Construing the Child Reader: A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of the Opening to Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book ( 2009 ) charts the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is adopted by supernatural entities in the local graveyard after his family is murdered. This article draws on the notion of the “construed reader,” and combines two cognitive stylistic frameworks to analyse the op...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inChildren's literature in education Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 180 - 195
Main Author Giovanelli, Marcello
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.06.2018
Springer
Subjects
Adoption
Audience Awareness
Childrens Literature
Cognitive Processes
Education
Family Environment
Fiction
Grammar
Language and Literature
Language Education
Linguistics
Literary Devices
Original Paper
Social Sciences
Sociology
Neil Gaiman
Text World Theory
Stylistics
Cognitive Grammar
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Summary:Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book ( 2009 ) charts the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who is adopted by supernatural entities in the local graveyard after his family is murdered. This article draws on the notion of the “construed reader,” and combines two cognitive stylistic frameworks to analyse the opening section of the novel. In doing so, the article explores the representation and significance of the family home in relation to what follows in the narrative. The analysis largely draws on Text World Theory (Werth, 1999 ; Gavins, 2007 ), but also integrates some aspects of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 2008 ), which allows for a more nuanced discussion of textual features. The article pays particular attention to the way Gaiman frames his narrative and positions his reader to view the fictional events from a distinctive vantage point and subsequently demonstrates that a stylistic analysis of children’s literature can lay bare how such writing is designed with a young readership in mind.
ISSN:0045-6713
1573-1693
DOI:10.1007/s10583-016-9285-3