A Study Of Steve Jobs From The Perspective Of Cognitive Poetics

As one of the most influential contemporary writers in modern America, Walter Isaacson is a former executive at CNN and Time who has written best-selling biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, etc. His boldly truth-telling biography Steve Jobs has received widespread concern all over the world since its birth in 2011. In the past several years, the study of the very literary work has mainly concentrated on aspects like Steve Jobs’ great business mind, professional management skills and powerful leadership, on the narrative characteristics and styles of biography writing, or simply on the translation strategies applied in different Chinese versions of the book. Hence, with the help of the Figure-ground Theory represented by Peter Stockwell especially, this dissertation attempts to interpret Steve Jobs from the perspective of Cognitive Poetics through a detailed analysis of how the reader’s attention focuses on Steve Jobs, whose prominence in all the self-construction respects made him out of the ordinary, thus proving that Figure-ground Theory is of great power in the field of textual interpretation.Figure-ground Theory, first proposed by the Danish psychologist Rubin, mainly bases on salience principle. It is believed that figure is the prominent cognitive concept that receives the most attention, while ground is the part that sets off the figure; and that the two cannot be perceived simultaneously. In other words, with complete shape,structure and coherence, figure is the prominent part of perception, inclined to attract more attention; whereas ground is the undifferentiated part with vague details, inclined to be easily neglected. As to cognitive features, reader’s attention being attracted is the counterpart of prominence; but readers tend to alter their understanding of figure and ground in accordance with their constant attention shift in the dynamic process of reading literary works.(Wang, 2012)The dissertation is divided into five chapters. A brief introduction of the research background, methodology, and structure appears in the first place; the basic framework of Figure-ground Theory and brief introduction of Steve Jobs comes afterwards, and followed by the analysis of both loser and winner Steve Jobs respectively in Chapter 4which attempts to apply Figure-ground Theory and its relationship with the reader’s attention; then the last chapter arrives at a natural conclusion that the reader’s attention focuses on Steve Jobs as the main figure because of his prominence in personality consistence, designing coherence, and career competence; and through the detailed analysis, it proved that Figure-ground Theory is of great power to the explanation of literary text, offering a new perspective for the interpretation of biographic works.