Potential and Actual Cognitive-Emotional Engagement with Characters: A Response to Michael Whitenton and Bonnie Howe & Eve Sweetser

Abstract This article addresses the contributions by Michael Whitenton, and Bonnie Howe and Eve Sweetser, in the present volume. I endorse all three contributors’ use of cognitive-linguistic approaches, highlighting their helpfulness for the reconstruction of frames that shape the reading experience of audiences located in different historical and cultural contexts. The two chapters meticulously trace the complexity and dynamics of understanding exemplary biblical characters. I emphasise that the level of attention to linguistic detail displayed by cognitive stylistics is a desideratum for a reader-oriented analysis of a text’s potential reading effects. At the same time, I question some assumptions in cognitive linguistics concerning the cognitive-emotional processes real readers are actually likely to perform. The two chapters serve as a starting point for me to discuss general tendencies in recent cognitive and empirical literary studies, which have perhaps overstated the intensity and impact of some processes, while overlooking others that may be just as important.