Attention and Effort in the Transfer of an Orthographic Detail?
T. Merriam · Notes and Queries · 2012
DANIEL KAHNEMAN distinguishes between a so-called mental System 1, the automated activity of the associative memory in making intuitive decisions on the one hand, and, on the other, System 2 which requires attention and effort. System 1 entails conditioned patterns and habits of the mind, an unconscious mental ‘default mode’; System 2 entails the fully conscious checking and re-checking of facts for accuracy.1 The distinction of the two systems casts light on textual transference from one literary work to another. By textual transference, I mean the borrowing of themes, concepts, verbatim wordings in context, collocations in or out of context, rare words, frequency of function words and their common juxtapositions, and, in the case of handwritten manuscripts, characteristic orthographic features. Literary themes can engage System 2: writers of one text may well be conscious of thematic or topical parallels with the texts from which they borrow. Whether there is transference of deliberately chosen thematic material from one author to himself or herself (sometimes referred to as ‘self-plagiarism’), or from one author to another, both attention and intention are engaged. At the unconscious level of collocations and function words on the other hand, System 1 may dominate. If, for example, motivation is absent in the choice of words, the choice of phrasal patterns of words, or the choice of orthographic formations, involuntary habit is responsible.2