should the method of his argumentation prove to be right, whereas his argumentation method would come undone should his argument prove to be correct. Obviously the autological problems of media research do not simply disappear - as shown in McLuhan's case - but they can be brought to light and through these problems we can gain experiences in dealing with, and in relation to, the media.

What we know about our media we know through our media. Given these conditions, the first and most important question which media research has to confront is which medium under which conditions should have analytical competence in relation to other media. The way this question is dealt with presupposes an approach which does not begin with a historical description of (media) culture, but with a culture of description in and through media (sensu S. Jünger).

Invisible Wars: Violence in daily papers

Based on the assumption that metaphors are ways in which human experience is perceived and conceptualised, this paper investigates how violence today may be present not only in the crime sections of newspapers but how it has infiltrated other sections of daily life, where it is not the focus such as the Economy, Politics, Sports and Entertainment sections. Our hypothesis is that violence has been naturalised and has become ingrained in the way people not only relate to each other but also in the way they experience the external world. To this purpose, we investigate two issues of newspapers of wide circulation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - O Globo, O Dia, and Jornal do Brasil - dated November 11 and 12, 2003, looking into the conceptual metaphors used to convey the pieces of news.

Our findings show that X IS WAR is by far the most frequent metaphor in the sections studied. Our understanding is that these findings should be brought to the attention of editors and the professionals of the press who use language to report and comment on news. We understand that this is an initial study. It would be interesting to investigate earlier issues of the same newspapers at a time when the crime rate was not as high as it is now in the context studied. It would also be interesting to draw a comparison with newspapers from other large and/or smaller cities in different countries in order to be able to decide whether violence is inherent to the way humans conceive the world or whether it characterises only certain moments in history.