A case study of student perception of narrative coherence in short fiction
A case study of student perception of narrative coherence in short fiction

Author(s): Oxana Creanga
Subject(s): Philosophy, Social Sciences, Language and Literature Studies, Education, Aesthetics, Higher Education
Published by: Biblioteca Ştiinţifică a Universităţii de Stat Alecu Russo
Keywords: text representation; coherence; naming conventions; storyline; free direct/indirect discourse; narrative perspective; discontinuity
Summary/Abstract: The present study explores the perception of coherence in the short story “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie” by B. Bainbridge, approaching coherence as a pragmatically determined quality of text production and reception. The investigation of the subjective reception of coherence focused on the structural elements that preclude the linear development of the narrative and the discoursal features that cause overlapping or abrupt transitions in narrative perspective. These aspects demand a higher degree of cooperative reader participation in text comprehension. The results of a survey administered to 10 second-year students within the course of Text Linguistics were analysed to obtain quantitative data for comparing patterns in reader experiences and perceptions of the linearity and unity of the story content. Additionally, the study aimed to determine the reader’s degree of interpretative cooperation in completing the blanks and solving the indeterminacies. The questions covered three broad areas of structural and discoursal elements essential to building a coherent representation of the story content: 1) the narrative structure, with particular attention to the general perception of exposition, retrospective narration, foreshadowing, and the interplay between the main and subsidiary storylines; 2) the way naming conventions and referencing elements are used in the story; and 3) the shifts in narrative perspective marked by the transition from the diegetic to mimetic forms of discourse.

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