This article analyses the degree to which readers report a perceived sense of closeness to the events depicted in ‘Belgium’, the opening story of Mary Borden’s The Forbidden Zone. Theoretically, I draw on Ronald Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar, which models language primarily through its notion of construal, an aspect of which claims that -ing forms impose an internal perspective on a scene that results in the interpretative effect of it being ‘close by’. This study tests this idea empirically by utilising a quantitative tool (Likert scale) to elicit two sets of verbal data, which are then analysed qualitatively. My analysis demonstrates that readers respond to the events in the story and articulate the relationship of particular language features to their responses in different – and often surprising – ways. The study is the first in stylistics to empirically test the interpretative effects of verb forms as theorised by Cognitive Grammar and thus contributes new knowledge both by exploring how the landscapes of First World War literature are experienced by readers and analysing how the language of those landscapes may give rise to particular reported effects.

中文翻译：

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认知语法和读者的亲近感：对玛丽·博登的“比利时”反应的研究

本文分析了读者对玛丽·博登的《禁区》的开场故事“比利时”中描述的事件的感知亲近感的程度. 从理论上讲，我借鉴了 Ronald Langacker 的认知语法，它主要通过其解释概念对语言进行建模，其中一个方面声称 -ing 形式将内部视角强加于场景，导致场景“近在咫尺”的解释效果。本研究通过使用定量工具（李克特量表）来引出两组口头数据，然后对其进行定性分析，从而对这一想法进行了实证检验。我的分析表明，读者对故事中的事件做出反应，并以不同的——而且常常是令人惊讶的——方式阐明特定语言特征与他们的反应之间的关系。