Lubna Zuhair AlHakeem, Dr. Mahmoud Reza Sabbagh & Dr. Zohreh Taebi Noghondari
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
Cognitive stylistics which is an area of stylistics in which interest has grown significantly over the last decade. It focuses essentially on schema theory which is a key idea within cognitive stylistics that derives primarily from psychology and artificial intelligence. The present essay selects a play named Detective Story written by the American dramatist Sidney Kingsley. The study will analyze the main character McLeod who is a New York City police detective, and his behaviors using Culpeper’s model of schema theory. Chosen scenes in the play will be presented and analyzed by applying schema concept on the main character. This study aims to show the role of schema theory in understanding the main character. The findings of study show that most often McLeod’s character and behaviors violate our familiar schema of a police officer. But any violation is definitely intended by the author to pass messages to the readers. The present study examines the consequences of such schematic violations in development of the character.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Second International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2018, Ahwaz.
