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Language and Dialogue - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2013
Volume 3, Issue 1, 2013
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Negotiating narrative: Dialogic dynamics of Known, Unknown and Believed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Author(s): Gill Philip, Ramona Bongelli, Carla Canestrari, Ilaria Riccioni and Andrzej Zuczkowskipp.: 7–33 (27)More LessWithin the framework of KUB Theory (Bongelli and Zuczkowski 2008, Zuczkowski et al. 2011), information communicated verbally can ultimately be reduced to one of three categories: what the speaker knows (Known), what the speaker does not know (Unknown) and what the speaker believes (Believed). Dialogic communication can be considered as an exchange of information originating in one of these categories and directed towards another. The present study investigates the interaction of Known, Unknown and Believed information in the dialogues found in Chapter 10 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. It demonstrates how these three categories of information can contribute to a reading of the plot and its progression, and also how aspects of the protagonists’ characters emerge through the language they use in their dialogic communication.
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Politeness and social utopia in Friedrich Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell
Author(s): Christel Björkstrandpp.: 34–55 (22)More LessThis paper is an interdisciplinary analysis of Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell (1804). An initial study of its dramatic structure suggests a change in the relationship between the Swiss peasants and nobles. A further analysis, based on Brown’s and Levinson’s politeness theory confirms the development of a social utopia in the play, but also reveals that Wilhelm Tell plays a minor role in the social development described. The comparison of the play with earlier versions of the Tell legend highlights the roles of peasants and nobles in the establishment of the Swiss Confederation and suggests that Schiller elaborated extensively on the idea of a ‘common ground’ among the Swiss from different classes. The comparison between Schiller’s play and the contemporary German philosopher Johann Benjamin Erhard’s essay Über das Recht des Volks zu einer Revolution illustrates that Schiller’s social utopia develops in accordance with contemporary social visions. However, Tell’s act of murder separates him from the other Swiss protagonists in Schiller’s attempt to outline a righteous revolution, different from the one in France.
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Towards a lexicogrammatical pattern in Swedish crime novels
Author(s): Marie-Christine Klöspp.: 56–70 (15)More LessThe success of Swedish crime novels has been noted and discussed at length. Much of this commentary refers to a salient characteristic atmosphere which seems to be a common feature of most if not all Scandinavian crime novels. In this paper the potential of some recurring lexicogrammatical features to construct this characteristically gloomy and sombre atmosphere is presented and discussed. It will be shown that the vague feeling of unease which is perceived while reading these fictional texts is linguistically attestable. The analysis is conducted within the framework of M.A.K. Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar (SFG) which will be applied to three contemporary Swedish crime novels by different authors. One of the main goals is to illustrate by what means the authors instantiate perceptions and extra-linguistic phenomena in their fictional worlds.
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Orienting the reader: Discourse strategies for conversing about spatial information in George Orwell’s Burmese Days
Author(s): Marla Perkinspp.: 71–92 (22)More LessThis study examines strategies that authors can use in texts to keep readers active and accurate participants in the literary conversation and sets forth a taxonomy of those strategies: initiating the literary conversation, anticipating, preventing and correcting possible misunderstandings, and keeping readers engaged as interlocutors. A case study on Burmese Days, by George Orwell, reveals a pattern of interactions between stated information and assumed knowledge. Orwell’s strategies indicate that he assumes that readers are competent, participatory readers (literary conversants), and he uses that assumption to convey locational information. Among these strategies are the following main categories: emphasizing closed-class semantics over open-class implicatures; providing more detail about more important information and less detail about less important information; reviewing the most important information from multiple perspectives; and perhaps most importantly, leaving some information for readers to infer. All of Orwell’s strategies assume the best about readers’ knowledge and willingness to participate and leave room for a pragmatically productive give-and-take that closely resembles conversation.
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Semantic variations of the French verb voir and the discourse system in Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Rigodon
Author(s): Clara Ubaldina Lordapp.: 93–107 (15)More LessUsing Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative Operations and Notional Domains as its starting point, this paper presents a unified characterisation of the French verb voir and its variations. These variations are then related to its enunciative nuances. I argue that voir is used profusely by Céline in his last novel Rigodon and plays a significant role in the book’s discourse system. From the beginning of the narrative, voir appears as the core of a brilliant meta-narrative metaphor setting the tone and tying together the entire story. I conclude that, throughout the novel, different forms of this verb are either attributed to the narrator or to the main character (which are in fact both incarnations of the author himself). This strategy helps to enhance the sense of immediate presence in the narration and results in a permanent dialogue with the reader.
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How to distinguish hypothetical from actual speech in fiction: Testing the typicality hypothesis
Author(s): Laura Karttunenpp.: 108–128 (21)More LessThis paper investigates the connection between counterfactuality and stereotypicality in direct speech representation. In Monika Fludernik’s theory of schematic language representation, quotations typify rather than reproduce, and typicality coincides with stereotypical expressivity in the form discourse particles, among other features. By distinguishing hypothetical speech proper from the more general concept of typifying direct speech, we can see that in fiction hypothetical speech is not always stereotypically expressive. In conversational storytelling, discourse markers serve the functions of source-tracking, emplotment, and expressing the quoter’s emotions and evaluation. I discuss reasons why fiction differs from conversational storytelling in this respect. Fludernik’s treatment of discourse markers or ‘typicality markers’ in direct speech representation is here complemented with Bakhtinian notions of dual expressiveness, speech genres, and the responsive quality of utterances. The arguments presented are illustrated by passages from the fiction of Carol Shields, Peter Bichsel, and Junot Díaz.
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The dialogics of metaphor and simile in Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September
Author(s): Julia Kindpp.: 129–146 (18)More LessMetaphors and similes characterise Elizabeth Bowen’s writing. Despite frequent claims that this contributes to the lexical, grammatical and syntactic irregularities of her style and hence makes her writing difficult to understand, I show that her metaphors, similes and literal descriptions in a selected passage from The Last September function within conventional linguistic structures. While my analysis of metaphors and similes is conducted with reference to Bakhtin’s essay “Discourse in the Novel”, I use Martin and Rose’s model of Discourse Analysis (2007) and Steen’s study of metaphor in literature (1999) as practical tools for my analysis of the text. I discuss how ‘dialogic’ linguistic and pragmatic processes (in a Bakhtinian sense) influence the emergence of metaphorical meaning in Bowen’s novel and examine how the linguistic structures governing literal and metaphorical elements of description give rise to cognitive patterns which in turn serve to establish the novel’s theme by connecting the protagonist with her fictional setting in a meaningful way.
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Words between reality and fiction
Author(s): Edda Weigandpp.: 147–163 (17)More LessThe transition from reality to fiction can be best illustrated by analysing autobiographies which claim to describe the life of the author. Essentially they are based on memories, which poses the question whether what is being remembered really happened in this way. In what respect do ‘real’ stories differ from ‘literary’ or ‘fictional’ ones? Several literary autobiographies are analysed and contrasted with popular autobiographies. Are there special literary devices by which we can recognize that a story is intended to be fictional? According to Searle there is ‘no textual property that will identify a stretch of discourse as a work of fiction’. The paper discusses Searle’s position and identifies an interesting textual difference in the way persons are introduced in fiction. Even if there is no sharp division between fiction and non-fiction, there are a few verbal and cognitive means of the game which enable us to recognize how the text is intended.
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