Apostrophic fiction and joint attention in lyrics

A social cognitive approach

Abstract

This paper offers a functional, more specifically social cognitive interpretation of apostrophe. Under the proposal, this figure of speech involves the special functioning of joint attention as a feature of linguistic activities (cf. Tomasello 2002, Sinha 2005, see also Tátrai 2011). At the same time, it is also a characteristic, even defining property of lyrical poetry (see Tátrai 2012). The proposal will be backed up by the study of lyrics produced by the Hungarian alternative rock band Quimby.

The interpretation to be offered here departs from the received view that is dominant in the rhetorical tradition; for example, it rejects the need for situating apostrophe in the system of figures of speech. Instead, it makes an attempt at the cognitive linguistic adaptation of certain insights of literary theory (cf. Frye 1998, Culler 1981) about the relationship between apostrophe and lyrical poetry. My departure from the rhetorical tradition is motivated primarily by its basic incompatibility with the view of meaning characteristic of functional cognitive linguistics. From the adopted perspective, meaning is not seen as a mental object existing prior to linguistic activity, but rather as an intersubjective act (within a scene of joint attention) which allows its participants to construe and share their experiences of the world (cf. Sinha 1999, Croft 2009, Verschueren 1999). Once the social character of linguistic cognition is taken as a point of departure, it is worth devoting special attention to apostrophe, given the inherently discursive basis of this figure of speech.