Relational deictic metaphors: real-reader response and interpretation of young-adult fiction

This thesis presents a unified and innovative contribution to the field of cognitive poetics, and the related field of cognitive stylistics. Its aims to establish the concept of relational deictic metaphors (also referred to as RDMs) as a framework within cognitive poetic analysis. It also aims to extend and augment the frameworks of cognitive deixis, conceptual metaphor, and text-world theory. In this thesis, the discussion centres on the ways in which real readers negotiate their own understanding and interpretation of the relational deictic information and conceptual metaphors they encounter in three passage from three young-adult novels; Why We Broke Up (Handler, 2011), To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Han, 2014), and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Albertalli, 2015). By combining these frameworks in an in-depth cognitive poetic analysis, I aim to explore how relational deixis and metaphor work together to inform and reflect social relationships and personal identity