Mental models in discourse production Atypical discourse and the role of event models in the narratives of depressed patients

A mental model is a partial and subjective cognitive representation of reality (van Dijk, 1985a). Van Dijk’s introduction of the mental model has helped explain the relationship between discourse and cognition. This thesis provides empirical support for and extends Tuen van Dijk’s theory regarding the role of mental models in the production of discourse. It does so by examining the influence of mental models on narratives produced by depressed patients in counseling sessions. Using tools from Systemic Functional Linguistics (Eggins, 2004), the thesis demonstrates how the verb choices can be used to examine the content of mental models, while clausal connections and narrative structure can be used to examine the discursive expression of mental models. Furthermore, local and global atypicalities in patients’ retelling of events suggest possible cognitive processes at work in the conversion of a mental model of an event to spoken narrative.