The actual topics

Now that it is a mere week (less about five hours) until my exam, I have my actual list of topics in hand. These are fairly different from the ones I thought up, and frankly much better. (One might even say that they're fun.) I'm copying them in below, so that I can refer to them whenever the fancy strikes me, and so that you, dear readers, can see what I'm working on. I expect to be wandering in my fields of rumination until the eve of the exam myself, so I'll see you then.

1. Discuss how the study of language interacts with inquiries into strata, categories, genre, division, and categorizations of literature in the modern period. Examples include high vs. low, "modern" vs. "popular," innovative vs. standard, literary vs. everyday, but do not feel constrained by this illustrative list.

2. Discuss the phenomenon sometimes referred to as "levels of narration" or "narrative embedding." What sorts of texts illustrate this phenomenon, and what sorts of theories are currently available for representing this sort of thing? Is this a purely literary phenomenon, or does it have deeper roots in language, culture, or general cognition?

3. Choose one of the following theoretical constructs: frame, image-schema, construction, mental space, recursion, joint attention, presupposition. Discuss with specific examples the sorts of phenomena linguists and other ccognitive scientist use these constructs to model and explain. Where possible be sure to consider competing theories of the same phenomena. Show how these constructs might be profitably applied either to the analysis of primary texts, or to theoretical issues in the critical or cultural theory more generally, or both. Alternatively, you could explain why these constructs are inherently uninteresting [to], or otherwise prone to be treated as suspect by, literary and cultural critics and theorists.

(planning)

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