Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 10-30-2026

Abstract

The representation of mental distress in fiction has been the subject of much research. Western fiction has produced numerous cognitive stylistic studies investigating how linguistic choices can serve as an effective analytical method; however, the use of cognitive stylistic tools to examine this phenomenon in Arabic remains much more limited. Furthermore, including theories such as mind-style, possible selves, and subworlds to assess mental distress is another under-researched area in Arabic fiction. Some notable work on these theories includes Emmott and Sanford (2012) on subworlds, Semino (2014) on mind-style, and Bak (2015) on possible selves and mental distress. This paper utilizes qualitative tools, including cognitive stylistics theories: mind-style and narratological tools: narrative subworlds and possible selves, together with an analysis of musical and tarab related lexical/semantic fields to examine a narrator’s world view. Initial findings highlight the inventive ways that the narrator uses to express his mental distress. For instance, the use of music as a subworld to escape, and the use of possible feared selves and desired selves to cope. This study suggests that using this framework of analysis can render fuller results if applied to other forms of Arabic fiction

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