The Psychological and Social Effects of Literariness: Formal Features and Paratextual Information

Abstract

: This chapter explores the effects of literariness on readers ’ psychological and social understandings within and beyond literary texts. Literariness is introduced as (a) a function of specific textual features that create linguistic fore-grounding and (b) the positioning of a text as literary through para-textual signi-fiers (such as non-fiction and fiction labelling). After a brief review of the history of research on literariness, we discuss empirical studies of the role of paratext (such as non-fiction and fiction labelling) in the processing of texts and connect this research to the concepts of identification and perspective taking. We introduce research on readers ’ responses to the formal features of narrative and high-light the role of literary techniques in the non-literary context of journalism.