Altered Consciousness in 1960s American Science Fiction: a Corpus-Stylistic Analysis

Elizabeth Oakes

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Chapter 5 Altered Consciousness in 1960s American Science Fiction: a Corpus-Stylistic Analysis

In: Poetics of Disturbances

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Elizabeth Oakes

Elizabeth Oakes
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 95–113

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004519886_007

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Abstract

During the 1960s, portrayals of altered, non-normative, consciousness became thematically key in exploring the intersection of social and psychological issues. In American science fiction, the depiction of altered states of consciousness, such as mental illness, dreams, and psychedelic drug trips, increased. Concurrently style shifted to a central concern of the genre as authors, editors, and academics began to perceive and promote the literary value of science fiction. This blended computational stylistic study describes styles of depicting altered consciousness in a corpus of award-winning American science fiction novels published between 1960 and 1969. Computational analysis with The Regressive Imagery Dictionary, a program that categorises the words of a text according to psychological paradigms, reveals lexical characteristics of style, and analysis guided by this dataset then interprets how stylistic detail creates distinct thematisations of altered states. The study aims to understand how nuances of word choice and sentence construction may affect how people conceptualize altered states, and how those notions affect, for example, treatment of the mentally ill. It poses the following questions: What linguistic strategies and semantic fields are used to represent altered states and how does the style of portrayal relate to the thematic import of altered consciousness? How do these themes affect, and how are they affected by, contemporaneous popular and professional attitudes towards mental illness? I demonstrate that stylistic differences in portraying altered states of consciousness at the lexical and syntactic level correspond to two distinct thematisations of altered states, which in turn are in dialog with contemporaneous socio-cultural currents. In one group the embodied style of altered consciousness gives rise to progressive themes of environmental and human interrelatedness, while through a style of movement and sensory prolixity, the second group portrays altered consciousness more conservatively as absence or chaos. This leads me to argue that the nuances of how we write about altered consciousness affects both societal understandings and how we regard and treat people undergoing such states.

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Poetics of Disturbances

Narratives of Non-normative Bodies and Minds

Series: Narratives and Mental Health, Volume: 2

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004519886

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 24 Oct 2024

Subjects
- Biology
  - Psychology
  - Interdisciplinary Sciences
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Literature, Arts & Science
  - English & Anglophone

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Chapter 5 Altered Consciousness in 1960s American Science Fiction: a Corpus-Stylistic Analysis

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Poetics of Disturbances

Narratives of Non-normative Bodies and Minds

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