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What do we learn from dialogues in fiction?

Project description

Comparing fiction with real-life dialogue

The ability of literature to inspire reflection and provide insights to readers about their own social interactions is a long-debated question. A more formal approach, exploring the role of fictional dialogue and juxtaposing it with current psycholinguistic and neuroscientific findings, is the focus of FictDial, a collaborative project of the Norwegian Reading Centre and the University of Oslo. Reading and cognitive science research join forces to examine literary influence on real-life situations by asking specific questions, such as whether literature can influence empathy or improve our understanding of codes of social interaction.

Objective

FictDial investigates the function and processing of dialogue in literary fiction in exchange with what we know about real-world conversational dialogue and, thereby, aims to bridge a gap between the current psycholinguistic and neuroscientific knowledge of verbal interactions (conversations) and literary research. Its starting point is the suggestion that reading literary fiction can augment our capacity for social inference and empathy. The project aims to understand 1) what could be learned from fictional (literary) dialogues about every day social interactions (objective 1), 2) how fictional dialogues are processed (objective 2) and 3) how these dialogues affect the knowledge of adults and adolescents about real-life social interactions (objective 3). It applies methods from different disciplines from qualitative, literary analysis to behavioral experiments and measurements of eye-movements. Fictional dialogues are studied with special attention to gender-specific ways of verbal interactions, and mechanisms of social learning are examined in relation to embodied experiences and immersion during reading. The project is hosted by the Norwegian Reading Centre, with a secondment at the University of Oslo, involving experts from education, empirical reading research, narratology and cognitive science. The proposed project includes activities of dissemination and communication to the academic sector but also to teachers, pupils, and policy makers. The research, training and publication activities of the project will enable me to enhance my profile as an independent researcher.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

Keywords

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Funding Scheme

MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2018

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITETET I STAVANGER
Net EU contribution
€ 214 158,72
Address
KJELL ARHOLMS GATE 41
4021 Stavanger
Norway
Region
Norge Vestlandet Rogaland
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 214 158,72