Discursive space in Kazuo Ishiguro's "An artist of the floating world": A qualitative content analysis through the spatial triad

Abstract

Representation of space in the narrative texts is among essential linguistic productions and concerns applied linguistics particularly from psychological and educational perspectives. The significance of the present study lies in its attempt to increase awareness of settings in which human beings are involved. The aim of this study is to carry out a qualitative enquiry into the textual representation of space in Kazuo Ishiguro's narrative text An Artist of the Floating World by using Henri Lefebvre's conceptual spatial triad. Probing into characters' thoughts, beliefs, and dreams presented through various modes of discourses, the study explores the verbal characteristics of discourse through which space is illustrated and shows that An Artist of the Floating World is marked with affluent spatial verbal indicators to analyse. The researcher used qualitative content analysis, drawing on the theory of "narrated social settings" and utilized Lefebvre's terminologies to carry out stylistic discussions. Hence, from a linguistic perspective, the study attempted to make inferences about textual space representations, conceiving space as a verbal product as much as a social one. Relying on the fact that the narrated social space is constructed by three components of the spatial triad, the study explores the linguistic markers and verbal indicators through content analysis. Findings are discussed with reference to the key words and critical concepts of (a) The Spatial Practice (Perceived Space), focusing on the representation of everyday routines and the functional space, (b) The Representation of Space (Conceived Space), dealing with space representation, designed by architects and urban designers according to ideology, and (c) The Representational Space (Lived Space), emphasizing the significance of cultural and subjective imagination. The study showed that settings are part of the characters and cannot be isolated from the human persona. It also showed that settings are linguistic productions of the minds of the characters. The study concludes that descriptive textual data produced in Ishiguro's narrative text produces certain discursive space indicated by verbal elements loaded with social, ideological and experiential implications.