Impact Factor: 1.0

Published since January 1, 1972

Journal of Literary Semantics

An International Review

ISSN: 1613-3838

Edited by: Marina Lambrou

Founded by: Trevor Eaton

About this journal

Objective
The aim of the Journal of Literary Semantics is to concentrate the endeavors of theoretical linguistics upon those texts traditionally classed as “literary”, in the belief that such texts are a central, not a peripheral, concern of linguistics.

The Journal of Literary Semantics, founded by Trevor Eaton in 1972 and edited by him for thirty years, has pioneered and encouraged research into the relations between linguistics and literature. It is widely read by theoretical and applied linguists, narratologists, poeticians, philosophers and psycholinguists. JLS publishes articles on all aspects of literary semantics.

The Journal of Literary Semantics is an international peer-reviewed journal that continues to have an important place in the intersecting worlds of literary semantics, cognitive poetics, and stylistics. The Journal aims to advance our understanding of the structures, dynamics, and significations of literary texts by publishing articles on theoretical and empirical research. This includes articles that relate the study of literature to other disciplines such as psychology and history, as well as articles dealing with pedagogy and other educational issues inherent in the study of literature. Central to each submission should be an engagement with the text (or texts) through the presentation, analysis and discussion of findings for original insights.

We welcome submissions on the following topics.

Topics

Stylistics
Cognitive poetics
Narratology
Pedagogical stylistics
Translation　
Adaptation　
Reader response and empathy studies
Psycholinguistics
Literary semantics

Article formats
Research articles, review articles

Your Benefits

Your benefits

Applying a theoretical linguistic approach to literary texts
Bridging the gap between linguistics and literary studies
Comprehensive and interdisciplinary focus on literary semantics
Internationally recognized reviewers and editorial board

History

The Journal of Literary Semantics was founded by Trevor Eaton in 1972.

Other publications in the field
Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
Mouton Series in Pragmatics [MSP]

Abstracting and Indexing

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IBZ (International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences)
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WorldCat (OCLC)
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Supplementary Materials

Topics

Volume 53 Issue 1

April 2024

Publicly Available April 10, 2024

Frontmatter

Page range: i-iv

Download PDF

Articles

April 9, 2024

You as a stylistic vector of otherness: from self-ascription to enactment in Kincaid (1988), Adichie (2009) and Azumah Nelson (2021)

Sandrine Sorlin

Page range: 1-17

Abstract

Based on a theoretical pragmatic model (Sorlin, Sandrine. 2022. The stylistics of ‘you’. Second-person pronoun and its pragmatic effects . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), this article compares the use of the second-person pronoun in three different narratives written by Black writers: Jamaica Kincaid’s essay, A Small Place (1988), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story “The Thing Around Your Neck” (2009) and Caleb Azumah Nelson’s first novel Open Water (2021). It highlights how the racial nature and assumed universality of you is exposed in the texts and argues that the pronoun works as a powerful vector of otherness, bringing the (white Western) reader to experience racism in most intimate terms. The three texts propose varied stylistic constellations that draw on the flexibility of the pronoun in terms of potential reference, entailing different positionings of audiences, going from “self-ascription” (Wechsler, Stephen. 2010. What ‘I’ and ‘you’ mean to each other: Person indexicals, self-ascription, and theory of mind. Language 86(2). 332–365) to “enactment” (Caracciolo, Marco. 2014. The experientiality of narrative . Berlin: De Gruyter; Popova, Yanna B. 2015. Stories, meaning and experience: Narrativity and enaction . London & New York: Routledge). The article also evidences how the inter/intra-personal pronoun triggers a blurring of traditional stylistic and narratorial labels and lines. Lastly, from an enactive perspective that sees reading as an intersubjective participatory act where meaning emerges in the very interaction between a teller and a reader, this article sees communicating as an act of coordination based on the metaphor, communicating is dancing , inspired by Azumah Nelson’s rhythmic novel.

April 9, 2024

Thackeray-type narrator revisited: portrayal of characters’ minds as narratorial performance in Vanity Fair

Masayuki Nakao

Page range: 19-38

Abstract

The traditional authoritative, obtrusive narrator, also known as the Thackeray-type narrator, has been excluded from the narratological study of consciousness representations, partly because scholars have a stereotypical view that such a narrator avoids descriptions of a character’s inside view, and partly because they dislike narratorial presence in the representations of figural consciousness. Taking Thackeray’s Vanity Fair as a typical example, this paper revisits these views and reconsiders the presentation of consciousness in terms of narratorial performance of narrative authority. With attention to the degrees of the reader’s involvement, it investigates how the narrator modulates various narrative techniques (psycho-narration, free indirect thought, narrated perception) to present the minds of the worldly male characters, how each technique functions in different narrative contexts through the interaction between the narratorial voice and figural consciousness, and how the narrator’s internal evaluation is subtly embedded in the immediate representations of consciousness to create intentional ambiguity.

April 9, 2024

Italian places in Japanese manga: a study on topophilia in graphic narratives

Francesco-Alessio Ursini, Giuseppe Samo

Page range: 39-65

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to offer an analysis on how Italian places act as key narrative units in Japanese manga. Building on a quantitative and qualitative corpus study, the paper investigates how culturally salient locations are embedded in these narratives. It is first shown that authors develop salient locations (“places”) as distinct entities playing key roles within narrative structures. It is then shown that these representations of places follow principles of cultural relevance, popularity, historical and geographical faithfulness. This is the case because authors creating manga set in Italy share knowledge and appreciation of Italian places and their cultural import with readers. These results are framed in a theory of geo-criticism and in a possible worlds analysis of places in fiction, hereby extended to graphic narratives.

April 9, 2024

Transitivity and agency in Richard Jefferies’s rural essays: an ecostylistic analysis

Annalisa Federici

Page range: 67-87

Abstract

This essay aims to provide an ecostylistic analysis of transitivity and agency in selected extracts from Richard Jefferies’s late nineteenth-century rural essays, which were collected in his so-called country books. Jefferies’s portrayal of the interconnection between humans and the natural environment has been variously described as “pantheistic”, a “pantheist revery”, or an “ecstatic communion”. The present study proposes to validate these claims by showing that Jefferies’s essays utilise patterns of transitivity to depict manifold relationships between human and non-human agents in placid landscape descriptions. These can be regarded as positive discourse praising the rural environment and humans’ entanglement with other animal and vegetable organisms. An in-depth scrutiny of the linguistic patterns of Jefferies’s texts, corroborated by the theoretical and methodological framework of (eco)stylistics and related disciplines (i.e. Systemic Functional Grammar), offers useful insights into the author’s ecosophy and holistic understanding of the human and non-human world. By conceptualising the various constitutive elements of the physical environment as active/agentive participants in particular types of processes, Jefferies gives special prominence to ecocentric, rather than anthropocentric positions.

Book Review

April 9, 2024

Margaret Freeman: The Poem as Icon. A Study in Aesthetic Cognition

Willie van Peer

Page range: 89-92

Volume 53 (2024)

Issue 1

Volume 52 (2023)

Volume 51 (2022)

Volume 50 (2021)

Volume 49 (2020)

Volume 48 (2019)

Volume 47 (2018)

Volume 46 (2017)

Volume 45 (2016)

Volume 44 (2015)

Volume 43 (2014)

Volume 42 (2013)

Volume 41 (2012)

Volume 40 (2011)

Volume 39 (2010)

Volume 38 (2009)

Volume 37 (2008)

Volume 36 (2007)

Volume 35 (2006)

Volume 34 (2005)

Volume 33 (2004)

Volume 32 (2003)

Volume 31 (2002)

Volume 30 (2001)

Volume 29 (2000)

Volume 28 (1999)

Volume 27 (1998)

Volume 26 (1997)

Volume 25 (1996)

Volume 24 (1995)

Volume 23 (1994)

Volume 22 (1993)

Volume 21 (1992)

Volume 20 (1991)

Volume 19 (1990)

Volume 18 (1989)

Volume 17 (1988)

Volume 16 (1987)

Volume 15 (1986)

Volume 14 (1985)

Volume 13 (1984)

Volume 12 (1983)

Volume 11 (1982)

Volume 10 (1981)

Volume 9 (1980)

Volume 8 (1979)

Volume 7 (1978)

Volume 6 (1977)

Volume 5 (1976)

Journal Impact Factor	1.0	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
5-year Journal Impact Factor	0.8	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
Journal Citation Indicator	2.86	2022, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2023)
CiteScore	1.1	2022, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2023)
SCImago Journal Rank	0.142	2022, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2023; Data Source: Scopus)
Source Normalized Impact per Paper	1.458	2022, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2023; Data Source: Scopus)

More information about journal rankings

Submit

Journal of Literary Semantics: Special Issue Guidelines
A special issue is a thematic collection of articles, guest-edited by an academic who is not a part of the Journal of Literary Semantics core editorial team. There are two issues of Journal of Literary Semantics per year (April and October) and October can be reserved for a special issue. The special issue typically contains 5-6 articles, plus book reviews.
If you have an idea for a special issue please refer to our guidelines.

Submission
Submissions should be sent directly to the Editor, Marina Lambrou: M.Lambrou@kingston.ac.uk

Your benefits of publishing with us

International and renowned Editorial Board
High-quality peer review
Every article easily discoverable because of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and comprehensive abstracting and indexing services
Optional open access publication
Secure archiving by De Gruyter and the independent archiving service Portico

Submission process

Submissions to the journal should be written in clear and concise English
Submitted manuscripts should be no longer than 7,000 words
Submitted manuscripts should be sent as a Word document
Authors whose native language is not English should have their manuscripts read by a native speaker before submission. Submissions should be sent to the Editor: Marina Lambrou
Peer review process (you will be guided through every step)
The journal operates a double-blind peer review that takes on average 3-4 months
If accepted: you have the option to publish it open access

Please note

An abstract of between 100 and 150 words must be submitted together with the article
Examples not in English must have aligned interlinear glosses and an idiomatic translation
Formatting and style: Once accepted for publication, the author(s) will be required to submit the final version electronically conforming to journal style. Please see the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet for details regarding journal style
Permissions: copies of any letters granting permission to reproduce illustrations or tables from other sources, or lengthy quoted passages, must be included with the manuscript
Corrections: authors are asked to check their manuscripts very carefully before submitting them in order to prevent delays and extra costs at the proof stage. Authors will receive PDF page proofs for correction which must be returned by dates given in the publication schedule
Offprints: upon publication, authors will receive electronic offprints (in PDF format) of their contribution
Before submitting a paper please get familiar with our Publication Ethics statement as well as Copyright Transfer agreement
Once your article is accepted you have the option to publish it Open Access
Our Repository Policy allows you to distribute 30 PDF copies of your published article to colleagues (the PDF has to include the information that it is an author's copy). Please also feel free to distribute the link to the online abstract
If you have any general questions please visit our FAQ page for journal authors

We look forward to receiving your manuscript!

Hybrid Open Access

Authors have the option to publish their article under an open access license. The standard article processing charge for a hybrid open access article is 2,000 Euro (plus VAT if applicable). Please note that corresponding authors from institutions with which we have a transformative agreement, can publish open access without paying the fee. More information on the eligible institutions and articles can be found here.

Editorial

Editor
Marina Lambrou; Department of Humanities, Kingston University; Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE, UK; e-mail: M.Lambrou@kingston.ac.uk

All correspondence concerning editorial matters and submissions should be sent to the Editor.

Founding Editor (1972–2002)
Trevor Eaton, Kent, UK

Editorial Board
Jean Boase-Beier, University of East Anglia, UK
Michael Burke, University College Roosevelt, The Netherlands
Billy Clark, Northumbria University, UK
Anne Furlong, University of Prince Edward Island, Canada
Marcello Giovanelli, Aston University, UK
Andrew Goatly, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, P. R. China
Brian McHale, The Ohio State University, US
Rocio Montoro, University of Granada, Spain
Louise Nuttall, University of Huddersfield, UK
Violeta Sotirova, University of Nottingham, UK
Masayuki Teranishi, University of Hyogo, Japan
Michael Toolan, University of Birmingham, UK

(Deutsch)

Online ISSN: 1613-3838
Print ISSN: 0341-7638
Type: Journal
Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
First published: January 1, 1972
Publication Frequency: 2 Issues per Year
Audience: linguists, literary scholars