Language and Literature 2001 Semino 345 55 On readings, literariness and schema theory a reply to Jeffries

Language and Literature Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), Vol 10(4): 345–355
[0963–9470 (200111) 10:4; 345–355; 019577]

On readings, literariness and schema theory:

a reply to Jeffries

Elena Semino, Lancaster University, UK

1 Introduction

I am grateful for this opportunity to reply to Lesley Jeffries’ article in this issue,
‘Schema affirmation and white asparagus: cultural multilingualism among readers
of texts’. I hope that this response, although critical of Jeffries’ article in many
respects, shows that this is a debate between people who share many assumptions
about the role of language in textual understanding and who are engaged in the
same enterprise: that of producing ever better accounts of how interpretations are
arrived at in the interaction between texts and minds.

One the whole, I agree with Jeffries that the phenomena she talks about should

be part of the agenda for further research in text analysis, and in the modelling
and investigation of text processing. I also agree that progress in this area will
involve the adoption of more refined theories of the organization and use of
background knowledge than the version of schema theory I used in Part 3 of
Semino (1997). However, progress depends on a fair assessment of what has been
achieved in the past. In this respect, I will argue that the usefulness of Jeffries’
suggestions and insights is undermined by fundamental problems in her critique
of Cook (1994) and, particularly, Semino (1997). As well as pointing out that
Jeffries has misrepresented some important aspects of my work, I will suggest a
partly different account of her responses to the two poems, and discuss some of
the implications of Jeffries’ article for schema theory and for work in cognitive
text analysis generally.

Although I will often refer to Cook (1994) as well as to my own work, I should

make clear that I am writing this reply on my behalf only.

2 Schema refreshment and literariness

Part 3 of Semino (1997) is heavily indebted to Cook (1994) for an approach to
text analysis that combines linguistic description with schema theory in order to
account for how readers imagine (different types of) text worlds in reading texts.
In particular, I used Cook’s notions of schema reinforcement and schema
refreshment to explain how text worlds may be perceived as ordinary, realistic,
familiar or conventional on the one hand, or as ‘deviant’, unrealistic, unfamiliar or
unconventional on the other. Contrary to what Jeffries suggests, however, defining
literariness or the function(s) of literary discourse was not at all part of my
endeavour. Indeed, I (thought I had) clearly disassociated myself from Cook’s

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definition of literariness based on the notion of schema refreshment or, more
precisely, discourse deviation (i.e. the disruption of the readers’ schemata as a
consequence of linguistic deviation) (Cook, 1994: 197 ff.). Jeffries’s association
of myself with Cook in this respect is based on de-contextualized quotations that
give a distorted picture of my position.

In introducing my use of Cook’s framework, Jeffries makes the following

point: ‘Like Cook, she wants to incorporate in her definition of “literariness” the
ability of literary texts “to disrupt the ordinary application of schemata and their
potential for causing schema change (Semino, 1997: 152)” ’ (pp. 326–7). The
sentence fragment quoted by Jeffries in fact occurs not in the context of an
attempt on my part to define literariness in terms of the notion of cognitive
change, but in the context of an introduction to a number of studies that do
attempt to do this:

As I will show in this section, a common thread in studies applying schema
theory to literature is the claim that literary texts tend to challenge and modify
the readers’ existing schemata. This leads to a cognitive approach to the
definition of literariness, whereby the main common characteristics of literary
texts are their ability to disrupt the ordinary application of schemata and their
potential for causing schema change. Such an approach is part of a wider
recent tendency to regard literariness as a property of text processing rather
than as a formal property of a certain type of texts. . . . For the purposes of this
book, however, the relevance of any application of schema theory to literature
lies in its implications for the analysis of text worlds. (Semino, 1997: 152;
emphases added)

Most of the other quotations used by Jeffries to suggest that I espouse a ‘weaker
version’ of Cook’s theory of literariness are extracted from a single paragraph,
which I hope I will be forgiven for quoting in full below. This paragraph occurs
after a summary of Cook’s definition of literariness on the basis of the notion of
‘discourse deviation’:

Clearly, Cook’s argument captures something that is central to the notion of
literariness, at least in contemporary Western cultures. It is true that, by and
large, we tend to associate literature (or at least some types of literature) with
both linguistic creativity and with innovative, original thinking. A high degree
of discourse deviation, in other words, may well be the distinguishing feature
of works that are considered prototypically literary (although this is probably
more true of poems than of novels and plays). On the other hand, it is also true
that discourse deviation is not limited to literature, and that not all texts that are
considered to be literary display discourse deviation. Cook explicitly and
repeatedly acknowledges this, but he does nevertheless seem to imply the
existence of an almost necessary link between literary texts and, minimally,
schema refreshment. The problem with this is that it leads to the conclusion
that texts that confirm dominant assumptions have a weaker claim to

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literariness than schema refreshing ones, which is hard to maintain even within
the boundaries of 20th century Western culture. Rather, I would argue that,
although discourse deviation may be a central property of prototypically
literary texts, in practice texts that are regarded as literary range on a
continuum from schema reinforcement at one end to schema refreshment at the
other end. My analyses in the next three chapters will contrast poems that I
regard as occupying different positions on such a continuum. (Semino, 1997:
154)

The first half of the chapter following this quotation is devoted to the analysis of a
poem by Seamus Heaney (‘A Pillowed Head’), which, I claim, is schema-
reinforcing for me and likely to be schema-reinforcing for many other readers.
My aim in analysing this poem is both to demonstrate the usefulness of an
analytical framework based on Cook (1994) and to provide

an example of a literary text that seems to reinforce rather than question the
areas of knowledge which are relevant to its interpretation, and that therefore
triggers the construction of a text world that is not just ‘possible’, but also
fairly conventional and familiar . . . Like most other discourse types, literary
texts may challenge or confirm existing beliefs and assumptions (in this, I go
against Cook’s and Weber’s claim that the reading of literature typically results
in schema change). (Semino, 1997: 175)

Contrary to what Jeffries suggests, in the course of the analysis I also explicitly
reject the suggestion that schema refreshment correlates with high artistic merit or
literary value (Semino, 1997: 193–4).

I must admit that I still agree with my assessment of Cook’s definition of lit-

erariness as expressed in the paragraph quoted above, even though it could be
characterized as ‘sitting on the fence’, or even as a ‘weaker version’ of Cook’s
theory (although, personally, I do not think that the latter is an accurate description).
What seems to me out of the question is that Jeffries can claim to have undermined
my approach, or questioned the essence of my endeavour, by denying the necessity
of schema refreshment as an outcome of the reading of literary texts, or by
showing that two poems can have schema-reinforcing effects. In fact, I agree with
much of what Jeffries says about literary reading in general and about the schema-
refreshing potential of other discourse types. What I do not agree with is that her
own personal readings of the two poems actually work as examples of literary
experiences that do not involve schema refreshment as defined in Cook (1994)
and Semino (1997). This is a different issue, which I will deal with in section 4.

3 Individual interpretations, generalizations and schema theory

Generally speaking, I agree with Jeffries’ emphasis on the need to incorporate
interpretative variability in textual analysis. I also generally appreciate the way in

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which she attempts to put into practice the idea that analysts should be open and
explicit about themselves and their own backgrounds when they propose their
own interpretations of texts. I do, however, have problems with a number of
points in Jeffries’s argument.

Contrary to what Jeffries suggests, in Semino (1997) I did not try to hypothe-

size about ‘some kind of “typical” or “intended” reader’ (p. 331), but I explicitly
aimed to demonstrate the usefulness of a particular analytical framework, using
my own personal readings as data: ‘My analyses will make use of schema theory
to account for textual interpretations that are, inevitably, my own’ (Semino, 1997:
161). It is true that I did not describe myself and my background as explicitly as
Jeffries does hers, and it may well be that there is something to be gained from
such explicitness. However, the contents of the schemata I assume in the course
of the analyses are made explicit. I therefore doubt what useful information about
my schemata for birth or marriage would have been available to my readers if,
following Jeffries, I had told them that I am a woman, Italian, born in the 1960s,
living in the North of England, and so on. The problem with personal information
is that, at a general level, it is of limited use but, at a specific level, it could be
uncomfortable for both writer and readers. After all, Jeffries herself does not go as
far as explaining how her own experiences of masturbation and heterosexual sex
affected the schemata she applied to the reading of ‘Against Coupling’, even
though, strictly speaking, this is the kind of personal information that would have
been relevant. This point I am making is that, while I accept the charge of using
too impersonal a stance in Semino (1997), one can be explicit about one’s own
assumptions and background knowledge without being unnecessarily personal;
and, conversely, providing some personal information does not automatically
result in total transparency. In fact, Cook himself personalizes the textual
interpretations he proposes much more often than is implied by Jeffries’ rather
dismissive account of the ‘urination’ text (e.g. Cook, 1994: 171).

A related issue of Jeffries’ complaint is that, along with many literary scholars,

I (and Cook) do not devote enough attention to interpretations other than the main
one we propose for each text. It is true that I, for one, do not discuss variant
readings extensively and systematically. This is partly because my aim was not to
investigate interpretative variation as such, but to demonstrate on one particular
textual reading an analytical model that could be applied generally to account for
other readings, and that, more importantly, would explain how different readers
come up with different interpretations of the same text.

Here, however, Jeffries makes a more fundamental objection. She claims that

schema theory is in fact unable to account for interpretative variability. I must
admit that I did not fully understand the basis for this claim, so that my answer
may not properly address her criticisms. As I understand it, schema theory
accounts for variant readings almost by definition: if readers apply different
schemata (or different variants of the same schema) to the same text, they will end
up with different understandings. A number of informant-based studies have
used schema theory to explain how different groups of readers reacted differently

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to the same texts (e.g. Steffensen and Joag-Dev, 1984; Clapham, 1996).
Moreover, Jeffries is wrong to deduce from my own critique of schema theory
that the theory lacks empirical evidence: there are plenty of studies that provide
empirical support for claims based on schema theory (for an overview, see
Eysenck and Keane, 1990: 279–80, 323 ff.). The issue is that schema theory is
rather unprincipled in what can count as a schema, so that it is hard to disprove
empirically. Similarly, it is not the case that the use of schema theory necessarily
leads to circular arguments about the existence of reader differences. Schema
theory has been used to explain how (some) reader differences come about, and
also to account for failures or errors in comprehension and memory (e.g. Bartlett,
1932; Steffensen and Joag-Dev, 1984).

I was surprised to find that some of Jeffries’ central claims on the inadequacy

of schema theory are based on the way in which Cook and I talk about textual
understanding. Jeffries specifically notes our tendency to remind readers that the
phenomena and interpretations we are discussing are reader-dependent, and
concludes that this need for frequent repetition is a sign of the weakness of the
theory. I simply fail to see why this should be the case. In fact, the need for such
repetition, in my case at least, derives from the anticipation of the kind of
accusation that I defended myself from earlier on. I was concerned that, by
focusing in detail on accounting for one particular reading, I might give the
impression that I presented this reading as superior to or more generally valid than
any other reading, or, worse, that my approach was aimed at proving the validity
of one specific reading. That is the reason for the repeated caveats noted by
Jeffries. I simply cannot see how these caveats constitute proof of a weakness in
the theory. Similarly, I cannot see why distinguishing between the ‘bottom-up’
and ‘top-down’ dimensions in text processing (or between the ‘projection’ and
‘construction’ of text worlds) is a sign of a fundamental theoretical problem. This
basic distinction is used in cognitive psychology to express the fact that the
construction of meaning is dependent both on the text and on the reader (a fact
that is central to Jeffries’s rejection of the viewpoint that ‘all readers’ meanings
differ infinitely’ (p. 341)). Although this distinction involves a (metaphorical)
idealization of the complex interaction between external stimuli and existing
resources, it is not at all an opposition that needs to be reconciled by further
research.

I was also surprised by the strength of Jeffries’ disapproval of the use of

hedges when making generalizations on the basis of one’s reading of a text, and I
balked at her description of the word ‘unlikely’ ‘as a sign of the dominant culture
being taken for granted as a norm’ (p. 340). I think more evidence is needed for
what is being taken as the norm than the use of an adjective which could be
applied to assess any assumption or reaction, dominant or otherwise. More
constructively, it is precisely the kind of extensive analyses proposed in Cook
(1994) and Semino (1997) and the resulting (hedged) generalizations that lead to
hypotheses to be tested by means of informant-based work.

As Jeffries herself acknowledges, what she does in her article is not at all

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unlike what Cook and I did. Although she does briefly consider variant readings
of the texts she analyses, most of her argument is based on her own individual
responses to the two poems, which, in one case, she supports by claiming that she
‘may in some sense be an “ideal” reader of this text’ (p. 335). Her notion of
‘schema affirmation’ is a generalization from her own experience and the
experiences described in a quotation from Alice Walker. Similarly, Jeffries uses
hedges such as ‘likely’ when she suggests how the ‘Control of Space’ text might
be processed (pp. 339–40).

As long as analyses are explicit, rigorous and systematic, this kind of

enterprise is, in my view, no less valid or useful than doing empirical work with
other readers. I agree that more informant-based work needs to be done, but
important work has been done already (e.g. van Peer, 1986; Fairley, 1989; Kunne-
Ibsch et al., 1991 Steen, 1994). Experts in text analysis have important
contributions to make to the modelling and investigation of cognition, as
exemplified in Emmott’s (1997) groundbreaking book. However, they are not
always best placed, in terms of training and expertise, to carry out research in text
processing (there are, of course, people who can do both at a very high level, but I
am not one of them). In this respect I believe that what is also needed is more
communication and cross-fertilization between scholars studying text
comprehension in different areas.

4 Schema ‘affirmation’ and ‘dominant’ and ‘oppressed’ schemata

As I showed in section 2, Jeffries’ findings that the reading of two poems can
result in schema reinforcement actually confirms, rather than challenges, some
aspects of my argument in Semino (1997). A much more relevant issue, which
does lie at the core of my book’s endeavour, is whether what Jeffries calls
‘schema affirmation’ undermines the usefulness of the notions of schema
reinforcement and schema refreshment as tools in text analysis.

As I mentioned in Semino (1997: 158, 159), Cook’s notion of schema

refreshment has parallels in other models of cognition which try to account for the
important phenomenon of cognitive change. Cook defines ‘schema refreshment’
as a change in an individual’s schemata that may involve the destruction of
existing schemata, the creation of new ones, or the establishment of new
connections between existing schemata (Cook, 1994: 189 ff.). In my attempt to
apply this notion to the analysis of text worlds in poetry, I found that I needed to
broaden Cook’s definition in order to make what I regarded as plausible claims
about the potential effects of some texts. Not surprisingly, I did not have any
examples of texts that might result in schema destruction, and I wonder whether
this ever happens at all. Similarly, I did not have any examples of texts that required
the creation on my part of new schemata, and, again, I would not regard this as a
common experience, especially for adult readers. What I did have was plenty of
texts that required unusual instantiations of schemata and/or the simultaneous

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activation and interconnection of schemata that, in my case at least, were not
normally activated together. Even in such cases, however, I could not claim that
the experience of reading the relevant text would result in permanent cognitive
change. I therefore proposed a partial redefinition of ‘schema refreshment’:

Firstly, it seems appropriate to talk about the ‘potential’ or the ‘conditions’ for
schema refreshment (as I have done in the last two chapters), since actual
schema change is not only rare but also hard to verify. Secondly, I would want
to partially redefine the notion of schema refreshment in order to include not
only schema change, but also less dramatic and less permanent experiences,
such as connecting normally separate schemata in unusual ways in the
processing of a particular text, becoming aware of one’s own schematic
assumptions, questioning the validity of one’s schemata in the light of new
experiences and so on. In this sense the notion of schema refreshment can be
usefully applied to poems such as ‘The Applicant’ and ‘Morning Song’
without making unreasonable claims about the impact of such texts on the
readers’ views of the world. (Semino, 1997: 251)

This is, indeed, a ‘weaker version’ of Cook’s theory but one that, to my mind, has
more cognitive plausibility and practical usefulness than the original ‘stronger’
version (without being substantially different from it).

Let me now turn to Jeffries’ wonderfully chosen poems (which will soon make

their way into my teaching materials on schema theory). According to Jeffries,
both poems involve the poetic treatment of a subject unusual for poetry and not
often talked about in general.

As Jeffries argues, these poems may be schema-

refreshing for readers unfamiliar with the relevant female experiences, for whom
they might even require the creation of new schemata. This does not apply to
Jeffries’ own reading, since she already possesses the relevant schemata.
However, her response to the two texts, as she herself describes it, does not, in my
view, count as a case of schema reinforcement either. Jeffries’ interpretation of
each poem involves the instantiation of an unusual combination of a ‘formal’
schema (the schema for poetry as a genre) and a ‘content’ or ‘world’ schema (the
schema for female masturbation or for sex in pregnancy) (see Semino, 1997:
133). Even on its own, this aspect of Jeffries’ reading makes her experience
potentially schema-refreshing in my terms, but I think it would count as a
schema-refreshing reading for Cook too. Because both schemata relate to private
experiences that are seldom made public, the fact itself that these schemata are
instantiated textually at all is potentially schema-refreshing, in that the two poems
challenge the reader’s expectations about the kinds of experiences that are
publicly talked about and the ones that are not. Insofar as Jeffries claims that the
‘thrill of recognition’ resulting from such a combination of genre and topic is ‘a
very common experience in the enjoyment of literary texts’ (p. 334), she is
actually partly supporting Cook’s definition of literature which she (rightly)
spends so much time refuting (I do not have the space here to discuss the
applicability of Cook’s notion of ‘discourse deviation’).

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In her discussion of both poems, however, Jeffries goes even further in

detailing how they require the simultaneous activation of an unusual set of
(partially clashing) schemata. In discussing ‘Against Coupling’, she makes the
following comment: ‘It is perhaps in the detail that the satisfaction comes. It is
funny to juxtapose familiar but mainstream schemata, such as British “culture”
and sexist cultural norms, with the feminist schemata of the long-suffering
“woman-as-sexual-object” ’ (p. 335). And in summing up her discussion of the
schemata involved in her reading of ‘White Asparagus’ she says: ‘As with
“Against Coupling”, the very conventionality of these schemata juxtaposed with
the familiar but taboo schema of female desire produces the gentle humour of the
poem for me as a reader’ (pp. 336–7). Minimally, what Jeffries describes meets
the conditions for what I call potential for schema refreshment (given that the
experience of reading the poems may not have lasting consequences on her long-
term memory). Insofar as the reading of these poems leaves a lasting trace in
Jeffries’ schemata for female masturbation and female libido in pregnancy, or in
any other relevant schemata (and the connections between them), her reading
would be a case of schema refreshment in the stronger sense of permanent (if not
large) cognitive change.

Jeffries’ analyses do not, therefore, question the validity of the notion of

schema refreshment as an analytical tool. In my view, they describe a particular
type of experience that can be included under this general concept, alongside
many others. Although the notion of schema refreshment can of course only
account for part of a reader’s response to a text, I do not think it is ‘reductive’ and
‘unenlightening’ to try to explain a range of different reactions in terms of ‘a
single principle of schema change’ (p. 336). In fact, I think it is dangerous for
cognitive approaches to texts to ignore that many different responses may well
originate from a small set of basic cognitive strategies and principles. Where I
agree with Jeffries is that more work needs to be done to gain a better
understanding of the nature and range of the experiences that I would regard as
included under the notion of ‘schema refreshment’ (even though the term ‘schema
refreshment’ may be replaced by some other, more appropriate, term for
[potential] cognitive change).

I was also persuaded by Jeffries’ suggestion that it is not appropriate to think in

terms of a cline with schema reinforcement at one end and schema refreshment at
the other. It seems more appropriate, from both a practical and a theoretical point
of view, to talk of a cline of schema refreshment only, with no schema
refreshment at one end and dramatic schema refreshment at the other. Jeffries’
own reading of ‘White Asparagus’, for example, involves a lower degree of
(potential for) schema refreshment than the reading of someone who was
convinced that pregnant women had no sexual desires, or loathed sex altogether.

Jeffries’s account of her emotional reactions in reading the poems also highlights
the need to incorporate affect within cognitive models, as I tried to do, but only in
a rather rudimentary fashion, in Semino (1997).

I have not yet dealt with the important fact that Jeffries makes a distinction

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between what she calls ‘dominant’ and ‘oppressed’ schemata. More specifically,
she claims that part of her pleasure in reading the two poems is that they both
involve the instantiation of so-called ‘oppressed’ schemata. I agree that relations
of dominance need to be taken into account in work of this kind, and it is perhaps
a weakness of Semino (1997) that I did not focus much on this. I also accept that
the version of schema theory used in Semino (1997) is not ideally suited to
accounting for how cognition intersects with political and ideological phenomena,
except at the basic level of variation in the contents of schemata (but see, for
example, van Dijk [1987, 1990] and Augoustinos and Walker [1995] for more
relevant models of social cognition). I am, however, concerned about the
implications of taking the notions of dominance and oppression from socio-
political discourse and straightforwardly applying them to individual cognition.

In order to see the problem here, it is necessary to reflect on the status of the

concepts that I have been talking about so far. The notion of schema refreshment
is quite obviously a metaphor for changes taking place in conceptual structure. But
even when we talk about schemata as ‘portions’, ‘chunks’ or ‘areas’ of background
knowledge, we are talking metaphorically about something to do with information
in our brains. In Semino (1997), I pointed out that, within more recent connectionist
models of comprehension (e.g. McClelland et al., 1986), schemata may be seen as
‘frequent patterns of activation in networks of low-level units of knowledge’ in
our neurons (Semino, 1997: 185). From this point of view, schema refreshment
corresponds to unusual patterns of activation in units within neural networks, which
may result in a change in the strength of the connection between some of the units.
However, as Cameron (1999: 11) points out, the notion of neural networks is also
a metaphor, albeit a more appropriate one perhaps than the notion of schema.

So what exactly is an ‘oppressed’ schema? Jeffries appears to use this notion to

refer to schemata for experiences that are not normally talked about, and may be
ignored or denied by the ‘dominant’ culture. This leads to the (highly political)
question: how does oppression at the societal level translate into individual
cognition? Many women will have detailed, well-established and frequently
instantiated schemata for female masturbation even though the topic is not talked
about much or socially accepted. On the other hand, people with little or no direct
experience of female masturbation may not have this schema at all, or only a very
basic one, precisely because they will not have had enough opportunities to
encounter this experience through discourse. In other words, the oppressed status
of a particular view or experience at the socio-cultural level may affect the
relevant schema in individuals’ long-term memory in a variety of ways. As a
consequence, Jeffries’ distinction between ‘dominant’ and ‘oppressed’ schemata
needs to become more precise and explicit in order to be useful.

In fact, in some cases Jeffries uses the notion of ‘schema’ itself in a way that is

different from the versions of schema theory I am familiar with:

Women in our culture, then, may have a schema related to washing clothes,
sex, pregnancy etc. both from the dominant viewpoint (‘I must remember to

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get the family washing done after work’) and simultaneously from a
contradictory, feminist, viewpoint (‘Why the hell doesn’t he think of putting
the washing on ?’). (p. 358)

The first problem is that, strictly speaking, the hypothetical words or thoughts ‘I
must remember to get the family washing done’ reflect an episodic memory, not a
schema, which is part of semantic memory. The woman’s representation of her
own role in the relevant situational context (‘I must remember’), on the other hand,
derives from a ‘washing clothes’ schema where women are the default value for
the slot of human participant. The second problem is that the other hypothetical
utterance/thought, ‘Why the hell doesn’t he think of putting the washing on?’,
does not in my view reflect a different viewpoint on the same schema (nor a
different schema). Rather, it expresses a negative attitude to the fact that women
should occupy the default human role in the ‘washing clothes’ schema that is
commonly shared within a particular society. In his model of social cognition, van
Dijk describes attitudes as a type of social schema (van Dijk, 1987: 190) and points
out that attitudes may form clusters which constitute ideologies (van Dijk, 1987:
193; see also van Dijk, 1990). Within such a model, it is possible to account syste-
matically for how being a feminist affects one’s reaction to (individual instantia-
tions of) a wide range of schemata, including the schema for washing clothes.

My point in all this is not to deny the usefulness of the distinction that Jeffries

is trying to make, but to suggest that it needs to be clarified further, with more
explicit awareness of the relationship between social processes and structures on
the one hand, and cognitive processes and structures on the other.

To conclude, I totally agree with Jeffries that cognitive models need to account

for the ability to read a text from multiple (and clashing) perspectives, although I
doubt whether this experience is as common as she suggests. More specifically,
Jeffries’ article made me realize that my treatment of text worlds in Semino
(1997) should have considered how text worlds as cognitive constructs may be
internally complex or inconsistent as a consequence of complexities in the
reader’s identity and view of the world, or as a result of their awareness of others’
ideological standpoints. I think schema theory can be stretched to account for this,
but it is certainly not best suited for this purpose. ‘Conceptual Blending’ theory
(Fauconnier, 1997; Fauconnier and Turner, 1998) carries more promise, not just
with respect to this issue, but also with respect to some of the other inadequacies
of schema theory that I have mentioned. This is shown, for example, in Margaret
Freeman’s re-analysis of Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Applicant’ – the poem I discuss in
the last chapter of Semino (1997) (Freeman, 2000, forthcoming).

It is important to bear in mind, however, that any account of all these complex

and sophisticated interpretative processes is highly speculative, no matter what
model of cognition is applied. The state of the art in the study of how background
knowledge might actually be stored in the brain and of how cognition works
cannot yet tackle the interpretative processes people like Jeffries and myself want
to talk about, and will lag far behind for the foreseeable future.

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Notes

In fact, one of my (totally mainstream) pregnancy books does talk about the topic of ‘White
Asparagus’ (Stoppard, 1985: 106), but this is a different matter.

It has to be noted, however, that, according to Stoppard (1985: 106) an increase in libido is
normally associated with the middle trimester of pregnancy only.

I will not deal with Jeffries’ point that my own reference to the ‘washing clothes’ schema suggests
that I am ‘operating at this particular moment with a conventional schema deriving from patriarchy’
(p. 338). Since she mentions the relationship between my own schemata and my husband’s,
however, I will say that, within our domestic set-up, I am indeed the default participant in the
‘washing clothes’ schema, but he is the default participant in our shared ‘ironing’ schema!

References

Augoustinos, M. and Walker, I. (1995) Social Cognition: An Integrated Perspective. London: Sage.
Bartlett, F.C. (1932) Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Cameron, L. (1999) ‘Operationalising “Metaphor” for Applied Linguistic Research’, in L. Cameron

and G. Low (eds) Researching and Applying Metaphor, pp. 3–28. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Clapham, C.M. (1996) The Development of IELTS: A Study of the Effect of Background Knowledge on

Reading Comprehension. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cook, G. (1994) Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

van Dijk, T.A. (1987) Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk. London: Sage.
van Dijk, T.A. (1990) ‘Social Cognition and Discourse’, in H. Giles and W.P. Robinson (eds)

Handbook of Language and Social Psychology, pp. 163–83. Chichester: John Wiley.

Emmott, C. (1997) Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eysenck, M.W. and Keane, M.T. (1990) Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook. Hove and

London: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Fairley, I. (1989) ‘The Reader’s Need for Conventions: When is a Mushroom Not a Mushroom’, in W.

van Peer (ed.) The Taming of the Text: Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, pp.
292–316. London: Routledge.

Fauconnier, G. (1997) Mappings in Thought and Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fauconnier, G. and Turner, M. (1998) ‘Conceptual Integration Networks’, Cognitive Science 22(2):

137–87.

Freeman, M.H. (2000) ‘Poetry and the Scope of Metaphor: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Literature’,

in A. Barcelona (ed.) Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective, pp.
253–81. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Freeman, M.H. (forthcoming) ‘The Poem as Complex Blend: Conceptual Mappings of Metaphor in

Sylvia Plath’s “The Applicant”’.

Jeffries, L. (2001) ‘Schema Affirmation and White Asparagus: Cultural Multilingualism among

Readers of Texts’, Language & Literature 10(4): 325–43.

Kunne-Ibsch, E., Schram, D. and Steen, G. (eds) (1991) Empirical Studies of Literature: Proceedings

of the 2nd IGEL Conference 1989. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

McClelland, J.I., Rumelhart, D.E. and the PDP Research Group (1986) Parallel Distributed

Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Vol. 2: Psychological and Biological
Models. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

van Peer, W. (1986) Stylistics and Psychology: Investigations of Foregrounding. London: Croom Helm.
Semino, E. (1997) Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts. London: Longman.
Steen, G. (1994) Understanding Metaphor in Literature. London: Longman.
Steffensen, M.S. and Joag-Dev, C. (1984) ‘Cultural Knowledge and Reading’, in J.C. Alderson and

A.H. Urquhart (eds) Reading in a Foreign Language, pp. 48–61. London: Longman.

Stoppard, M. (1985) The New Pregnancy and Birth Book. London: Dorling Kindersley.

Address

Elena Semino, Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancaster University,

Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK. [email: E.Semino@lancaster.ac.uk]

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