University of Minnesota
Note. According to the respondent's wish, Andrew Elfenbein's original position paper is not included in these publications on the website. Instead, the text below, which was written after Sternberg's rejoinder was available, offers a summary of part of his initial argument, while adding a counterreaction to some of Sternberg's comments on his original version.
In "Minding the Gap: Closure and Cognition," my response to Meir Sternberg's "Universals of Narrative and their Cognitivist Fortunes," I pointed out the inconsistences in Sternberg's theory that arose from his assumptions about the origins of supposedly universal effects on readers. These inconsistencies arise from an unresolved tension in Sternberg's invocation of a communication model of reading, which supposedly "operates between expressor and explainer, author and audience." Yet Sternberg's rhetoric belies this model by locating agency in neither author nor audience but in the personified text, as in the following quotation: "The narrative opens a discontinuity for a time --perceptibly for curiosity and suspense, quietly for surprise -- yet fills it in, or invites the reader to do so with equal certitude, at a later point." In his comments on my response, Sternberg claims that this statement allows "for [various kinds of readers'] making (picking, inventing, wishing on the narrative) their own temporary gaps, within the definitional limits of the terms." But such is what the statement does not do: it grants agency to the narrative, which "opens," "fills . . . in," and "invites." Sternberg's communication model collapses in practice. Rather than locating the origin of communication with an "expressor" or an "author," he moves uneasily between the narrator, the author, English as code, or "the narrative." He notes that he uses "a long-established metonymy, whereby 'narrative' stands for the narrator or author." But the narrative is not equivalent either to the narrator or to the author: each has a quite distinct status. As for other side of the communication model, what Sternberg calls "explainer" or "audience," Sternberg's appeals to what he calls "inevitable effect" render the reader superfluous. In his model, effects are inevitable, whether readers experience them or not; readers who might not experience what he claims are inevitable effects are dismissed out of hand as incompetent. In Sternberg's model, both author and reader are projections of the critic based on his reading of a given text.
Sternberg ends with a pointed question: "Is discourse-making the business
of the solipsistic mind or the interaction of one mind with another on some
joint (con)textual ground?" While this presents a clean distinction, there
may be other options. The mind of the reader is conditioned by such factors
as background knowledge (language competence, domain expertise, familiarity
with generic conventions); cognitive abilities (working memory capacity, reading
strategies, level of metacognition); physical state (level of tiredness, presence
of distractions); goals (reading for pleasure, for study, for distraction,
for information); attitude (level of determination, investment in cognitive
challenges); and social context (the family, the classroom, the workplace).
All these factors, and others, shape any given act of reading. In such an
act, the reader will transform the surface code of the text first into a textbase
and then into a situation model through such possible activities as pattern
recognition, recruitment of background knowledge, development of forward and
backward inferences, and participatory emotional responses. The sheer variety
of factors affecting the reader should create considerable suspicion about
any theory that purports to name universals. Sternberg's theory remains a
valuable guide to some of the reactions that certain readers might experience
when reading, but not a comprehensive theory of narrative response.
