叙事与身体思维:体验认知研究

Narrative and the Thinking Body:Studies in Embodied Cognition

20世纪80年代以来,语用学家、哲学家、认知科学家和神经科学家在"体验认知"的基础之上发展了心智模型理论。这种理论的精髓在于身体和思想是不可分的:身体姿势和面部表情不局限于简单地表达和传递心智状态;身体也不只是我们用于来表达抽象概念的具体隐喻的源泉;体验是一种认知形式,它可能是非意识的,而不是有意识的。实验研究不断证实了身体会思考的假设。对感官知觉、身体运动和身体位置的描述是叙事的重要组成部分,目前对体验认知的关注为叙事研究提供了进一步解答叙事怎样阐释身体这个问题的恰当时机,并为跨学科研究做出了突出贡献。正如威廉.詹姆斯提出的"对现实运动的活的理解",叙事把身体置于一个由时间和空间构成的复杂网络。本文将对该领域中的新近研究进行综合概述,集中探讨三个方面,以期为进一步开展叙事相关研究提供参考。

Since the 1980s, linguists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists have been developing a model of the mind based on ＂embodied cognition. ＂ The essence of this theory is that the body is not just expressive of mental thoughts or merely a source for concrete metaphors to express abstract ideas, but that embodiment is a form of cognition ： it may be a non-conscious rather than conscious process, but experimental evidence increasingly supports the hypothesis that the body thinks. Since an important component in narrative is the description of sense perceptions, body movements, and body positions, the attention currently being given to embodied cognition makes this an opportune moment for narrative studies both to expand the questions for interpreting bodies in narrative and to make a distinctive contribution to interdisciplinary work in this field. Narrative situates the body in a complex web of temporal and spatial experience, offering what William James called a ＂living understanding of the movement of reality. ＂ My paper will briefly summarize some recent scientific studies in this area and then concentrate on three areas ripe for further investigation in narrative studies.