Coherence in literary discourse

Abstract

The concept of coherence has tended to be regarded as a textlinguistic notion (Toolan 2012). It has been methodically discussed also in theories of discourse, namely in a social theory of discourse (Fairclough 2010). Taking an approach which blends methodologically and theoretically various areas of linguistic study, this chapter aims at exploration of coherence in literary discourse. More specifically, it brings together relevant observations and references to reading and understanding implied messages in literary narratives from functional, pragmatic and cognitive linguistic perspectives. Soon we proceed to an explication of the concept in narratology, regarding coherence as an important feature of (literary) narrative. Analysing aspects and subtypes of coherence in novels and short stories, we perceive literary discourse as a multi-layered structure where “the communicative characteristics of a literary text are the source of coherence of literary significance” (Kikuchi 2007: 2). The chapter also addresses some problematic issues, such as the notion of literariness and literary discourse as resulting in a type of reading different from that studied in mainstream discourse processing research (cf. Miall 2002). The relevance of pragmatic concepts of cooperativeness and politeness in the study of coherence in literary narratives is further discussed; examples of literary discourse are provided to illustrate specific stages and types of inferential processes. The chapter proceeds to implementing recent findings of research in cognitive psychology as pertaining to processes of the reading and comprehension of discourse and to the ways textual information is stored in, and retrieved from, memory (cf. van Dijk 1978) and concludes in a discussion of the dominance of coherence in particular elements of the generic structure of literary narrative as closely related to genre and register characteristics.