Insights From Mental Model Theory and Cognitive Narratology as a Tool for Content Selection in Audio Description

Abstract

One of the main questions in audio description (AD) to which no systematic answers have been provided yet, is how to decide what information you include in your description and – if there is not enough time to describe everything – how you prioritize that information. In the present paper I want to propose an answer to this problem by asking the question: how do audiences process (filmic) stories and what information do they need to process them? The basic idea underlying this question is that people process and interpret stories by creating mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983) of these stories. The paper explains how these models are created, what information is necessary to create them and what is optional, thus helping describers to decide what information in their description is “need-to-have” and what is “nice-to-have”. The theoretical explanation will be applied to the opening of the film Slumdog millionaire (Boyle, 2008), to illustrate how the theory works and can be used in daily practice.