Discourse dynamics of concepts in a war narrative: A cognitive-narratological analysis of Daniel Kraus’s "Angel Down"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26565/2218-2926-2026-32-01Keywords:
cognitive linguistics, cognitive discourse analysis,, cognitive narratology, corpus analysis, discourse dynamics of concepts, concept of WAR, narrative structure, Voyant Tools, frequency analysis, interpretation of conceptsAbstract
This study investigates the discourse dynamics of key concepts in the narrative through a corpus-based analysis of Daniel Kraus’s Angels Down, an immersive, cinematic novel about five World War I the soldiers who stumble upon a fallen angel that could hold the key to ending the war. Focusing on concepts such as WAR, SOLDIER, DEATH, FEAR, CAMP, and HOME, the research examines how lexical frequency, collocational patterns, and contextual distribution reflect the actualization and interpretation of meaning across the text. The corpus was segmented according to Voyant Tools platform, allowing both absolute and relative frequency measures to be calculated for each segment. Contextual analysis using KWIC, collocates, and other Voyant Tools instruments enabled identification of key concepts and analysis of their discourse dynamics through narrative functions and interpretation. Findings indicate that key concepts are highly dynamic, with their prominence and meaning varying according to narrative position and formal features such as sentence length and paragraph segmentation. The extended, looping sentences maintain the continuous activation of WAR and DEATH concepts, creating cumulative semantic intensity and reflecting psychological and emotional dimensions of the narrative. Paragraph breaks, while visually dividing the text, do not reset conceptual focus, allowing concepts to accumulate and interact with contextual elements, producing nuanced interpretations. These results support the hypothesis that conceptual units in narrative discourse are context-dependent and dynamically modulated by formal textual features. The study demonstrates the value of integrating quantitative corpus methods with qualitative interpretive analysis, providing a model for examining the interplay between narrative form and conceptual meaning. Implications extend to cognitive-narratological research, highlighting how textual structure, plot progression, and changes in narrative focus, can actively shape concept realization, salience, and semantic framing.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors, who publish with this journal, accept the following conditions:
The authors reserve the copyright of their work and transfer to the journal the right of the first publication of this work under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows other persons to freely distribute a published work with mandatory reference to the authors of the original work and the first publication of the work in this journal.
Authors have the right to enter into separate additional agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the work in the form in which it was published by this journal (for example, to post the work in the electronic institutions' repository or to publish as part of a monograph), provided that the link to the first publication of the work in this journal is given.
The journal policy allows and encourages the authors to place the manuscripts on the Internet (for example, in the institutions' repositories or on personal websites), both before the presentation of this manuscript to the editorial board and during review procedure, as it contributes to the creation of productive scientific discussion and positively affects the efficiency and dynamics of citing the published work (see The Effect of Open Access).
