VIEWPOINT 1

Journal of Researches in Linguistics, 2024

In cognitive stylistics, “deixis” is deemed one of the core linguistic elements through which both the physical and ideological stances of the participants in fictional narratives, namely the narrator and the character(-focalizer)s, are demonstrated. This study aims at investigating the cognitive functions of the different kinds of deixis, i.e., perceptual, spatial, temporal, social, textual, and compositional deixis, in The Bell (1958), a critically acclaimed novel by the British philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch. Because of its special narrative discourse, in particular the use of variable internal focalization, Murdoch’s novel proves to be a proper case for exploring how deixis impacts upon the (implied) reader’s cognition of the story. Thus, utilizing a descriptive-analytic method, the present research examines the text worlds and mind styles shaped in this novel through various kinds of deixis, among other textual elements, and explores the relationship between these text worlds and the way they inform the reading process. To achieve this goal, this qualitative study draws upon Peter Stockwell’s (2019) reformulation of the cognitive deixis theory to examine selected extracts from Dora Greenfield’s and Toby Gashe’s discourses in this novel, as two of the major character-focalizers. The findings suggest that deictic expressions serve a significant function in appreciating the characterization of the fictional personages, their relations, and consequently the narrative’s overall theme, thereby affecting and somehow directing the reading process. This mainly occurs through the reader’s cognitive pushes and pops in and out of the different layers of the narrative discourse as well as projecting the narrator’s and character-focalizers’ text worlds or deictic fields and constantly shifting among them. By foregrounding the role of deixis in narration, this study carries significant implications for cognitive stylistics of prose fictional narratives, providing a deeper appreciation of the relationships between characters and between characters and fictional settings in such texts.

Target, 2011

Point of view in narrative has been identified in literary stylistics through the use of deixis, modality, transitivity and Free Indirect Discourse. These findings have also been applied to literature in translation (Bosseaux 2007). This article focuses on deictic cues in the narrative structure of Canne al Vento by Grazia Deledda in the original Italian and the English translation, following an earlier study focussing on constructing a particular point of view through mental processes of perception, the translation of which did not always reflect that point of view (Johnson 2010). Data emerging from a corpus-assisted study is examined qualitatively using a systemic-functional model in order to assess to what extent the point of view constructed by these cues in the ST is conveyed in the novel in translation.

Semantics and Linguistic Theory, 2017

In this paper, I argue for the existence of two distinct kinds of protagonists’ perspective taking in narrative texts. The first, Free Indirect Discourse, represents conscious thoughts or utterances of protagonists and involves context shifting: All context-sensitive expressions with the exception of pronouns and tenses are interpreted with respect to the fictional context of some salient protagonist (Schlenker 2004; Sharvit 2008; Eckardt 2014, Maier 2015). The second, which I dub viewpoint shifting, does not necessarily represent conscious thoughts or utterances and it does not involve context shifting. Rather, a situation is described as it is perceived by a salient protagonist or in a way that reflects the doxastic state of such a protagonist, not with respect to the Common Ground (CG) of narrator and reader. While FID is only available at the root level, i.e. at the speech act level, viewpoint shifting is available at the level of finite matrix clauses.

Exploring possible readings of point of view and focalization through my experiences with photography, I found that narrative “depth of field”—an effect roughly analogous to that observed in photographs and manifest in our binocular vision—can prove helpful when interrogating some of the ways in which narrative “works” on a reader. To clarify and explore the potential of this idea, I start by briefly examining the concepts “plane of critical focus” and “depth of field” as they relate to the visual arts, particularly photographs. These working understandings are then extended to corresponding definitions pertinent to narrative. Narrative focus and narrative depth of field are further developed and informed as to possible textual markers signaling a point or plane of narrative focus and delimiting the corresponding depth of that field of focus or, conversely, indicating any obscuring “circles of confusion” surrounding that point or plane. After considering connections to readers’ (en)vision(ing) in response to narrative description, the concepts are further extended to considerations of temporal depth of field (in terms, for example, of the degree to which character histories are developed) and semiotic depth of field (in which the diction, syntax and abundance of narrative signage may indicate a particular perspective). Illustrative examples suggesting the facility and potentially useful range and scope of application for these concepts are taken from the short fiction of Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway. Finally, the analogy to visual arts is resurrected to suggest an explanation for the way in which readers’ visual/temporal/semiotic readings (mental “snap-shots” of various textual effects) coalescence into a final image of the text as a whole, as the end of the narrative is approached.

This article is mainly focused on one of the elements of the narrative, focalization that is at work along with narration to produce desired literary effects. Focalization is basically a cognitively-minded narratological concept that deals with perceptual, psychological and ideological stances adapted in the narrative by either narrator(s) or character(s). In focalization studies we focus on the question of how the reader responds to the narrative drawing on the textual devices provided by the above stances. These assumed viewing positions attribute certain taint and color to narrative and help the reader to infer how the existents of the two levels of story and discourse perceive the fictional world and how they are related.

Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2019

This paper explores deictic shifts in fiction translation. It studies how deictic shifts affect the spatial-temporal and psychological point of view in four Arabic translations of Jane Eyre and A Farewell to Arms. The study reveals a tendency in translation to (i) use more spatial and temporal deixis, (ii) use more proximal than distal forms and (ii) use forms that are more marked for emotional space than physical space. This points to a translated narrative with a more emphasized spatial-temporal dimension, higher emotional proximity and empathy, and more marked psychological perspectives and voices. These shifts reposition the narrator and the other speaking characters. Based on the textual data, these shifts are best seen as traces of translators’ interpretive work and their second materialization of the original voices; the traces of the translators’ efforts to re-contextualize the original story based on their mental representation of the original perspectives.

Deictic shift theory (DST) was developed as a model of the construction and comprehension of all types of fictional narrative. With respect to the participant structures of texts, however, DST researchers have focused their attention on deictic shifts in third-person narratives, leaving first-person narratives unanalyzed from this theoretical perspective. As a result, DST in its present form does not adequately account for the variety of manipulations of a range of perspectives that may be achieved in firstperson narratives. Nor has DST been systematically applied to texts whose participant structures undergo extensive reorganization as the result of a surprise ending or other narrative twist.

The present paper used the modal framework of Simpson in doing a stylistic analysis of the story “Things You Don’t Know” by Ian Rosales, a highly-acclaimed Filipino writer. Since stylistics has always been concerned with how readers interpret the texts by focusing on linguistic choices, the modal choices of the writer based on Simpson’s modal framework would allow the readers to identify the attitude of the narrator. Indeed, results show that the epistemic type of modal was preponderant –this type apparently allows the readers to feel the narrator’s uncertainty in situations or events. In addition, this modal framework also enables the readers to further identify the shade of a text, since the choice of modals highlights either a positive, negative, or neutral shade of a story. Since the epistemic modal was the most pronounced, the story is definitely negative in shade, and this can be inferred in the short story where the narrator is uncertain what was going on in her everyday affairs. In turn, this uncertainty is emphasised by the narrator’s dependence on his/her perception of external appearances or surroundings.

In this essay I examine the interrelation of the various stylistic and grammatical features involved in expressing point-of-view, reported speech, and obviation in two Fox (Mesquakie) texts: Warrior Powers from an Underwater Spirit and Lazybones (henceforth WP and LB, respectively), as transcribed by 1912b) and translated into English by Dahlstrom (2000a;. I conclude that in these texts, character and narrator points-of-view constitute two distinct indexical domains that correspond (1), to the texts' reported and reporting speech frames, (2), to the "informal" and "formal" obviation paradigms described by , and (3), to divergent spatial orientations, temporal structures, and ideological perspectives.

The study of linguistics of literary discourse is a recent development in the global spread. Until 1982, efforts made in the seventies in this direction were by literary critics such as Chatman (1978), Ehrlich (1990), Fludernik (1993) and Mey (2000). No work that we are aware of has specifically studied how characters in fiction have been focalized through deictics alone. The common trend is that deictic features are taken along with other linguistic elements. Given the high place deictics occupy in human communication, it is essential to isolate them for study to explore the degree at which they influence character projection in fiction. This work will therefore not only add to the material on this area, it will also facilitate character appreciation in fictive works. The text, Ake, is extensively studied, and only the deictics that occur in conversations between characters are sampled. Examples of deictic usage are picked randomly to exemplify deictics of time, place and time as they occur in the text.