ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: CHI-THINKING: CHIASMUS AND COGNITION Patricia Ann Lissner, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation Directed by: Professor Mark Turner Department of English The treatise proposes chiasmus is a dominant instrument that conducts processes and products of human thought. The proposition grows out of work in cognitive semantics and cognitive rhetoric. These disciplines establish that conceptualization traces to embodied image schematic knowledge. The Introduction sets out how this knowledge gathers from perceptions, experiences, and memories of the body’s commonplace engagements in space. With these ideas as suppositional foundation, the treatise contends that chiastic instrumentation is a function of a corporeal mind steeped in elementary, nonverbal spatial forms or gestalts. It shows that chiasmus is a space shape that lends itself to cognition via its simple, but unique architecture and critically that architecture’s particular meaning affordances. We profile some chiastic meanings over others based on local conditions. Chiastic iconicity (‘lending’) devolves from LINE CROSSING in 2-D and PATH CROSSING in 3-D space and from other image schemas (e.g., BALANCE, PART-TO-WHOLE) that naturally syndicate with CROSSING. Profiling and iconicity are cognitive activities. The spatio-physical and the visual aspects of cross diagonalization are discussed under the Chapter Two heading ‘X-ness.’ Prior to this technical discussion, Chapter One surveys the exceptional versatility and universality of chiasmus across verbal spectra, from radio and television advertisements to the literary arts. The purposes of this opening section are to establish that chiasticity merits more that its customary status as mere rhetorical figure or dispensable stylistic device and to give a foretaste of the complexity, yet automaticity of chi-thinking. The treatise’s first half describes the complexity, diversity, and structural inheritance of chiasmus. The second half treats individual chiasma, everything from the most mundane instantiations to the sublime and virtuosic. Chapter Three details the cognitive dimensions of the macro chiasm, which are appreciable in the micro. It builds on the argument that chiasmus secures two cognitive essentials: association and dissociation. Chapter Four, advantaged by Kenneth Burke’s “psychology of form,” elects chiasmus an instrument of inordinate form and then explores the issue of Betweenity, i.e., how chiasma, like crisscrosses, direct notice to an intermediate region. The study ends on the premise that chiasmus executes form-meaning pairings with which humans are highly fluent. Key terms: chiasmus, rhetorical figure, cognitive rhetoric cognitive semantics, iconicity, Kenneth Burke CHI-THINKING: CHIASMUS AND COGNITION by Patricia Ann Lissner Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland at College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2007 Advisory Committee: Professor Mark Turner, Chair Professor Per Aage Brandt Professor Jeanne Fahnestock Dr. Michael Israel Dr. Richard Klank Dr. Elizabeth Loizeaux ©Copyright by Patricia Ann Lissner 2007 ii PREFACE On an otherwise uneventful day in 2005 a friend telephoned to bemoan that her brother- in-law had decided to accept a new job in a city two thousand miles away. The upset traced to her unhappiness over the coming loss of his companionship and emotional support. Downhearted and distracted, she remarked of the relationship, really more to herself than to me, “We’re fric and frac.” Then, with only the barest of pauses, she continued, “We’re frac and fric. Always together.” What this brief story has to do with the text before you will become evident shortly. But first I want to share a second anecdote. In 2006, I received a birthday card from a different friend. The outside of the card had this salutation: “Like a great wine, we get better as we get older!” To this statement, the inside contained a corrective: “Or rather, as we get older, we feel better with lots of great wine!” These two communications—one glum, the other merry; one spoken in the spur of the moment, the other purposeful and dreamed up for commercial sale—bear, despite their considerable differences in purpose, context, and origination, a strong structural likeness. Both the fric–frac vocalization and wine–better–older message repeat and reverse linguistic items within the small compass of their respective wholes. These types of occurrences, whereby linguistic constituents double and crosswise (i.e., backward) arrange over the span of a stand- alone articulation, has a name. Chiasmus. The name may seem exotic, and, thus, suggestive of rarity. Indeed, some dictionaries or thesauri deem it not worthy of an entry. However, the linguistic phenomenon to which the word refers is not the least strange, nor is it at all uncommon. The chiastic examples are not iii provisions from friends intent on articulating or sending me chiasma to fill a treatise on the subject. I am gifted in my friends, but not in this particular regard. Neither the fric–frac speaker nor the birthday card selector, who are long-time personal friends, but not professional colleagues, know the term chiasmus nor have any concept about what it has to do with. Despite their unfamiliarity with the word and with any of its formal attributes, they exhibit a fluency and taken-for-granted preference for chiasmus. These ideas lay a cornerstone for the project ahead. The project takes as its suppositional foundation that chiasmus is not a specialty exclusive to rhetoricians, literature elitists, language adepts, or even those with the flair, now and again, for a clever turn of phrase. Rather, we all use and understand chiasmus, because it is a major conductor of human thought, reasoning, learning, and expression. To erect and establish this idea is the major goal of the pages that follow this one. Over the course of this enterprise, I would ask that you, my reader, keep tucked in a corner of your mind, the fric-frac speaker and the greeting card selector. We will want to think on them as we examine chiastic performances that range from the humdrum to the virtuosic. The reason why? Because, they are us, originators and receivers fluent in and entirely up to the masterminding performed via chiasticity. iv DEDICATION Richard W. Weisbeck For the ‘funnies,’ tightly-laced ice skates, parades and licorice sticks, and the strength of hammer and nail construction Elizabeth J. Weisbeck For grace and favor, elegance and art, gentle selflessness, and gardens for beauty and dreaming Margaret J. (Lissner) Cartwright For non-berating berating, patient impatience, and uncompromising belief Christopher R. Lissner For Chris, without whom v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I take as true that accomplishment rests in passion. No better exemplifier of this truth is my academic advisor and guide, Mark Turner. What I was quick to learn about Mark is that his greatest investment, in enthusiasm, interest, participation, and time, is in that which intrigues others and prompts them to further inquiry. This project of multiple fascinations, with a tendency to grow like Topsie, found in Mark unstinting encouragement and intellectual support. Any portion of the treatise that might happen to capture a reader owes to Mark Turner’s willingness to allow those under his tutelage to take intellectual risks and follow their mind’s leads. On the personal level, his suggestions and counsel, always kept to a minimum, never failed to be that looked for, but seldom found combination of the carefully reasoned, the scrupulously fair, and the practical. It has been and will remain a privilege to call myself a student of his. Professor Jeanne Fahnestock opened the intellectual world of rhetoric for me and did so, I strongly believe, as no one else could. This belief is founded in classroom experience. The first weeks in Jeanne’s “Contemporary Rhetoric” graduate seminar found me, at first, recalcitrant to a subject I felt to be foreign. But well before the semester was over, I had redirected my scholarly interests, having gone from a resister of rhetoric to a convert. Jeanne Fahnestock’s depth of knowledge and her thoroughgoing, balanced examinations proved to be their own persuasive devices. Her ability to get to the quick of an issue, its rhetorical tipping-point, in whatever field astounds. Her mindfulness and considered approach carry over into her person. Jeanne is genuinely kind, caring, and delicately mindful of others. I was most fortunate to have Dean Elizabeth Loizeaux’s careful reading and assessment of the treatise. The exemplary scholarship Beth carries so lightly has furthered understanding. Despite a taxing administrative and teaching schedule, Beth has been a steadfast supporter of my work, encouraging me in large and small ways. I am indebted to her for her remarkable geniality and good graces. Appreciation is due to Michael Israel, also of the Department of English, for the vigor and earnestness with which his recommendations were detailed. Michael was kind enough to commit time and intellectual energy to a graduate student whose interests range outside his scholarly sphere. Professor Richard Klank of the University’s Art Department and Art Studio brought welcome lights to this project: a perspective from outside literature and linguistics and a readiness to seek out alignments between disciplines that tend to remain segregated in the academy. His insights, opinions, and questions added greatly to the conversation. Richard’s zest for discovery and challenge are infectious. I am pleased to have this new friend in the visual arts who shares several intellectual interests, Henri Focillon among them. It was a tremendous honor to have Professor Per Aage Brandt elected as a special member to the defense’s Advisory Committee. That Dr. Brandt should entertain my ideas and work, read the treatise with such a fine, deeply versed interest, and travel from Case Western University to attend the dissertation’s defense was a scholarly act of exceptional generosity and intellectual gallantry.