A cognitive-stylistic analysis of theearly works of John McGahern

Laburpena

The early works of Irish author John McGahern (1934-2006), The Barracksand The Dark, are the result of dividing the original work into two different novelsafter he did not succeed in getting it published. Although a significant amount ofliterary analysis has already been carried out on both novels, a large gap arises when itcomes to a proper linguistic approach. The present dissertation aims at filling that gap.The starting point of this doctoral thesis are the previous literary approaches byscholars such as Guy, Liddy, Maher and O’Connell. The literary insights offered bythese authors qualify themselves as a valuable basis upon which to build up acognitive-stylistic approach to the figurative language employed by John McGahern.The main objectives of this dissertation are three, namely, (i) to unearth the cognitiveprocesses hidden in the figurative language employed by the author, and describe thecontroversial metaphors and metonymies which serve as a mechanism to denounce thepuritan society in the Republic of Ireland; (ii) to analyze the complex techniques ofcharacterization employed by McGahern to build up round characters in both storiesas notorious examples of social by-products of their time, and how they cope with thedarkest ideological sides of a deeply conservative and religious rural socioculturalcontext, and (iii) to dig out the choice of the linguistic constructions deployed by theIrish novelist in an effort to convey his message.The general view of functional and cognitive space offered in the works byButler and Gonzálvez-García serves as an invaluable scientific framework tosubstantiate the analysis of the two novels. Out of this general view, the modelsapplied to varying degrees are (i) Systemic Functional Grammar, (ii) CognitiveGrammar, (iii) Construction Grammar(s), together with (iv) Cognitive Stylistics, or (v)Poetics. The application of these cognitive fields needed further substantiation. This isthe point where the crossroads of literature and linguistics lies, in the form of freshand state-of-the-art cognitive literary approaches by scholars such as Burke andTroscianko, Polvinen, Kukkonen, Fludernik, Carney, Gibbs, Oatley, Bergs, Gerrig andMumper, Pirlet and Wirag, or Hartner, among others.Within the vast realm of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (henceforth CMT), andby drawing upon the work of authors like Lakoff, Kövecses, Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez,Peña-Cervel, Steen, Fauconnier and Turner, Sullivan and Gonzálvez-García among some others, the basic notions of image-schemas, conceptual domains, idealizedcognitive models, semantic frames, mental spaces and coercion are explained andapplied to the study of the conceptual metaphors in the most relevant passages fromboth novels. Approaches offered by scholars like Barcelona, Radden, Thornburg andPanther, Blanco-Carrión, Hernández-Gomáriz, Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, as well asBrdar and Szabó, to mention just a few, are invoked to study the metonymies thatemerge from the selected excerpts. Other related tropes, such as hyperbole (Claridge,Peña-Cervel and Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez) are also approached in the light ofconceptual metaphors and metonymies, due to their closeness in cognitive processes.The analysis of the larger stretches of text from both novels is mainly tackledfrom the perspective of Cognitive Grammar, by appealing to authors such asLangacker, Stockwell, Harrison, Yuan, Nuttal, and some others. The tools and notionsin the light of which Cognitive Grammar is applied to both novels are specificity,prominence, profiling, perspective, stance, ambience and windows of attention. This iscarried out by paying close attention to the linguistic constructions—particularattention is given to conditional and modal constructions as stance enactors—as wellas lexical choices such as different adjectival and nominal constructions—useful asambience enactors.The characters, their worldview and mindstyle are deconstructed and studiedby drawing upon the insights by Culpeper, Semino, Fauconnier and Turner’s BlendingTheory and Emmot’s Split Selves. This is also consistent with the passages whereMcGahern’s ideological postulates clash with the predominant puritan principles thatpervade the two novels.Talmy’s fictive motion proves a useful technique in which the roles of Lightand Nature are relevant to convey McGahern’s message. Both novels are flooded withpassages in wan, feeble lights, and nature qualifies itself as a prison, or even anenemy.Finally, the windows of attention proposed by authors such as Harrison, orBrowse serve as an invaluable light in which actions and participants within theframes and domains of ANGER, LUST, DEATH, FAITH or PRISON are given salience.