Narrative Inquiry - Volume 29, Issue 2, 2019

In this article, we study the diachronic (re)construction of repeated WWII-testimonies. Specifically, we scrutinize how shifting master narratives in the social context may affect how stories are told in a particular time and place. We selected testimonies by two Belgian concentration camp survivors – one Flemish and one Walloon – who both wrote down their story twice, namely in 1946 and 1985. By comparing the “same” diachronically dispersed stories – thus addressing the temporal dimension – and the differences in the narrators’ regional background – thus incorporating the spatial dimension – we study how overlapping and differing storytelling environments influenced the narratives’ construction. In the analyses, we adopt an interactional-sociolinguistic approach to illustrate the storytelling environments’ influence upon the story formulations and the relativity of what is presented as the “truth”, since the narrators continuously adjusted their stories and identities to fit with the ever-evolving storytelling context.

This article explores fictionality within the context of the discourse of conspiracy. In particular it examines the phenomenon of ‘false flag’ narratives: alternative versions of an event constructed by individuals who have become convinced that a news story has in fact been staged for malfeasant purposes. The article uses figure-ground analysis, which facilitates examination of how attention is distributed within a text. Specifically, it enables an examination of the prominence and salience that is afforded to particular elements within a text, and how this can be used to construct a fiction out of facts. The article problematises the notion of using a pragmatic assessment of authorial intention to establish the fictive or nonfictive status of a text. Finally, it proposes that more work needs to be undertaken in considering instances where authors either do not know or are conflicted about what they believe.

This article studies the use of literature and narrative strategies of online antifeminist movements. These movements classified under the umbrella term the manosphere, wage ideological narrative warfare to endorse a misogynistic worldview. The case at hand concentrates on the radical faction of neomasculinity and its attempts to reinterpret the Western canon of literature. I propose that neomasculine readings of novels such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita are careless interpretations that ground themselves on specific traits of the texts while ignoring others. These readings attempt to evoke a sense of recognition in the community that believes in an alleged feminist conspiracy against men. Careless interpretations borrow from post-truth rhetoric and the feminist literary theory tradition of reading against the grain. When confronted over their controversial views, neomasculine figures renarrativize readings to benefit the promotion of neomasculine perspectives. This strategic use of literature is part of the narrative warfare discussed in detail.

This article approaches fictionality as a set of semiotic strategies prototypically associated with fictional forms of storytelling (Hatavara & Mildorf, 2017b). Whilst these strategies are strongly associated with fiction, they might also be used in non-fictional and ontologically ambivalent contexts to create ‘cross-fictional’ rhetorical effects. We focus on the representation of thought and consciousness. Using the concept of ‘mind style’ (Fowler, 1977, 1996; Leech & Short, 1981; Semino, 2007), we investigate the linguistic representation of the internal monologue of British Prime Minister, Theresa May, in a satirical newspaper article. The stylistic analysis of the PM’s mind style facilitates an account of the elaborate and nuanced mixing of May and the author’s ideological perspectives throughout the piece. We argue that this cross-fictional, stylistic approach better accounts for the satirical effects of fictionality in the text than those placing a premium on authorial intention and the invented nature of the narrative discourse.

The article presents a method for studying the factuality of narrative as a rhetoric. The need for such a method is apparent in the so-called post-truth climate, which sees us witnessing debates about semantic chimeras like “alternative facts” and “fake news.” The article arrives at its method by tackling challenges arising both in narrative theory and in fictionality studies. This involves developing models that let us take into account both the effects of local discursive features and the “macrogeneric” and “generic” frames guiding expectations about how communication is meant to work. The method is used in analysis of one of the controversial stories by the journalist Claas Relotius, who is currently being investigated in the forgery scandal of the magazine Der Spiegel.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, works depicting a post-human world have become a popular non-fiction genre. This kind of disanthropy is an extreme form of apocalyptic thinking. In this article, I examine one such disanthropic narrative, Alan Weisman’s bestselling non-fiction book The World Without Us (2007), using the theoretical framework of narrative fictionality studies. The World Without Us falls between the conventional oppositional pairing of factual and fictional narratives. The book bases its rhetoric heavily on scientific facts – or at least on scientific expectations – especially in its use of interviews with scientists. Nevertheless, the core idea of a world without humans is inevitably fictional since the presence of readers makes the book’s premise manifestly counterfactual and paradoxical. In my analysis, I adopt a rhetorical approach to fictionality and factuality to ask how particular techniques and strategies connected to fictionality and factuality are employed in Weisman’s text in order to discuss the anxieties, desires, hopes, and fears of the possibility of human extinction.

Using Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels as case study, this article presents a cognitive approach to fictionality and authorial intention using Text World Theory and Mind-Modelling. It investigates two forms of ontological distortion: readers’ (mis)classification of the novels’ genre (as autofiction or autobiography) and the problem posed by the author’s pseudonymic identity. The analysis has three parts: first, I conduct a Text World analysis of the novels’ syntactic/stylistic similarities to autobiography and, in doing so, reveal its ontological structure; second, I consider the ontological liminality of narration and the ways in which readers build an authorial mind-model of Ferrante; thirdly, I explore the assessment of critics and/as readers of the text’s fictionality and the impact of Ferrante’s pseudonym on perceptions of authorial intentionality and the authorial mind-model. Ultimately, I argue that a cognitive approach offers greatest insight into readers’ interpretations of authors and of fictionality.

It has become an increasingly common suggestion that we are currently living in a ‘post-truth’ world, where compelling storytelling has usurped the place of empirical facts in determining our shared social reality. The impression of reality becoming endlessly mutable by storytelling is bolstered by the idea of narratives as mediators of human experience, developed across humanities and social sciences, becoming part of a popularized post-truth discourse. In this discourse, stories are viewed as tools for constructing the world, and attributed power to create their own truths. I argue that the challenge for meaningful communication posed by this sentiment can be uniquely and effectively confronted in speculative storytelling, and especially currently enormously popular fantasy fiction. By creating thought experiments in conspicuously fabricated settings, fantasy stories highlight storytelling as a means for coming to terms with different realities – and provide their audiences with tools for critically examining and challenging the post-truth discourse.