Knowing, Unknowing, Believing stances and characters’ dialogic identities in the Harry Potter books

In a previous paper (Philip et al. 2013) we presented the analysis of the main characters’ identities, as they emerge from the dialogues in Chapter 10 of the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, in relation to their Knowing, Unknowing, and Believing epistemic stances. The aim of the present study is to expand this analysis to all seven books of the same saga, in particular focusing on how Harry and Lord Voldemort negotiate, construct, and develop their identities and how they evolve in what they know, believe, and do not know through the dialogues in the seven books. This study also aims to compare this linguistic analysis to a literary one. The results show that the epistemic roles in the dialogues support the characters’ identities in the narrative.