On ‘unspeakable sentences’: A pragmatic review

Journal of Pragmatics 13 (1989) 577496 North-Holland

Receiwed June 1988; revised version October 1988

For those who are accustomed to viewing language as a means for com,rrrunication, the phrase, ‘a sentence without a speaker’ may seem just as unthinkable as, say, ‘a building without bui ders’ : It may be f6r granted that where there’s a sentence there’s a speaker. So a which tries to monstrate the absence of the speaker might be untenable, o ut after sympathetic reading of her provocative work entitle Cs-sztsnces.one mav agree. to some extent at least, wit advances a theory that in the world of narration there exist a speaker, sentences which are independent of the usu r’unctioi3of the spoken language, viz. ‘unspeakable sentences‘. Ever since her ina raf article on free indirect Speech and Thought ST)) was published ii1 I973, ST has given rise to m IXllon and Kirchhofi on (1981)). %h of her previous articles ( to address the controve (1983 : 17)) even for iihmry generative grammar” (1983 : 17).

* RW~W of: Ann Bar?field, Umpeahble guuge qft;iction. IY&L kilosron: koutlec!gf

Sentences: Narration and ,Repre.sentation in CZCLam -42 K~gna

Paul.

address: H. Yamaguchi, Faculty of Education, Kanazawa IJniversity, 1-I Uchi, Kanazawa, Ishikawa 920, Japan. i v&h to express my gratitude to professor Masahiko Ohnuma for his guidance and valuable comments on the draft. I am also indebted to Michae:lCox and Ken-Ichi Seto for kirg@ ctaecking my English. Last of all, I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Jacob L. Mey, who recommended me to write this review article, ‘*

hthcx’s

0378-2166/89/$3.50 0 1989, Elsevier Science Publishers I&V.(North-Holland)

578

. H. Yamaguchi 1 On ‘Umpeakable Sentences’

oak deserves such Full of insights into ST and narration in general moment the most special attention. In fact, Unspeakab rettably, as far as stimulating and comprehensive work 1 know, Ranfield’s proposal has not been duly discussed in lingspistic terms (but cf. Woli (1986)): Although several counter examples to her theory have been offered by her literary opponents, its grammatical arguments have not been directly subject to linguistic comments. 9 this book, based misunderstanding on formal analysis of generative grammar, ha in literary circles. Therefore, there is a special need for linguistically proper ~v~l~~ti~~ of this imlX3 In addition to the li ligence mentioned above, there is another reason why 1 would like to att emgt a review of the book which was published the present article is an half a decade ago. (And this w .) Banfield aims to erely a linguistic but also a pra construct a grammatical theory of narration in terms of subjectivit Her proposal, therefo,rp-, sholuld rightly be accepted as a theoFf of gram-mar. ut as the subject of the book implies, the syntax of narration often calls for work fairly ground-bre laira i 4~ 91c Tme that BznMd’s ted speech in es the characteristic grammar of RST and general with a lot of illustrating examples. It is also true, however, that her rule-oriented grammatical analysis does not explain why RST ue interpretation concerning the assignment of point of view. r pragmatics. in this paper, would like to comment on anfield’s theory mainly hile introducing her arguments and from a pragmatic hpoint of view. appreciating them to an extent, I m clear where her theory is lacking in adequacy. I also present a few examples of which she does not take notice, in al context in which RST forms appear. Concentrafrom talking enough about her other unspeakable tences representing non-reflective ut thic will be excuse cause her entire the discussions

As a preliminary discussion to the grammatical analysis of R v&y, Banfield sets out to characterize the difference between S) and Indirect Speech (IS). (1) is the list of the con are absent in IS but present in IX: (la) sentences which have undergone root transformations (e.g., subject-atixiliary inversion, topica!ization, etc.) L

H. Ymaguchi 1 On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

579

non-embeddable expressive elements such 8s exclamations and verbless exclamatory st,,ntences incomplete senttences S ectkss i~qeratives direct address ifferent dialects or languages in introductory and embedded clau addressee-oriented adverbials such as ‘between you and I’ and ‘confidentially’. er example9 are:

(2a 1 ‘Absurd, she is,’ Clarissa insisted. (2b) Clarissa insistell that (*absurd she was. (PO29 \ she was absurd. 3 ‘Yes, this is lcvle,’ Constance sighed. ( a) (3b) Constance sighed that (*yes,) that was love. (p. 31) (4a )\ e answered, ‘Nt only upon the suffe&gs I have infE_=ted. answered that not o fferings he had inflicted. (p. 32) (4b) r Chubb rencated: ‘E (k] :ieated that to excttsc him. {p_33) (5b) not carry these orders.’ (Qa ) The private answered, ‘Sir, I ‘t carry out these orders. r) he cou The private answered that (6b) 33) unna yer think so yersen, like? said Cli , mocking the vernacula (7a ) *Clifford asked whether she didna think (?b) _ - __*_ tween you and me, she is lying.” John said, ‘ a (8 ) t between him and her she as lying. (p. 34) @b) *John said Upon examining the differences exemplified in (9-o-(), one may rightly redict that the reported clause of IS retains the features common to the is characterizable as an embedded clause wh!:reas the quoted clause of ences bet\veen these two independent sentence. In order to e IllCXkS anfield proposes to replace t initial symbol of the phrase structure (E stands for (ex es in Chomsky (1!)73), i.e., lies in recursivity : ression). The maio differen l Batield’s examples are not restrictedto Eng!ish sentences. She also cites French ex2mples in order to present“a special categoryof evidence making explicit Jvhatremainshidden in English” (p. 13). As can be known from these words of hers, Bangeld intends her theory to be universal. Here we should not misunderstand her intention. Her entire goal may be to construct a tical t;leoryon (narrative)‘style’which is characterizedby “the presenceor the absence of gta [the] subjective asp& of language” (p. 7), and therebv _ &mcnst-@ her non-communicz~ive theory of literaryw-ration (xe section 6). Therefore,the uGversal claim, I think, is made to her - ?=ary narration,but not to RST itself:which, though ubiquitous in kdogrammaticaltheory oar ..+,,eans for s--h and thought presentation. ~mpean lmqp2ges,may not be a ~universst-

H. Ymaguchi 1 On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

580

is recursive and embeddable, E by definition is no -embeddable. She hypotheon-embeddable expressive elements are directly generated under nd, therefore, barred from appearing in an embedded clause. She proposes several phrase structure rules to formulate the syntax of such expressive constructions as :

Were I will not touch upon the effect of the E node on the entire theory of generative grammar (about which Banfield &so holds silent), and concentrate Q ts the introduction of the node E brings to us instead on what benafi concerning the problem of subjectivity. The E node enables us to talk about eshes of the the expressions of subjectivity which have often evaded t where subjectivity lies. For example, according formal analysis: It makes c is an E, whereas the reported clause of IS is an to her the quoted clause of s complement, thus excluding the constructions listed in (1) (which imore or less reflect the speaker’s subjectivity). In this way, the intro tion of the E and IS. And node enables us to explain the syntactic differences between sion of expressive elements from an s complement, but us with an importan , introductory and qu as two different consecutive 3s. For instance, (10a) is derived transformatiesa % conjunction, provided that “this’ in (10’~

r said to me, “Oh, no, baseball in Japan is not baseball at h, no, baseball in Ja

(10 at all.

rat& because t ey fom two different r thechnical term for a sequence of one or more appropriately the quoted can introduce ents are attri is not the case 0 difkitiiii

25, Of

in IS. To illustrate this anfield analyzes the behavior of 6xpreosive constructions in I , among which questions and indirectly quoted excla i*wedin the embedded clause of indi including deictic adverbs, tense5 h.cd first and second person pronouns” 53). Interestingly, their .:++ .. ..-%pretation requires reference to the reporting aker instead of the reported speaker. These are some of her examples:

H. Yamaguchi / On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

581

Sir William asked himself, “There is no God?” *Sir William asked himself ther there was no God? (p. 53) John said, “That idiot of a doctor is a genius.” John said that the idiot of a doctor was a genius. (p. 5 Mary told me yesterday at the station that she would meet me there today. (p. 25) A directly quoted question like (1 la) can be paraphrased into an indirect form like (1 lb). The asterisk attached to (1 lb) is intended to show that the rephrased version can no longer retain the original interrogative force. And if (1 lb) is still understood to have interrogative force, it is normally ascz-&ed to the indirect reporter of the original question. In (12aj “That idiot of a doctor” reflects a particular psychological state and attitude of John, but when embedded in an indirectly reported clause this expressive phrase is not attributable to John, the quoted speaker, but instead to the speaking (quoting) I of the entire E. The deictic elements in (13) are calculated on the basis of the place and time in which the speaker of the entire sentence (“me”) reports Mary’s utterance. From these findings Banfield deduces a principle by the name of: ) I E I I 1”:For every expression (E), there is a unique referent of 1 (the tributed, and a ), to whom all rent of you (the (P- 57) Judging from the syntactic phenomena discucsed above, 1 E / 1 I (S ER) seems to be a reason2 ble principle and c orrespond to our intuition. It is this reasonable principle that, when revised, leads conclusion, namely, the to.4 absence of the s

After characterizing the sentences of RST as non-em 4-m/\~&rQ+;-pi “4;rrrQri~&Au.~%-*& out to demonstrate the absence principle. She offers four starts with the revision of cases in which I E / P SPEA narration. Ii) Expressive ele nts in (the third person) are not at&but the first person. For example, the exclamatory force of (15) is attrib subject of the parenthetical verb (“she”) and not to the hidden 6: (15) Oh hew extraordinarily nice wo&zen were, she thought.

{p. 73j

XI. Yamaguchi / On ‘Unspmkabie Sentences’

582

eddable expressive elements in of a third person pronoun:

t the point of view

news affected Connie in her state of semi-stupefied well-being with vexation amounting to exasperation. Now she had got to be bothered by the beast of a woman! (p. $9)

... (111I

terms in RST indicate the relation between a third person and the person so referred to: (17) She loved her Daddy.

(p. 90)

(iv) Italicized elements indicating contrastive or emnhatic stress are intera preted as the emphasis placed by a third person:

(18) e sat still, feeling as if he had had a blow, instead of giving one. Their eight years of friendship and love, the eight years of his life, were nullified. (p. 90) (1Q-o--(8) illustrate that the third person pronoun in ST apparently plays the role usually reserved to the I of s, the role as the subjective source for expressive elemen atield forms an opinion “that the notion o oint of view or subjectivity is not finition tied to the decides to refo~mulke ;IE / i ST into: (19a) 1 E / 1 SEL or every node E, there is at most one referent, called the ‘subject of consciousness’ or SELF, to whom all expressive elemects are lizations of SELF in an E are coreferential. there is an 1. I is coreferential with the SELF. absence of an I, a third person pronoun may be interpreted as d anaphorically to the complement of a consciousness verb, is coreferential with the subject or the indirect object of this

educes her narratorless theory of ’ (19ib) predicts that: erstood to represent a third person point of view if it rson pronoun. In other words, it is only in the absence at represented IEs with a third person SELF become

H. Y&nagachi / On ‘ihspeakalde Sentences’

583

To test this claim she presents the following example in which the original third person pronoun is altered into the first person (cf. (15)): (21) Qh how extraordinarily nice I was! (*she thought).

(p. 94)

Once the fist person I appears, the exclamatory force of the sentence is no longer attributable to person. It seems that (21) supports the claim put forward in (20). uld we accept (20) as true? Should we admit anfield that there is no speaker assumed in the sentence of RST, ontinual denial of ‘dual voice’ theorists, who insist that in ST “there is a blending of two points of view or ‘voices’, the character’s, whose consciousness is linguisticall resented, and the narrator% who ‘adopts the character’s point of view’ 185; cf. Pascal (1977))? Let us consider this absence of the speaker m detail. The question cast in preceding dkvides into three parts: (i) expressions in RST s subjectivity?; (ii) Is the re c&y the EAKER absent in RST?;. (iii) Does the absence of the SPEAKER entail the absence of the narrator? (i) Judging from Banfield’s argumentation, it seems highly probable that subjectivity expressed in RST is attributable soleiy to the third person SEL namely, the character whose words or reflections ar represented. run counter to a stronger version of the dual voice t eory (see, e.g. d’s grammatical argument and ut if one intends to deny is alho attributable to a covert the subjectivity renected i narrator, he/she should prove that the subjective intrusion of the narrator is not only possible in a particular text, but s)ist~~aticaZly possible on the grammatical level. I think that her ‘single-voice’ interpretation of expressive to our (or at least y) impression about some paradigelements corres T, in which charac s’ reflections are directly represenmatic examples ted (except for the concord of tense and person; see, e.g., (1Sj and (16)). eiements other than expressives (e.g. this question cannot be answered in gr er problematic explanation in terms of the tical terms (see, e.g., onsciousness in chapter 5 of the book). This is because dual voice phenomena such as double intonation and stylistic e act of reading and writing, and thus intrusion of the author presuppos anwhile, we should put them aside in require pragmatic consideration. order to concentrate on’ her grammatical description s the referent of k’ can be syntactically characte in (14). Thereion of expressive elements, as is fore, Banfield is right in saying that there is no speaker in sentences of SO far as this ‘speak& means a speaker who can (diratly) inscribe his/her

own subjectivity on a text. It should be kept in mind, though, that her theory does not specify, in a strict sense, whether this inability of the speaker to inscribe his/her subjectivity is caused by his/her total absence in RST or by some other systematic reaso the discussion in section 4). of the SPEAKER entail the absence of the (iii) Then, does the abse ds on how we interpret the terms. Banfield’s usage of the narrator? ‘, ‘speaker’, a& ‘-. --ti .narrator’ implies that they are terms ‘SP interchangeable in the context of third person narration. Thus, she deduces of the covert narra from the non-appearance of the first person in the third person T (and the restricted distribution of the first person in the first person RST): (22) Since no first person1 may appear in represented speech and thought le as the E’s SELF and since that first person must y parenthetical attached to the represented E, this means that represented Es cannot be simultaneously attributed to a than being narrated, consciousness in covert or ‘effaced’ narrator. d by any judging point of view. No this style is represented un one speaks in represented Es, although in hem speech may be represented. (p. 97) ere exists an important difference between so-called covert nfieldian speaker. While her SPEAKER stands solely on the obvious grammatical evidence concerning subjectivity, a covert narrator, according to the opinions of her opponent relies on two types of e linguistic (grammatical) and pragmatic arkers. The linguistic include such constructions as third person F~nouns and back-shifted tense in evaluative adject i 9 es. he pragmatic markers are fi% ose the act I:- re ing, as Ss indicated by the following remark of Chatman (1978: 197)1 “‘In covert narration we hear a voice speaking of events, characters, and set@ng, but its owner remains hidden in the discoursive shadows.” For example, rony conveyed by RST sentences may count as an explicit example of thr pragmatic markers. The covert narrator characterized by the pragmatic markers is hardly distinguishable from the implied author. Now, can we sav that the absence of tht entails the absence of the covert narrator? I think anfield”s argument does not provide enough evidence to prove the absence of the narrator. observed above, the term covert narrator is not identifiable with her S ER, and thus, the (apparent) absence of the latter does not guarantee the total absence of the former, the covert narrator. We should be more careful in discussing such a notion as the speaker in the text, which at the moment still lacks satisfactory linguistic foundation.

H. Yamaguchi1 On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

585

4. RST and echo questions

Having looked over Banfield’s narratorless theory, I would like to move to the point that I myself find most enlightening. Paradoxically enough, it is at this enlightening part that I find a primary mistake in Banfield’s approach. First, let us follow her discussion on violations of the priority of SPEAKER (cited in (19b)) and see what the violations bring to her principle. Consider the (23) Did I really know the road? Ralph asked me. Were the muleteers to be trusted? Would there be beds and eatable rooti l.?hen we arrived? (p. 123) Unlike the examples cited IJOfar, the above are sentences of represented speech in a first person narrative. They are interpreted as representations of what I heard. Interestingly, subjectivity expressed by the inverted questions is attributed not to 1, the SPEAKER, but to the SELF of his partner, Ralph. These sentences clearly count as violations of the priority of SPEAKER which states that if there is an 1, I is coreferential with the SELF, Here as in the case of 1 E / 1 I, the priority of SPE must undergo a revision. But before setting about a revision, Banfield first deals with a construction in which I exhibits the same behavior concerning the assignment of point of view, that is, the Echo Question (EQ). In an EQ “I refers, not to the echoed speaker, but to the echoing speaker, and pou refers to the echoed speaker” (p. 126)9the latter playing the role of SELF: ere can I buy pretTe?a at this time of night? (24b) Where can you buy pretzels? At this time of night? At CoUrss;. - -(Sperber and Wilson (1981: 306)) (25a) What a fool I am! (25b) What a fool you are? (25~) WhaE a fool I am? (25d); What a fool you are! (p. 127)

(2W

for (25a), whereas (25c) is not. (25~) would ((25b) is an appropriate instead be an EQ for (25d Note that the interrogative force of (24b) and the exclamato (25b), following the lead of the utterance (the echoin r)* This characteristic the role of or of I is similar to that of I In addition to the behavior of & EQ shares several properties with RST, such as the exclusian of addressee-oriented adverbials, direct address, and

indications of pronunciation (see section 5). Except for the frequent appearanshows remarkable syntactic resemblance to RST, so that we t the mechanisms underpinning the syntax of RST and EQ are Banfield seems to regard EQ as an equivalent of rence of contexts in which they occur. In some cages Jishable. Banfield says: In addition to the echo question, the spoken language shows a similar convention for ‘echoing’ heard speech in statements, although it does not concomitantly question all or a portion of the echoed utterance. An le is given below: Every time I see him he ridicules me. Oh, I could never repair the car myself. What was I doing lying in the middle of the road? No5 that wasn’t the way to go about it. ere, he”d show .298-299) It is this indication of the syntactic resemblance that I find most enlightening. ut regrettably, anfield does not try to explain problems inherent in main concern lies in the apparent anomalies of the ) not playing the role of SELF, viz., violations of In order to take these vi amendment to her priority 127)

Div(j,*(-aa

(ffJp&~fiFj$

ount,

@&j

&gTA&y

nfield adds the following

=‘e 8”:

AArl;~~ei; d first person in an E who is echoing another ady heard by this S R, then may rels,iquish his rogative as SELF and the refere :erlocutor may be rential with the SELF. (p. 128) second person, she goes so far unction of two roles

wised priority of SPEA e is a s either the SELF or the corefe indirect object o a parenthetical verb, i.e. Nij

.'-=nAm~~ iSi2~mx~

\k’. f-

the S

1291 Xd:Lj

iously, these revisions tend towards ad hoc explanation. She has stirted I, which is able to explain why IS rejects the ut in order to describe such particularized anfield’s priniciple must be less and less general.

il. Kmaguchi 1 On ‘UmpeakableSentences’

507

4 what is worse, though her 1 E / 1 SELF and its concomitants predict, $2’ _ycorrectly, tFe characteristic behavior of the first and third persons in EQ ;dnd RS’T, they can not explain why EQ and RST receive such unique interpretation concerning the attribution of point of view. What is wrong with them? Consider the following piece of constructed dialogue: (24) Jim : What a peach of a Liz: What a peach of a giri I am? The embeddable expressive phrase “a peach of X9’ shows the speaker’s attachment to a certain person or object. bus, Jim expresses his affection towards Liz by using this phrase. And it seems probable that the s reflected in Liz’s “a peach of a girl” originates in Jim’s words. echo express the same pleasant feeling as Jim’s original? Ev ixrfect accord with Jim’s cpinion, does not and can not express that SMUG aberland’s remark that a speech act is feeling by echoing Jim’s words (c not etg%rckd but displayed in report (IIaberland (1986: 220)). Batield’s formal analysis misses this expressive difference between the echoed and the and applies the attribution est on subjectivity (which is successful in T. In (29) Liz is only mentioning to expressive elements in what Jim has just said, and not using the phrase in order to express herself. It is this use-mention distinction that Banfield’s analysis is lacking in. (Banfield only points out that there is “a close gemantic relation” (p. 1 e echoing utterance; as to the use-mention ilson (1981).) do not of mention. So rxprcssive elements appearing in an echoed subjectivity of echoing speaker, but subjectivity of anner, RST, the underpinspeaker, i.e., the HEA of the EQ. In a li s, should also be viewed as ning mechanism of which is identifiable with an echoic mention. Characterizing these two stricted contexts as hoic above-mentioned ad hoc mention makes it possible to dispense with / 1 I. What is more, this revisions and to conserve the generality of 1 characterization enables us to explain why sentences of RST in third person narration receive such unique interpretation in regard to the assignment of point of view. And I believe that the questions inherent in RST such as irony and double intona&G can be answer4 &gantly by this approach B shall restrict myself to giving second thoughts on the absence of the ER. (For the precise characterization of RST as echoic mention and the consequences of this view, see Yamaguchi (in I have mentioned in the preceding section s right about the absence of the SPEAKER in so far as her ‘speaker’ means a speaker who can ;c own subjectivity on a text. The mention theory of RST (directly) inscribe h..,

588

H. Yamaguchi / On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

makes clear the implication of this remark. In order to keep the status of echoic mention, sentences of EQ and RST in principle cannot tolerate elements which express the SPEAKER’s subjectivity. For example, EQ and ST cannot introduce addressee-oriented adverbials such as ‘ca~!idly’ and These adverbials, when placed sentence‘between you and I’ (cf. section modifier, i.e., they comment in advance, initially, behave as a metalinguis from the point of view of the SPEAKER, on the way the following information should be taken by e hearer. Adressee-oriented adverbials, therefore, with an echoic representation of some prior cannot co-occur in an or thought which’reflects the point of view of the echoed (or rather speaker. This expressive inability of the echoing (or representing) may reveal that there is a grave shortcoming in Banfield’s logic. ve expression in sentences of RST That is, attribut the Csence of t Even if a speaker is present in .R tions expressive of this speaker’s subjectivity are systematically prohibited epresenlzli Es 9 &LX i&L tlic UdiiG x~ricuccz tddii 0. h e see the primary mistake of Banfield’s approach. Banfield’s failure in the analysis of the SPEAKER’s absence reminds us of the hidden pitfall that often cat&es formal analysts of the syntax on the discou25e IevcL In 2 unit 3arger than a sentence like a narrative, there are indelzd many syntactic phenomena which should receive a formal treatment, but careful consideration should be given when what is formalizable is isolated under the rubric of a gramrfiar, for there are various non-syntactic, as furors wh :h may affect the syntax of a given construction. anfield fails to see the PY~~~~5vedifkrmce ?xt:?ez:n the echoing and the echoed, and deductively infers from the from the attribution test on subjectivity) the A,t!~ethird person in EQ and RST are given ed out that Banfield’s theory lacks persuasion as regards the absence of the speaker. If one is to stick to the speakerless position, he/she has to rely on different evidence.

In order to discuss first the absence of the SP willfully skipped over the part an which Banfield tries to characterize RST as a non-communicative: context. Clearly this non-communicative view of RST is a ccrollary of her narratorless theory. Now field’s narratorless theory cannot be accepted at its face value, we CLrefd in evaluating the contents of this non-communication view. ut whether or not we accept her opinion, the facts cited by her remain of great interest for analysts of narrative.

H. Y&konaguchi / On ‘WmpeakableSentences’

589

For the purpose of demonstrating the non-communicative character of RST, Banfield provides six constructions which are preen9 in DS but absent

subjectless imperatives direct address addressee-oriented adverbizls indications of pronunciation present tense the second person er logic is this: these constructions are in some way or other linked to ahe unicative situation i which the addresser and the addressee absence of these with each other; constructions in ST sentences, then, indicates that is actually cut off from the usual communicative function. The first three constructions in (30) are those -which are excluded from s but not from Es. Their exclusion from represented Es, as “must be attributable to other than syntactic arc her examples of (3Oa)-(3Oc)* A wild idea shot through r Chubb’s brain: could this grand visitor be arold Transome? Excu m: he had been given to understan that a radical candidate . . . you excuse him # Excuse tim (p. 113) *sir,) he could not obey his orders, hz tek? the oi%cer (p. II1 entially, how extraordinarily r&e workmen were! (p 117) anfield states that subjectless imperatives are usually absent in represented greted with an s and that even if present as in (31a), they ‘Fannot be form normally underlying you” (p, 113), as is made explicit by (5 1b). Ati does not tolerate direct address, as is indicated by (32). If, as in (33), addressee-oriented adverbials appear in narration, the mot% c,entcncc will naturally be read as a statement by an i in reted as a sentence of represented at is common to these three const tions is that they retain a certain nicative force, towards the addressee: Imperatives are used XIII SOIW &4g~tzd set; direct address to ssee to n, to confirm the social relation between the attract the addressee’s atte addresser and tke addressee, etc. ; and addressee-oriented adverbial3 to convey beforehand how the following information should be taken by the addressee. anfield into a The absence of these constructions iG represente

590

H. Yavmguchi 1 On ‘UnspeakableSenter. I‘S’

rather strong claim that the communicative force inherent in these construcs is incompatible with MT, which, according to her, forms a nonunicative context. t one can derive from this a weaker alternative which goes: The communicative force of these constructions deprives their mo the status as echoic mention (or more generally narration; cf. tion on the absence of the speaker m section 4) - when interpretable as mentioned, i.e., characters’ words, they ma in (31a). I conceive that the weaker claim is more proba constructions, may be absent in narration in general, i manrraiivein which we ciEI”I cEe~dy i&z

course these constructions may occur cf. “See” in (38) below.) As to indications of pronunciation I do not have much to y, excer>t that, if present in a literary text such as DOS Passos’ U.S.A. (cf. cHale (1983)), th an be treated a.: a particular case of eye dialw;s. nfi,eld claims that, “apart the historic and generic ~~resent’,(p. 1!8), RST excludes the present tense. ut the ‘true’.present tense may be altogether absent in all narrative contexts (except in DS). Among others you is the most important evidence for the non-communicative view of
H. Ymaguchi / On ‘UnspeakableSentences’

591

Banfield’s claim on the absence of you seems reasonable enough. In a character’s utterance or inner reflection you may appear in order to designate either the character’s interlocutor or general “one”. But the former you is to be converted into he or she in third person narratirsn, and into the first or third person in firc,t person narration. Only the latter, ‘general’ you can evade the concord of person. In short, you, which is the result of the concord of person and thus refers to the reader, is generally absent in RST. ere we should turn to the overall context in which you is absent. YOUas the reader is missing not only in RST but also in DS and IS in ordinary narratives. In r the oral (or epistolary) narrative in which the identity of a c des with that of the addressee. or except for the narrational break in which the author cuts in to speak directly to the reader, such you never appears in the context of narrative. It follows from this that the absence of yoor is not specific to RST but to the narrative in general, including oral narratives. (Banfield herself later in the book expands the conte::t in which yaw is missing, from RST to her narr&~n; see section 6 below.) But if a narrative is constructed in such a special way as’ to take in the presence of the reader, you may well appear in RST. In fact this is occasionally the case with the second person narrative: (36) She looks at you as if you had just suggested instrumental rape. “I do not speak English,” she says, when you ask again. “Franc zis?” AA ia@at you that vway,as if tarantulas She shcakesher head. Why is she l,,k-, were nesting in your eye sockets? (J. cInemey, Bright Lights, Big City; italics in the original) I see no obstacle in regarding the last sentence as an instance of second person. Leech and Short (1981: 327) backs up my characterization of the above sentence as an T form: “it would be more aTcurate to say that the pronoun and tense se1 ion has to be appropriate to the form of narration in which the FIS [Free Indirect Speech] occurs” (italics in the original). The normal tense in this narrative is the present and through the whole of the text the main character is referred to as you just as the character is called he/she in ative. It may be that the original reflection oi the third perso s she looking at me that way . . . ?“, and the yotl in character goes : last sentence can be regarded as a result of the concord of person. Though this you does not directly refer to the reader, it indirectly does SO by making the reader play the protagonist’s part. It may, then, be that the second person narrative like the above clearly presupposes the communicative paradigm between the author and the reader, a-d you is the paradigm’s imprint on

592

H. Yarnaguchi+’On ‘UnspeakableSentencer’

the text. This means that the represented E in (36) exnibits the communicative property. It is true that you is generally absent frcm represented Es, but this ST alone, but to narration, especially literary absence is not confi ere again we see that anfield’s evidence does not precisely point mmunicative charac of RST but rather to the general character of narration. T as a non-communicative Now should we approve of the view of context? From all these reasons I think that nfield’s claim is a little too strong. It would be better to recast her distinction between communication and non-communication into other less restrictive distinctions, such as between the dialogic and monologic (or narrative) situation. To say so may inevitably entail revision of her major distinction between narration and discourse, which is the theme of the next section.

.

n

d’s distinction between narration and discourse should be First of all, ing to her, narration consists of these three styles; narraintroduced. tion per se (purely objective description of events), RST, and the representation of non-reflective consciousness (so-called represented perception), and can be grammatically characterized by boih positive and negative features. The negative features are the present tense and you, or rather the I-vou pair, w the absence of which distinguishes narration from dis wrse; the positive ones are those tenses which appear only in narration, i.e., tiorist, imparfait (PAST cotemporal with NO ), and historical present. As the negative features suggest, Banfield claims that narration forms a non-communicative context, mmunicative context. at there is a significant difference between the narrative language and the dialogic language, but I have reservations about describing the narrative style as a non-communicative realization of language. One of the reasons is the difficulty in characterizing RST as a non-communicative context (see section 5). The other is that oral narratives cannot duly be treated along the lines Banfield suggests. As a matter of fact, her attitude towards the oral narrative seems to me somewhat ambivalent. There is substantial evidence which indicates that Banfield excludes oral narratives from her narration. I will pick out three points. First, she suggests in places that RST is an exclusively literary style. Second, she regards skaz (a kind of first person (literary) narrative in which the speaking I directly talksto the reader, as in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn) as a simulation of oral discourse and apparently throws it out of narration. Third, she claims that the act of writing has a great influence on narrative style and says that it is writing which “allows the creation of a fictional NOW completely separate from the

H. Yamaguchi 1 On ‘UnspeakabkSentences’

593

real linguistic act which creates it and the creation of a fictional SELF separate from any writing I” (p. 242). (But apart from these, the fact that the oral narrative can be easily and correctly grasped within the communicative paradigm shows the difficulty in incorporating it into narration.) On the other hand, Banfield cites historical present as a feature of narration, and gives examples of a highly particularized oral narrative, sportscast. Notice, however, that historical present is frequently found in ordinary oral narratives. Thus, we find incoherence in her treatment of the oral narrative. (From overall impression, Batield seems to exclude oral narratives from narration.) It should be emphasized that other than historical present oral narratives often exhibit the features of narration. Despite Banfield’s remark that “the past tense [in an oral narrative] cannot be cotemporal with NOW” (p. 299), we can find such past tense in oral narratives as in the following example: (37) Those who really went through combat, t Normandy lan heavy stuflt; might laugh at this little action ‘d been in, but for me . . . We were passing people who were taki over from us, another company. We had one da, -v of this. Our uniforms were now dirty and bloody and our faces looked like we’d been there for week had the feeling: You poor innocents. (S. el, ‘The Good italics and the three dots are in the original) ere NOW designated by the word “now” is cotemporal with PAST. And we may also find RST sentences in oral narratives. (38) and (39) respectively exhibit an example of represented speech and thought (which Is indicated by my italics): (38) My mom had always wanted me to better myself. I wanted to better myself because of her. Now when the strikes started, 1 told her I was going to join the union and the whole movement. I told her I was !--ping to work without pay. She said she was proud of me. (His eyes glisten. A long, long pause.) See, I told her I wanted to be with my people. If1 were a company man, nobody would like me any more. I had to belong to somebody and this was it right here. She said, “I pushed you in your early years to try to better yourself and get a social position. But I see that’s not the answer, I know I’ll be proud of you.” (S. Terkel, Working) (39) In Ltidenscheid, we were in the hills looking down. It was dead silence in the town, except that you became aware of German ambulances with the big red crosses on the roofs. We didn’t know whether it was a trick. There was something mysterious about that sight. The bells started tolling in the city. You didn’t know what to make of it. Was this tke

594

If. Yamaguchi 1 On ‘UnspeakableSentences

opening of a major battle? Were they going away? There was very little

resistance and we took the town.

(S. Terkel, ‘The Good War’)

Both examples contain several pieces of grammatical evidence for the RST

form. For instance, shifted tense, unchanged deictics (“this”, “here”), communication or consciousness verbs preceding the introdl:ction of RST forms (“I told her”, “You didn’t know”), etc. There may be no objection in regarding ST is generally considered to be a literary rms, though rd person RST, however, is very rare in oral narratives (cf. and may be regarded as a literary style.) In this way, oral narratives occasionally display the features of narration, though they clearly presuppose the speaker-healer paradigm, as is indicated ’ in (38) which is inserted in a narrational break. It should be cle at Banfield’s narration-discourse distinction has a considerable difficulty. er evidence for narration, in reality, points to a more general distinction between narrative and dialogue.

ST can be resolved into three major To sum up, contentions: (i) attribution of t of view solely to the character; ( as a non-communicative context. absence of the narrator; (iii) accepting the fist, I have declined to accept the latter two, but this should not n that we should completely reject her theory. Indeed her idea be taken of unspe sentences, at first glance, might be a surprising one, but if we give thought to the general significance of the third person narration, her osal will not be so s rising. There may be two ways to look at the third from which side one is viewing the problem, i.e., from the author’s side or the reader’s. The reason why the author chooses the third person narration instead of the first may be, most simplistically, to avoid a fixed and limited point of view from which the text is described. n order to narrate the event objectively or in order to pick out from among several viewpoints of the characters the most 2 But cf. Polanyi (1982) and Haberland (1986), who point out that RST forms appear in spoken English and Danish respectively. Some literary critics also admit that the source of RST form can be found in ordinary speech, though they are inclined to regard RST as a littrary style and emphasize “the distance between the forms found in common parlance and in literature” (Pascal (1977: 19)). It should be noted here that the ordinary source these literary critics have in mind is a kind of report which appears in a dialogic situation, as is shown by Thibeaudet’s example: “a sergeant will ask his officer for leave on behalf of a private in his platoon in some such terms as: ‘He’s asking to go on leave; his sister is making her first communion”’ (excerpt from Pascal (1977 : 18); see Thibaudet (1935: 23 l-232)). My examples, observed in oral narratives, demonstrate more affinity with the literary use.

convenient one for a particular passage, the author tries to narrator’s existence. This view predicts that the third tendeAlcy towards the impersonal style. From this vie int the narratorless theory is no longer a surprising attempt, especially third person narration in grarnnatical terms, si characterize a covert narrator only by syntactic means (cf. Violi (1986)). On the other hand, one can look at third person narration from the reader’s side. Our rationale always s r the speaking subject. The slightest trace is enough to make us imagine the personality of the speaking subject. So in the act of interpreting there arises a strong desire to recover the ‘effaced’ narrator. I think that this is the position from which the standard and the dual voice theory look at the third person narration. oint ~1’view, a narrative without a narrator is hardly conceivable. Then, why has RST been a battlefield for both sides, although the presence or absence of the narrator may be a proper subject for the stttdy of the third person style? To answer this, we should look at the matter from the reader’s side. In interpreting a represented E like: ‘Where were her paints, her paints yes” we, consciously or unto ously, recover the original form of the character’s reflection, such as: “ here are my paints, my paints yes”. doing, our rationale assumes a partictilar standpoint from which the present tense and the first person in the original are viewed (or echoed) as the past and the third, whether or not we call this a covert narrator’s point of view. In this way, the third person ST systematically makes us feel the presence of the narrator. Therefore, in spite of the apparent .absence of the speaking subject, the third person ST provides us with some reason to talk about the covert narrator. Notei however, that the dual voice theory is at the moment also lacking in CSS turning down adequate linguistic foundation. ect theory, we should take into cons on her linguistic it when it is not linguistically characterizable. Other than the ordinary more or less metaphorical use of the term ‘covert narrator’, we now need a prtxk definition of this covert speaker in the text. Thus, we should approve of’ anfield’s achievement also for her reaction against the linguistically naive narrator theory, as s for the presentation of many interesting li phenomena and the tion of the possibility that linguistics can con to the study of (literary) narrative style. anfield’s theory will surely offer us a linguistic starting point.

Banfield,Ann, 1973. Narrativestyle and the grammarof direct and indirectspeech. Foundations of Language 10: l-39.

596

If. Yamaguchi / On ‘Unspeakabk Sentences’

Banfield, Ann, 1978a. Where epistemology, style and grammar meet literary history” New Literary History 9: 415454. Banfield, Ann, 1978b. The formal coherence of represented speech and thought. PTL 3: 289-314. Banfield, Ann, 1981. Reflective and non-reflective consciousness in the language of fiction. Poetics Today 2(2): 61-76. Banfield, Ann, 1982. Unspeakable sentences: Narration and representation in the language of fiction. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Chatman, Seymour, 1978 Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Chomsky, Noam, 1973. Conditions on transformations. In: S. Anderson and P. Kiparsky, eds., A Festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Reinhart & Winston. pp. 232-286. Culler, Jonathan, 1978. On tropes and persuasion. New Literary History 9: 607-618. Dillon, George L. and Frederick Kirchhoff, 1974. On the form and function of free indirect style. PTL 1:431-440. Haberland, Hartmut, 1986. Reported speech in Danish. In: F. Coulmas, ed., Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Sruyter. pp. 219-253. te ron no tame ni vowards the iheory of the narrator]. (The Hanawa, Hl?taru, 1977. es in Language and Literature: Literature 2: 53-73. University of Tsukuba Leech, Geoffrey N. and Michaei H. Short, i981. Styie in fiction: A iinguistic introduction to English fictiona! prose. London: Longman. McHare, Brian, 1978. Free indirect discourse: A survey of recent accounts. PTL 3: 249-287. McHale, Brian, 1983. Unspeakable sentences, unnatural acts: Linguistics and pottics revisited. Poetics Today 4(l): 1745. ‘Pascal, Roy, 1977. The dual voice: Free indirect speech and its functions in the nineteenth-century European novel. anchester: Manchester University Press. Polanyi, Livia, 1982. Literary complexity in everyday storytelling. In: D. Tannen, ed., Spoken and written language: Exploring orality and literacy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. pp. 155-170. Ron, Moshe, 1981. Free indirect discourse, mimetic language games and the subject of fiction. Poetics Today 2(2): 17-39. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. Irony and the use-mention distinction. In: P. Cole, ed., Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. pp. 295-318. Thibeaudet, Albert, 1935. Gustave Flaubert. Paris: Gallimard. le sentences and speakable texts. Semiotica 60: 361-378. aration). Echoes: From dialogue to narrative.