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Title:
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A Partitioned-Narrative Model of the Self: Its linguistic manifestations, entailments, and ramifications
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Author:
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Kam-Yiu Pang
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Otago
, Linguistics Section
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Degree Date:
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2006
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Discourse Analysis
Philosophy of Language
Semantics
Cognitive Science
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Director(s):
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John Taylor
Chris Ackerley
Jae Jung Song
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Abstract:
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Contrary to common folk and expert theory, the human self is not unitary.
There is no Cartesian theatre or homunculus functioning as a metaphorical
overlord. Rather, it is an abstractum gleaned from a person’s experiences—a
centre of narrative gravity (Dennett 1991). Experiences are a person’s
cognisance of her ventures in life from a particular unique perspective. In
perspectivising her experiences, the person imputes a certain structure,
order, and significance to them. Events are seen as unfolding in a certain
inherently and internally coherent way characterised by causality,
temporality, or intentionality, etc. In other words, a person’s self
emerges out of her innumerable narrativisations of experience, as well as
the different protagonist roles she plays in them. Her behaviours in
different situations can be understood as different life-narratives being
foregrounded, when she is faced with different stimuli which different
experiences/events present.
In real life, self-reflective discourse frequently alludes to a divided,
partitive self, and the experiences/behaviours that it can engage in. In
academic study, this concept of the divided and narrative-constructivist
self is well-represented in disciplines ranging from philosophy (e.g.,
Dennett 1991, 2005), developmental psychology (e.g., Markus & Nurius 1986;
Bruner 1990, 2001; Stern 1994), cognitive psychology (e.g., Hermans &
Kempen 1993; Hermans 2002), neuropsychology (e.g. Damasio 1999), psychiatry
(e.g., Feinberg 2001), to linguistics (e.g., McNeil 1996; Ochs & Capps
1996; Nair 2003). Depending on the particular theory, however, emphasis is
often placed either on its divided or its narrative-constructivist nature.
This thesis argues, however, that the two are coexistent and
interdependent, and both are essential to the self’s ontology. Its
objectives are therefore: (i) to propose a partitioned-narrative model of
the self which unifies the two perspectives by positing that the
partitioned-representational (Dinsmore 1991) nature of narratives entails
the partitioned structure of the self; and (ii) to propose that the
partitioned-narrative ontology of the self is what enables and motivates
much of our self-reflective discourse and the grammatical resources for
constructing that discourse. Partitioning guarantees that a part of the
self, i.e., one of its narratives, can be selectively attended to,
foregrounded, objectified, and hence talked about. Narrativity provides the
contextual guidance and constraints for meaning-construction in such
discourse. This claim is substantiated with three application cases:
reflexivity ('I found myself smiling'); various usages of proper names,
including eponyms ('the Shakespeare of architecture'), eponymic denominal
adjectives ('Herculean'), etc.; and partitive-self constructions which
explicitly profile partitioned and selectively focal narratives ('That’s
his hormones talking'). When analysed using the proposed model, these
apparently disparate behaviours turn out to share a common basis: the
partitioned-narrative self.
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