LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 25:9 September 2025
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A Cognitive Stylistic Analysis of Mind Style in The Parable Of The Wicked Husbandman

Comfort, Odochi Anosike

Abstract

This study employs cognitive stylistic approaches to the parable of the Wicked Husbandman in Luke's Gospel, focusing on how linguistic features construct mental styles and influence interpretation. Using Text World Theory and Schema Theory, the analysis examines two English Bible translations, the New King James Version (NKJV) and the New International Version (NIV), to explore how differences in diction and syntax affect meaning. Findings reveal that the vineyard owner's mental style is encoded through material and mental processes that highlight patience, persistence, and eventual justice, whereas the tenants' worldview is shaped through verbs of violence and rebellion, indicating their rejection of authority. Deictic structures frame the parable within familiar cultural schemas of land ownership, inheritance, and stewardship, guiding readers towards theological interpretations of obedience and judgment. Variations in translation add nuance: the NKJV's elevated diction underscores solemnity and divine authority, while the NIV's straightforward phrasing stresses immediacy and human conflict. The study contributes to stylistics by extending cognitive frameworks into biblical discourse and to biblical interpretation by demonstrating how translation shapes worldview construction. It concludes that parables are linguistically rich sites where language, cognition, and theology intersect to influence moral and spiritual understanding.

Keywords:Cognitive stylistics, Mind style, Text World Theory, Schema Theory, Biblical parable, Gospel of Luke

Introduction

Cognitive stylistics has become a vibrant interdisciplinary field, drawing on linguistics, psychology, and literary studies to explain how readers process and interpret texts. At its core, it examines how linguistic patterns trigger mental processes such as perception, memory, and schema activation, thereby shaping literary interpretation (Simpson, 2004; McIntyre, 2008). Stockwell (2002) characterises it as "a new way of thinking about literature," one that places language within cognitive science, while Gavins and Steen (2003) emphasise its focus on the systematic description of linguistic features. This perspective broadens the scope of stylistics by highlighting cognition's role in textual engagement, showing that interpretation is not solely a linguistic act but also a cognitive one.

A central idea in cognitive stylistics is mind style, defined by Fowler (1977, p.103) as "any distinctive linguistic representation of an individual mental self." Later refined to refer to the worldview of an author, narrator, or character (Fowler, 1996), mind style highlights how lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic choices encode specific perspectives. Leech and Short (2007) describe it as a way of capturing how a fictional world is understood, while Semino (2007) demonstrates how deviations in representation reveal unusual or striking viewpoints. Therefore, mind style provides a framework for analysing how texts linguistically construct mental worlds and influence interpretation.

Although mind style has been widely studied in modern fiction, poetry, and drama (Freeman, 2000; Semino & Culpeper, 2002; Hoover, 2004), its use in biblical texts remains limited. However, parables, as concise narratives with layered metaphorical and cultural meanings, are particularly well suited for such analysis. The parable of the Wicked Husbandman (Luke 20:9-19) demonstrates this richness: it uses familiar agricultural imagery, culturally embedded schemas of authority and inheritance, and stark contrasts in character behaviour to communicate theological truths. A cognitive stylistic approach helps us examine how these elements shape the mind styles of the vineyard owner, his servants, and the husbandmen, and how readers interpret meaning through linguistic cues.

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Comfort, Odochi Anosike
Faculty of Arts
Department of English and literary studies
Bingham University-Karu
Nasarawa State Nigeria
comfortanosikeI7@gmail.com

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