Attribution Theory and the Act of Performance

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LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School
1985
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John Walthall Creagh III
Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Creagh, John Walthall III, "Literature as Phenomenon: Attribution Theory and the Act of Performance (Oral,
Interpretation, Pre-Formance, Newcomb, Bakhtin)." (1985). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses.
4123.
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8610633
Creagh, John Walthall, III
LITERATURE AS PHENOMENON: ATTRIBUTION THEORY AND THE ACT OF
PERFORMANCE
The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical Col. PH.D. 1985
University
Microfilms
International
300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106

LITERATURE AS PHENOMENON:
ATTRIBUTION THEORY AND THE ACT OF PERFORMANCE
A dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the
Louisiana State University and
Agricultural and Mechanical College
in partial fulfil lment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
The Department of Speech Communication, Theatre,
and Communication Disorders
by
John Creagh
B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1973
M.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1982
December 1985
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people have been instrumental in the completion of this
project. However, my first thanks must go to Martha Nell Hardy who jerked
me out of complacency and into the Ph.D program at Louisiana State
University. Dr. Mary Frances HopKins is also deserving of gratitude; as
an exemplar of all that an interpretation scholar can be, she is a role
model for everyone in the field.
I also wish to thank Dr. J. Donald Ragsdale for introducing met o
attribution theory and encouraging me in the risky business of
synthesizing communication theory and interpretation. This openness of
perspective, coupled with the gentle firmness of Dr. Fabian Gudas and the
deep sensibilities of Dr. Billy Harbin, have had much to do with the
success of this study.
Special thanks must be reserved for my advisor Dr. Barbara
Becker--a woman of patience, sensitivity, and honesty—whose refusal to
accept less than my best will leave me eternally in her debt.
Finally, I am grateful to my wife Sara, whose drive, determination,
and encouragement during a time when she had her own best work to produce
motivated me to those same ends. And to my daughter Rachel, I owe the
passionate rebirth of any imaginative and creative spirit that I might
possess.
i i
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Acknowledgment......................................................................................................... ii
Table of Contents....................................................................................................... iii
Abstract........................................................................................................................ vi
Chapter
1. Literature as Phenomenon: Attribution Theory
and the Act of Performance............................................................ 1
Introduction......................................................................................... 1
Attribution Theory and the Act of Performance......................... 5
The Phenomenological Approach to
Attribution Theory........................................................................ 7
Symbolic Interactionism as Support for the
Phenomenological Perspective.................................................... 9
The Phenomenological Reduction.................................................... 12
Literature as Phenomenon................................................................ 19
The Phenomenology of Attribution ................................................ 21
Attribution as Symbolic Action ...................................................... 26
Directions for this Study.................................................................. 33
2. The Function of Attribution in the Performer’s
Experience of a Narrator.................................................................. 35
Basic Assumptions of Attribution Theory..................................... 37
A Very Brief History of Attribution Theory................................. 39
Attribution and Person Perception.................................................. 44
Actor’s Versus Observer’s Attributions:
The Performance Situation.................... 48
Festinger and the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance..................... 54
iii
Congruity Theory.............................................................................. 57
Process Versus Content in Attribution ......................................... 61
Attributional Theories: The Effects
of Attribution................................................................................ 63
Summary .............................. 65
Summary: Patterns of Attribution in
Literary Response.......................................................................... 66
Toward an Attributional Model of the
Pre-Formative Experience .......................................................... 69
Conclusion........................................................................................... 72
3. The Text as Other:
The Many Voices of Prose Fiction...................................... 74
A Phenomenology of Pre-Formance ............................................. 75
Attribution in the Experience of Reading..................................... 88
The Development of the Interpersonal Metaphor
in Literary Criticism.................................................................... 91
Psychological Balance in the Pre-Formative
Constitution of Textual Voices.................................................... 106
The Many Voices of Prose Fiction................................................. 109
Heteroglossia as a Rehearsal Method ........................................... 115
The Figural Voice.............................................................................. 122
4. The Function of Attribution in a Pre-Formative
Reading of "A Rose For Emily".................. 124
The Purposes of the Model .............................................................. 146
The Phenomenological Experience of the
Text-as-Utterance........................................................................ 147
Balance or the Strain toward Symmetry as the
Principal Dynamic of the Response to a Text ......................... 150
The Fundamental Attribution Error............................................... 154
Non-Common Narrative Behavior .................................................. 158
iv
The Figural Voice.............................................................................. 159
Conclusion........................................................................................ 171
5. Conclusion.............................. ............................................................... 175
The Performing Consciousness........................................................ 175
Attribution in the Performer’s
Engagement with a T ext.............................................................. 176
Attribution as an Aid in Forming a Performance......................... 181
A Final Example................................................................................ 183
Other Applications of the Attribution Model............................... 186
Intrinsic Applications........................................................................ 187
Extrinsic Applications...................................................................... 190
Conclusion........................................................................................... 191
Bibliography................................................................................................................. 193
Vita................................................................................................................................ 202
v