Reader responses to narrative point of view

Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133 www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

Reader responses to narrative point of view Violeta Sotirova * School of English, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK Available online 28 November 2005

Abstract This empirical study addresses a problem in the analysis of free indirect style, one of the linguistic forms used for the presentation of narrative viewpoint. Free indirect style, or the presentation of speech, thought and perception has been a contentious issue in linguistic and literary scholarship inviting conflicting theoretical accounts. The empirical study reported here contributes to this debate by presenting reader responses to point of view in a passage from Sons and Lovers, with the aim of replacing critics’ idealisations of the form and function of free indirect style with real readers’ interpretations. I discuss the results from the experiment in light of two hypotheses put forward for the interpretation of the style: the single and the dual voice hypothesis. I also try to correlate the informants’ interpretations with formal features of the technique elicited by theoreticians. The outcome shows that dual voice, as well as single voice, is a prominent interpretative choice that readers make and so I conclude that linguistic theories of the style should reflect these spontaneous readerly intuitions. The responses also raise questions about the analysis of free indirect style as discourse, showing that discourse links interact with linguistic indicators of voice in complex ways, a fact that has to be accounted for in a discourse theory of free indirect style. # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Free indirect style,1 a linguistic form used for the presentation of narrative viewpoint, has been a contentious issue in linguistic and literary scholarship. The peculiar linguistic properties of the style—its ability to conflate two deictic systems, anchored simultaneously in the character’s present and the narrator’s past, and to combine third person reference with character subjective idiom and expressivity—have invited conflicting theoretical accounts.

* Tel.: +44 115 846 82 39; fax: +44 115 951 59 24. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 In this article I will use free indirect style as a linguistic term to cover several modes of point of view presentation in narrative. The term is a calque of the French style indirect libre coined by Bally (1912a, 1912b). The style thus designated underwent numerous redesignations thereafter: Cohn (1966) calls it narrated monologue; Pascal (1977)—free indirect speech; Brinton (1980) and Banfield (1982)—represented speech and thought; Fludernik (1993)—free indirect discourse; 0304-422X/$ – see front matter # 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2005.09.004

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

109

Two comprehensive linguistic treatments, proposed by Banfield (1982) and Fludernik (1993), result in contradictory claims about the nature of free indirect style. Banfield sees sentences of the style as the verbal exponent of a character’s consciousness, whereas Fludernik subsumes all linguistic features and the intentionality of passages of free indirect style to the reporting situation and the needs of the reporter. While these two theoreticians argue for a single voice linguistic definition of the style, many literary critics, and a number of linguists (among whom are Cohn, 1966; Pascal, 1977; Toolan, 1988; Bakhtin, 1981 [1934–1935]; Leech and Short, 1981), have maintained a dual voice interpretation as most adequate. The proponents of the dual voice hypothesis find support for it in the combination of linguistic markers which the style exhibits and which correspond to two subjectivities: past tense and third person reference aligning readers with the narrator, and proximal deictic items and expressive language aligning us with the character. Dual voice theories of free indirect style have also incorporated as evidence the two primary effects of the style: to evoke empathy with a character, or a degree of distance and irony. These effects, it is argued, suggest the presence of a narrator who wishes to convey empathy or irony towards a character. When we find ourselves in a theoretical situation such as the one outlined here, the appeal to the intuitions of real readers might be one way of resolving the debate: The theoretical models that we develop also have their limitations, and may contain mistakes. Insofar as these models are based on armchair analyses of texts, a confrontation with concrete readers’ reactions may tell us where precisely the incompleteness of our theories and the mistakes in our models are to be found. (van Peer, 2001: 337) 2. Empirical work on narrative perspective Some existing studies tackle the effects of narrative perspective on readers. Millis (1995) reports that narrative perspective can be linked to cognitive behaviour. Subjects tested in his experiment read sentences introducing a shift in perspective more slowly than sentences not containing any shifts. Dixon and Bortolussi (2001) also report results from studies which found a similar correlation between disrupted focalisation and reading time. Corroboration of these results comes also from Miall and Kuiken (2001) who find a correspondence between slowing down of reading tempo and insight into characters’ experience. While these three reports only indicate a quantitative change in readers’ behaviour when confronted with shifts in perspective, there have been more concrete attempts to gauge the qualitative effects of perspective and distance in narration. Dixon et al. (1993) found that the manipulation of narratorial certainty in a story by Borges had an impact on readers’ degrees of appreciation of the text. In their first experiment, the story was read twice unaltered, and the outcome was that readers’ appreciation significantly increased after the second reading. In a Adamson (1994, 1995)—empathetic narrative. For a checklist of characteristic features, see Brinton (1980); or for a rigorous linguistic analysis Banfield (1982). Fludernik (1993) offers a flexible model of characterisation of the style. Leech and Short (1981) provide a taxonomy of related narrative modes for the presentation of speech and thought and claim that they are not clear-cut, but should more adequately be viewed as focal points on a cline. They insist that the separation of speech and thought presentation categories is necessary because of the different effects produced by corresponding modes. For example, free indirect speech and free indirect thought, although sharing a number of linguistic cues, result in rather different effects: ironic distancing versus empathetic alignment. While I am aware of the precision of their model, I still choose to use free indirect style as an umbrella term to cover represented speech, thought and perception mainly for brevity’s sake and because this broad designation of related forms is sufficient for the argument I wish to develop here.

110

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

second experiment, the authors altered the text from first to second reading by removing epistemic markers, such as ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, ‘might’ or questions from the discourse of the narrator, i.e. everything that indicated the narrator’s limited perspective. As a result, on second reading of the altered text, the readers’ degree of enjoyment and appreciation stayed almost the same as after the first reading.2 These findings would suggest that readers are sensitive to narrative perspective and distance, and that perspective has a palpable effect on their appreciation of a story. Further support for this conclusion comes from another variable considered in the study—the informants’ experience. The group of frequent readers demonstrated more discernment for the Borges text on second reading and greater sensibility towards the presence or absence of epistemic uncertainty in the discourse of the narrator than the group of infrequent readers. Dixon and Bortolussi (1996) report that the manipulation of character discourse presentation also affects the emotional bias readers feel towards characters. In a story about a conflict between a man and a woman, the informants tended to sympathise more with the character whose thoughts or perspective were presented in free indirect style. But this claim, as the authors themselves admit (Dixon and Bortolussi, 2001), is inconclusive. An earlier study by Sanders and Redeker (1993) on the effects of perspective on readers’ sympathies and judgements of objectivity challenges Dixon and Bortolussi’s (1996) findings. Sanders and Redeker (1993) claim that the use of focalisation in news texts does not affect judgements of objectivity and is welcomed by informants as a powerful dramatising device, but not one that creates bias in the reader.3 Studies of this type can be brought to bear on our understanding of free indirect style and on the theories outlined in section one. The empirical work reported here suggests that readers can discern the use of narrative perspective and that they appreciate it aesthetically. However, sometimes the inconsistent results seem to reflect some of the contradictory interpretations put forward by theoreticians. Readers’ tendency to identify with the character whose thoughts are portrayed in free indirect style might suggest that a single voice interpretation of the style as a device enclosing us within the mind of the character is accurate. On the other hand, readers’ unaltered sense of objectivity and fairness, even in narratives that employ free indirect style, would seem to lend support to theories that allow for dual voicing. One conclusion we can draw is that free indirect style is a difficult form to evaluate and describe functionally. Finally, the corpus-based research of Short et al. (1996), Semino et al. (1997), Wynne et al. (1998) and McIntyre et al. (2004) provides evidence for a model of speech and thought presentation which situates the different reporting modes on two clines. The categories on the clines are found both in a written and, as the latest contribution suggests (McIntyre et al., 2004), in a spoken corpus, albeit with differing frequencies. The authors of these studies argue that the different modes of speech and thought presentation are best captured as focal points on the clines and that there are no clear-cut boundaries between 2

The response to the second text, a story from a popular magazine is reported not to have changed after the second reading. The second version of this text was altered to incorporate the epistemic markers removed from the Borges story, but without resulting in any significant difference in appreciation. 3 Adamson (2001) argues that free indirect style may have changed its functional value in New Journalism which would explain the findings of Sanders and Redeker (1993). According to her, its reappropriation in a different genre may have resulted in a functional shift: from a mode primarily reserved for empathy to a default narrative mode indexing suspense. Also, as Redeker (1996) has shown, another possible explanation could be that Free Indirect Discourse in newspaper reports departs from its literary uses. Functionally, rather than offering a direct glimpse into a character’s mind, it allows the reporter to signal their attitude to what was said. Formally, it does not follow strictly the rule of shifted tenses and so present tense is also permitted in it.

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

111

them. Semino et al. (1997), in particular, found that there existed a number of ambiguous cases which could be classed in two possible ways. Interestingly, in writing the highest number of ambiguities occurs between Indirect Speech and Free Indirect Speech, and Indirect Thought and Free Indirect Thought. This suggests that it is not always clear whether it is the narrator speaking (as in Indirect Speech and Indirect Thought) or whether the character’s voice is made prominent (as in Free Indirect Speech and Free Indirect Thought). This empirical result matches the theoretical claim made about free indirect style that it obscures the source of statements in narrative and consequently destabilises our sense of truth in the narrative world.4 The corpus work, then, gives further evidence that free indirect style is not always easy to identify on the basis of formal criteria alone and even experienced readers and theoreticians have doubts about assigning perspective to sentences. In light of all this empirical research, what we do not yet know is how readers assign perspective in free indirect style: do they choose to read perspectivised sentences as stemming from the narrator, from the character, or from both? Testing reader intuitions about dual versus single perspective is possible and would make a contribution to the unresolved theoretical debate outlined in section one. 3. Rationale This study reports empirical findings about the reading of point of view in a passage of free indirect style by appealing to the intuitions of real readers. The number of informants who participated is large: in total 86 informants took part in all four stages of the study. This fact should lend significance to the results. I believe that the analysis of their responses can fill in a gap in existing studies of free indirect style: while commentators often qualify certain of the effects of the style in terms of reader intuitions, these intuitions have not actually been tested and have been assumed to coincide with the researcher’s own judgements. This empirical study is intended to show: (1) if readers are sensitive to dual voicing in narrative and in what contexts they assign dual perspective to sentences; (2) whether responses to perspective correlate with formal cues of free indirect style proposed in the theoretical literature. One such set of formal criteria for identifying free indirect style is presented in Brinton (1980). Below I give a summary of her features which will serve as a checklist in the course of my discussion of the results: (1) shifted pronouns: the third person she or he is the subject of consciousness; it is the referent of the expressive content of the sentence; use of pronoun rather than proper name; third person reflexive pronoun may occur even when there is no third person sentence subject; (2) the narrative past tense and present and future time deictics are cotemporal to suggest simultaneity of the moment of consciousness with an event in the narrative past; special verbal past tense—imparfait, past progressive; shifted tenses of modals with past meaning, otherwise only found in Indirect Discourse where sequence of tenses is observed; (3) pronouns, demonstratives, definite articles, and definite noun phrases which have no antecedent in the previous discourse may occur; (4) contains the non-embeddable, independent clauses of direct quotation, such as direct questions and imperatives; contains rhetorical questions and clauses with preposed adverbs 4

Cf. Adamson’s (1995: 32–37) discussion of the problems free indirect style raises for truth-conditional semantics; see also, Leech and Short (1981: 339–340).

112

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

(never) or initial conjunctions (and); interjections, exclamations, lexical fillers, repetitions, hesitations, optative or incomplete sentences; (5) lexical items which express the character’s emotions, attitudes, judgements, evaluations and beliefs; qualifying adjectives, generally prenominal (dear, good, damned), epithets, qualifying adverbs ( probably, miserably), nicknames or petnames and attitudinal nouns ( fool); (6) verbs of consciousness or of communication occur in parentheticals. (Adapted from Brinton, 1980)5 If the responses show a consistent pattern, then it will be possible to argue for a correlation between linguistic cues and interpretation. If readers select dual perspective as a valid option in the interpretation of free indirect style, then linguistic theories of the style should take this into account. 4. Design The study aimed at eliciting reader responses to narrative viewpoint as expressed in free indirect style. An important decision I had to make was how to phrase a question that prompted readers to attribute the viewpoint in a narrative passage to one or more of the narrative personae. The concept of ‘point of view’, although not exactly corresponding to free indirect style, seemed a less technical term that would be clear to anyone unfamiliar with narratological debates. The second decision I had to make was whether to ask for the informants’ reactions sentence by sentence or to pose a general question about the whole passage. In the interest of accuracy I had to opt for sentence-based interpretations because narrative viewpoint often alternates within a passage and it would have been difficult for informants to mark the precise shifts in the text, unless they responded to each sentence individually. So, the design of the empirical study had to encompass one main question, ‘Whose point of view is expressed in each sentence?’ and then space for the answers. The passage I chose is from D.H. Lawrence’s novel Sons and Lovers: Miriam shuddered. She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom; she kissed him and kissed him. He submitted, but it was torture. She could not kiss his agony. That remained alone and apart. She kissed his face, and roused his blood, while his soul was apart, writhing with the agony of death. And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last, feeling he would go mad, he got away from her. It was not that he wanted just then—not that. And she thought she had soothed him and done him good. (Lawrence, 1992: 435) The passage is almost entirely cast in free indirect style, portraying the feelings of two characters. In choosing it, I hypothesised that the presence of two narrative participants (Miriam and Paul) and the narrator would make the assignment of viewpoint more complicated and that this might yield interesting results. On the answer sheets I numbered each sentence and below the text provided boxes under several headings: Miriam, Paul, Narrator, Don’t Know. The informants were asked to tick one or 5 As a last feature Brinton (1980) lists that free indirect style is negatively characterised by lack of second person direct address (you) and addressee oriented adverbials like between you and me and frankly. Brinton follows closely Banfield (1973) and that is why she, too, disposes of features that would potentially characterise the style as communication. I omit this last requirement for free indirect style on the grounds that numerous counter-examples have been provided by McHale (1983) and Fludernik (1993).

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

113

more boxes for the source of perspective in each sentence (the layout of the final answer sheet given to Group IV can be viewed in full in Appendix A). 4.1. Procedure The procedure was somewhat complicated by the fact that I did not test all informants at once. The study was conducted in four stages, simply because opportunities for more tests arose over time. Naturally, the design changed slightly each time, and also the information obtained about the informants varied slightly. In all four stages of the study, the main question prompting the informants to identify viewpoint in sentences was not affected significantly. More significant changes developed as an attempt to obtain more background information about the informants: e.g. their degree subject, their general interest in novels, etc.6 The first group of informants were asked: Whose point of view is encoded in each sentence? With Groups II–IV I decided to substitute the word encoded with a less technical and biased term which did not presuppose that viewpoint was formally encoded. So their main question read: Whose point of view is expressed in each sentence? The first three groups had the passage immediately following this question with each of its sentences numbered. Only Group IV had a chance to first read the text and then see the question on the next page. After the question they had the text reproduced with numbered sentences. This strategy was only adopted with Group IV to give them a chance to form a holistic impression of the text first. But as the results will show, Groups I–III did not just view each sentence in isolation when offering their interpretations; rather, they too had some holistic idea of the passage. This refinement of the design, therefore, should not have affected the responses of Group IV in a way other than just giving them a more gradual introduction to the task. In the second stage of the study I also decided to provide further instructions on the answer sheet which stated: Please, answer the question by ticking one or more boxes for each sentence. These instructions were reinforced for Group IV who were also told: You may tick more than one box for any sentence which you feel can be assigned to more than one viewpoint. Group I received all instructions orally. As will become clear in the course of the discussion, this reinforcement of the idea that dual or multiple viewpoints are possible did not seem to prompt more such readings from participants in Group IV. With Groups I and II, I used two versions of the original passage: one containing the proximal temporal deictic now, the other the distal then, as it appears in Lawrence’s text. Half of the informants were given the original version, the other half—the altered. This choice of then in a sentence which otherwise meets all formal criteria for free indirect style is unexpected in view of the theoretical prediction that all deictic items should be aligned with the present moment of the character (cf. Brinton’s checklist: 2). Since there was no significant difference in the informants’ responses to the two versions of this sentence, Groups III and IV were only presented with the original text. Another decision I took in the first stage of the study was to break sentence (2), She drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom; she kissed him and kissed him, into its three clauses and ask for separate responses to them. The syntactic break between the three clauses seemed strong enough to warrant such a decision. Since this was done with Group I, I had no choice but to continue with this format of sentence (2) with all the other groups. If I were to conduct the study now, I would probably adhere to the author’s own demarcation of sentence boundaries. But the 6

As became clear from Dixon et al. (1993) the degree of experience readers have with narrative texts affects their appreciation and sensitivity to distance and perspective.

114

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

Table 1 Respondents’ literary training 30

Informants with/doing a degree in English language and linguistics and no A-level in English literature Informants with/doing a degree in linguistics and with A-level English literature Informants doing a degree in English language and literature No response

13 16 2

breakdown of this sentence does not seem to have affected the responses seriously. Most readers offer identical interpretations for sentences (1), (2), (3) and (4), with only minor differences across them which is probably an argument in favour of separating the clauses of sentence (2). The final change in the procedure for conducting the study was the inclusion of additional questions aiming to elicit information about the informants’ educational background and practice of reading novels. These questions were only added to the answer sheets of Groups II–IV, so their full relevance to the interpretations cannot be gauged, but I will nevertheless summarise the outcome in the next section. 4.2. Respondents Groups I, II and IV consisted, respectively, of 25, 23 and 29 undergraduate students at the University of Manchester. Many of them had not studied literature at university level and none had any specialist knowledge of narrative theory. They were all taking the Stylistics module, but they all participated in the study prior to their introduction to narrative point of view. The participants in the third group were research students and lecturers at Manchester, attending the weekly Linguistics seminars in the English Department, none of whom had done, or were engaged in, research in narratology. All four groups can be described as unbiased readers because they had no prior knowledge of the theoretical debate surrounding point of view. However, they had developed sensitivity for language and literature in the course of their formal education, and this is a fairly safe assumption to make on the basis of the answers to the additional questionnaire provided by Groups II–IV. I present an outline of the responses of these 61 informants in Table 1. As can be seen, 29 people in total would have had some experience of studying literature either at school or at university and 30 would have had none as part of their formal schooling, but would be language conscious (2 people did not reply whether they had taken A-levels in English literature). Most of the 32 people who either do not have A-levels, or for whom we do not know whether they had taken A-levels in literature, indicated that they read novels. Their responses are summarised in Table 2. Table 2 Familiarity with novels for 32 respondents without literary training Read novels regularly Read five novels a month Read two novels a month Read at least one novel a month Occasionally read novels Hardly ever read novels Do not read novels No answer

9 1 1 6 5 5 3 2

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

115

In total, 27 informants in this group were familiar with novelistic texts, some saying that they read extensively. We can safely assume, then, that most participants in Groups II–IV were experienced in reading and familiar with novelistic texts. These two factors make them competent readers and should consequently give more theoretical weight to their responses, because as Dixon et al. (1993) have found, competent readers are more sensitive and more appreciative of the use of perspective and distance. Given that the vast majority of Groups II–IV had in some way been exposed to reading novelistic texts, it could also be supposed that Group I, which did not fill in a questionnaire, was also representative of the kind of competent readers that Dixon et al. (1993) talk about. Even for the five informants who claimed that they had not taken Alevel or a degree in Literature, and that they did not read novels at all, we can assume that their studies of language and linguistics should have played a vital role in shaping their sensitivity to different language phenomena, including a sharpened awareness of perspective in discourse. I also asked the participants in Groups II–IV whether they recognised the text and its author, and if not, if they could make a guess about the genre of the work and its author. Most people (16 from the group with literary training and 17 from the group without any) either gave no reply or said they did not know. There was no significant difference between informants with and without literary training with respect to their guesses. Three people identified the author and the book correctly; three people only guessed the author was D.H. Lawrence. Five people suggested that the passage was from a Mills and Boon novel.7 There was no difference in competence between readers with and without literary training as regards identifying the text. 5. Results and discussion The slight alterations in the design of this study each time it was conducted complicate the treatment of the results. First, the questionnaire included for Groups II–IV may have to be taken into account in case the formal schooling in literature turns out to be important for the informants’ interpretations. A preliminary t-test eliminated this possibility. The difference in multiple perspective readings between the 30 informants without, and the 29 informants with, literary training was not statistically significant ( p = .982; p > .05). The same applies to the single perspective readings of the two groups ( p = .901; p > .05). As I concluded in the previous section, the informants’ experience with language and discourse analysis should not count as less important than the formal literary training some of them had received. With regard to the main question, Groups II–IV had additional instructions to tick one or more boxes for the source of perspective. Group IV had this further reinforced by the instruction to tick more than one box for any sentence that they felt could be assigned to more than one viewpoint. The adapted instructions in the second, third and fourth stage of the study may have had an influence on the informants’ choices. The even more specific emphasis on multiple perspective readings Group IV received could have biased them further in favour of dual or triple perspective. So, another preliminary estimate of the dual voice readings of the four groups is necessary before deciding whether the results can be conflated. The percentages for dual and triple perspective readings of the four groups are as follows: 7

See Lodge (1990: 66–67) for an interesting comment on Lawrence’s affinity for stylised representation of discourses, even in most sublime passages.

116

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

Group I Group II Group III Group IV

36.7% 32.5% 44.5% 28.9%

In spite of the lack of written instructions, Group I readers are still ahead of Groups II and IV in their preference for dual or multiple perspective. Group IV which was most emphatically encouraged to consider multiple perspectives shows a considerable decrease in such readings. The modified instructions, therefore, could not have had a crucial influence on the informants’ interpretations. The striking outcome, however, is the markedly high percentage of multiple perspective readings for Group III in comparison with the other three groups. The only distinguishing characteristic of Group III as opposed to the other three groups is that it consisted of research students and lecturers as opposed to undergraduates. The age and experience of these informants could have made them linguistically more aware and sensitive. The division between experienced and inexperienced readers, then, falls between undergraduates and researchers, or those with a relatively short versus long exposure to language phenomena, including perspective in discourse. 5.1. Analysis of responses The results are displayed in Table 3 where each cell is divided diagonally with undergraduates’ and researchers’ responses on either side.8 Sentences (1)–(4) give roughly the same outcome: the predominant intuition is for Narrator. In each of these four sentences, an act performed by the character is described and perhaps that is why readers infer the presence of an external observer, the narrator, who recounts the events. A number of informants from the undergraduate groups also opt for the dual perspective of Miriam and the narrator, especially strongly felt in sentences (1) and (4), and for the single perspective of Miriam. So, we may infer that something in the semantics of these sentences draws towards the subjectivity of the character. The verb shudder in (1) can have two implications: external observation of the physical act and description of internal emotional state. Even the actions denoted in (2) and (3): she drew him to her; she pressed him to her bosom, have powerful implications of Miriam’s feelings. The repetition in (4)—she kissed him and kissed him—which might denote a multiple occurrence of the event, but may also be indicative of the intensity of Miriam’s emotional involvement, might account for the character subjective readings. Sentence (5): He submitted but it was torture, marks a shift in the responses. From Narrator readers orientate their interpretations to Paul and Paul&Narrator. A grammatical change accompanies this shift: the subject position here is occupied by he. Compared to the first four sentences, (5) shows similarities in semantic content to (1) in the use of another verb, submitted, which characteristically in this passage creates an ambiguous tension between external narration and the internal state it evokes in the character. A new element of subjectivity appears in the second clause. Readers seem to pick up strongly on the emotionally laden torture as a signal of Paul’s subjective experience. There is an interesting divergence in the interpretations offered by undergraduates and researchers: the majority of undergraduates show a preference for a single voice reading by attributing (5) to Paul’s viewpoint, while the researchers almost unanimously choose a dual 8

The results collected at each stage of this empirical research can be viewed separately in Tables A.1–A.4.

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

117

Table 3 Overall responses to point of view

perspective reading. Overall, responses to this sentence are neatly distributed between two sources of perspective: Paul and Paul&Narrator. Majority responses to (6): She could not kiss his agony, are distributed once again differently between undergraduates and researchers. The undergraduates select Paul (19 people), Narrator (16 people) and Paul&Narrator (15 people). Most of the researchers attribute this sentence to the dual perspective of Miriam&Narrator. Also worth noticing is the distribution of responses (especially undergraduate) across the seven columns of the table. Each and every possible combination of single, dual and triple perspective is selected by some informants. The lack of any

118

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

apparent consensus on how this sentence can be read suggests a semantic polyvalence which needs to be explained. In (6), once again, we observe a shift in grammatical subject. Perhaps the fact that such a shift appears too soon complicates interpretations. Formally, the sentence exhibits several indices of free indirect style: the modal verb could and the evaluative noun agony, both associated with the technique (cf. Brinton’s checklist) and both classified in grammar as speaker subjective. Semantically, however, Miriam’s inability to soothe Paul’s agony could be felt by both characters, or could be reported by the narrator. This uncertainty is reflected in the selection, for the first time, of the category Miriam&Paul by some undergraduates. On the whole this sentence elicits predominantly dual voice interpretations from both undergraduates and researchers, with 34 undergraduates opting for dual voice readings as opposed to 27—for single voice; and with 6 researchers opting for dual voice readings as opposed to 2—for single voice. The undergraduates’ responses to (7): That remained alone and apart, also vary and are distributed across all columns of the table. Two majority interpretations emerge: one associating the sentence with Paul’s viewpoint, the other—with the narrator’s. As with (5) and (6), we have no overwhelming majority for any one interpretation and must look for something in the semantics and grammar of the sentence, or the passage, that explains this. A well-established belief in the theoretical literature on free indirect style is that narrative sentences with stative verbs almost always remain ambiguous between character’s viewpoint and narratorial statement. Adamson (1995: 33–34), for instance, analysing an example from Austen’s Emma, points out that the aesthetic power of whole novels can reside in such ambiguities: any premature assumption about voice attribution can be unsettled by what follows. The informants’ readings of sentence (7) neatly illustrate this theoretical analysis with the majority of responses hovering between narration and character subjective viewpoint. In contrast to this outcome, the researchers are again more united in their choice of narrative perspective for sentence (7)—the narrator’s. The undergraduates’ responses to sentence (8): She kissed his face, and roused his blood, while his soul was apart, writhing with the agony of death, are divided almost equally among Paul, Narrator and Paul&Narrator. The researchers’ responses predictably match this division of interpretations between narratorial report and character subjective experience, but without opting for the single perspective of Paul. Once again we see that the more experienced informants prefer the dual perspective of character and narrator to the single character perspective in a sentence that is subjectively coloured. The interpretations can be correlated with formal cues of narration versus free indirect style. The two coordinated clauses at the beginning contain dynamic verbs which might be taken as report of a new series of actions and so invite an interpretation as narrator’s discourse; but they may also be read as Paul’s memory of something which has already taken place in the narrative world (cf. this is the third repetition of kiss). The subordinate clause with its stative verb (was) can potentially be read as free indirect style. With its combination of a repeated report of action and words expressive of strong emotion (soul, writhing, agony, death), the sentence can be associated with the subjective viewpoint of the character. Sentence (9): And she kissed him and fingered his body, till at last, feeling he would go mad, he got away from her, prompts a redistribution in interpretations. The majority of undergraduates this time assign the viewpoint to Paul or to Paul&Narrator. The sentence, therefore, is less strongly associated with the voice of the narrator and fewer people treat it as narratorial report. A similar shift is felt by the researchers, a majority of whom read (9) as expressive of the dual perspective of Paul&Narrator. Overall, this sentence is interpreted as drawing more towards the

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

119

subjectivity of the character in comparison with (8). If we try to correlate this more subjective reading with linguistic cues of point of view, we notice a number of features that appear in checklists: sentence-initial coordinating conjunction, not typical of written discourse; the verb kiss repeated again; the private verb to feel. This cluster of linguistic features associated with narrative viewpoint, however, was also noted for (8). One reason why (9) is interpreted differently is perhaps the more colloquial ring to the expression feeling he would go mad, as opposed to the rather poetic and literary writhing with the agony of death.9 Sentence (10): It was not that he wanted just then—not that, is interpreted as aligned with the subjective experience of Paul by a solid majority in both groups. The difference between undergraduates and researchers, once again, lies in their predilection for dual versus single perspective in free indirect style. Fifty undergraduates interpret the sentence as arising from Paul’s point of view, while the majority of researchers—seven—take it as expressive of the dual perspective of Paul&Narrator. Compared to the other sentences, (10) demonstrates a higher concentration of indices of free indirect style: it is a cleft sentence, not that is rhetorically repeated, the punctuation breaks the flow of speech as if under an overpowering emotion, and it contains a private verb want adding to its subjective slant. Of all the sentences in this passage which could be classed as free indirect style, (10) probably approximates most closely what a character could have spoken to him/ herself. Still, among the undergraduates there are nine people who attribute this sentence to the narrator (as many as for sentence (9)) which would suggest once again that there is no clear-cut boundary between narration and free indirect style. An interesting feature of this sentence is the deictic adverb: it is not the expected proximal now which theoreticians of free indirect style take as the paradigmatic choice, but the distal then. Yet most readers do not seem to interpret sentence (10) as arising from the narrator’s point of view despite the fact that the deictic can be temporally aligned with the narrator’s position. Perhaps the presence of other strong emotive features accounts for interpreting the sentence as expressive of Paul’s viewpoint or of the dual viewpoint of Paul and narrator. Perhaps also the pragmatic properties of deictic items play a role. Deixis can be manipulated not only to express objective spatio-temporal location but also for the expression of emotional proximity versus distance. Paul is in a state of agony (the word is repeated twice) and torture, his soul remains apart at the physical contact with Miriam. The concentration of distal deictics in the passage suggests his alienation, even disgust: She could not kiss his agony. That remained alone and apart. It was not that he wanted just then—not that. It seems, therefore, that Lawrence selects then rather than now to make it consonant with the three occurrences of that which in turn are consonant with Paul’s emotional distance.10 Of all divergent interpretations of single versus dual perspective that undergraduates and researchers have come up with so far, this is perhaps the most striking example, because an overwhelming majority of undergraduates assign the sentence to Paul alone (50 people). So, if sentence (10) is a clear-cut case of free indirect style, it would appear that the two groups of less and more experienced readers have different views on single versus dual voicing in free indirect style. It may well be the case that a sensitivity towards dual voicing develops along with linguistic experience. If we take the responses of these two groups of informants as representative, we 9

An explanation suggested by one of the anonymous reviewers of this article. One of the reviewers of this essay suggested a different explanation for the use of then as indicative of the fact that Paul had by then already moved away from Miriam and from the situation referred to as that. 10

120

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

could say that more ‘naı¨ve’ readers opt for an interpretation that reflects one-sidedly the expressive content of a sentence of free indirect style, while more experienced readers can perceive more subtle overtones in perspective. The final sentence (11): And she thought she had soothed him and done him good, similarly to (6), (7), (8) and (9), shows a great variation in preferences among the undergraduates—an outcome which once again suggests semantic polyvalence. Three sources of perspective are singled out by a majority: Miriam (28), Narrator (17) and Miriam&Narrator (23). In response to this sentence, the researchers also single out these three sources of perspective, but the overall majority (five people) selects the dual perspective of Miriam&Narrator. The tendency noticed so far, for undergraduates to choose single perspective in any instance of free indirect style and for researchers—dual perspective, is here confirmed. Also, reflected in the responses to (11) is another tendency running through the results—of a possibility to interpret sentences of free indirect style either as arising from the narrator’s viewpoint, or as aligned more closely with the character. This sentence in particular has the formal make-up of Indirect Thought and as such illustrates the ambiguity noticed by Semino et al. (1997) between Free Indirect Thought and Indirect Thought. As the responses show, (11) can be read as the narrator’s report of Miriam’s thoughts, or as her subjective recapitulation of the situation (it is plausible to imagine Miriam saying to herself: I think I have soothed him and done him good). It is also possible to imagine Paul inferring her thoughts. The linguistic signals, which distinguish (11) from the rest of the passage, are the verb of cognition to think and the past perfect which introduces another temporal layer relating what is past for the character. The coordinating conjunction in sentence-initial position can also be interpreted as a marker of a more colloquial style, as if following somebody’s train of thought. These features appear as indices of a subjective point of view in theory and the responses suggest that in practice they function as strong signals of the device. The fact that three major groups of responses have formed around (11) and that there are minority responses among the undergraduates selecting all potential sources of perspective strongly suggests that the formal structure of the sentence could warrant various readings of perspective. 5.2. Summary of results The total of single and multiple perspective responses for the two groups of undergraduates and researchers are summarised in percentages in Table 4. We see in the last column of Table 4 that the three alternatives of attributing perspective—to the character, to the narrator, and to the dual (or triple) perspective of character(s) and narrator— feature in the informants’ interpretations. One of the questions, raised at the beginning of this study, was whether readers acknowledge the existence of dual perspective, when some theoreticians have been so eager to dispose of it on the basis of alleged linguistic evidence. The figures show that roughly one-third of the responses (32.9%) are in favour of dual and triple perspective, or in other words, in these cases readers allow for merging of character’s and narrator’s voices.11 A little less than a third of all responses are for single character perspective (31.4%), and a little over a third (34.4%) are for the narrator’s perspective. A t-test comparing the multiple versus single voice readings of all respondents indicates that the difference is not statistically significant (t = .262; p = .749; p > .05). 11

Throughout this essay I have treated perspective and voice as equivalent, one reason for it being that there is not a nontechnical way of getting readers to respond to voicing.

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

121

Table 4 Overall responses to single vs. multiple perspective Undergraduates

Researchers

Total

Multiple perspective Character&Narrator Two characters Triple

267 225 23 19

31.5% 26.6% 2.7% 2.2%

44 40 – 4

44.4% 40.4% – 4%

311 265 23 23

32.9% 28% 2.4% 2.4%

Single character perspective Narrator

285 285

33.6% 33.6%

12 40

12.1% 40.4%

297 325

31.4% 34.4%

These empirical findings seem to reflect the theoretical controversy surrounding free indirect style. Similar to scholarly debates, the responses to narrative viewpoint are divided between single and dual voice. The high percentage for the perspective of the narrator also suggests that some sentences of free indirect style are simply read as stemming from the reporter’s perspective—a result in line with Fludernik’s (1993) analysis of the style. Although the results do not offer a straightforward resolution of the contentious question of voicing in free indirect style, they do support the dual voice hypothesis as much as they support single voice hypotheses. If theory is to explain why and how texts have particular effects on readers then these reader judgements should be considered seriously as a valid alternative in the study of free indirect style. 5.3. Reader responses and formal cues This empirical study also offers evidence that a number of linguistic cues which theoreticians have listed as evocative of narrative viewpoint do indeed correlate with readers’ interpretations. Throughout my analysis, I have tried to seek these correlations which emerge as follows. Linguistic cues of narrative viewpoint:         

grammatical subject in (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (11) referring expressions in (1), (2), (3), (4) repetition in (4), (10) connectives in (9), (11) deictics in (7), (10) emotive words agony, torture in (5), (6), (8) broken syntax in (10) verbs of cognition and emotion in (1), (9), (10), (11) modal verbs in (6)

What we also saw, however, was that context plays a part in readers’ interpretations. So, for instance, in (5) with the shift in grammatical subject readers shift their interpretation of point of view, but in (6) a similar shift in the grammar of the sentence does not result in a marked interpretative shift for the group of undergraduates. In (9), the sentence-initial conjunction and correlates with a nearly continuous interpretation of the already established viewpoint in the preceding sentence (8). In (11), the same formal cue, sentence-initial and, does not result in continuous interpretations but correlates with a marked shift in perspective, most probably because of the shift in grammatical subject.

122

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

Another interesting fact worth reporting concerns the interpretative choices made by one informant in my first group of students. This student consistently chose the dual perspective of Paul&Narrator from sentence (1) through to (11). This proved to be a unique practice: no other informant made choices quite as uniform from the beginning. Was that student guided by the impression of the whole text when assigning the viewpoint in sentences (1), (2), (3) and (4) which most other informants interpreted as arising from the viewpoint of the narrator? We can only guess that perhaps this student was familiar with the novel, or even with traditional criticism of Sons and Lovers, and so had formed an idea of the author empathising with Paul throughout (although this interpretation is debatable, as more recent critical studies have shown).12 But it may also be the case that this reader was genuinely guided by the passage itself when assigning perspective. If so, his or her responses underpin another theoretical hypothesis that texts are read holistically and interpreted not only horizontally, but also vertically, that the context of the whole possibly plays a greater part in the interpretation of sentences than the local features of each individual sentence.13 5.4. Free indirect style as discourse If we look at the results as a whole, one of the striking outcomes is that there are marked interpretative shifts at various points and that at certain other points there seems to be less agreement on how to attribute the perspective. At the point of sentence (5), for instance, most people reorientate their interpretations to a new source of perspective. Sentence (6) redistributes the responses again and (11) brings about another such shift. So, it would appear that readers are capable of swiftly relocating the perspective from one sentence to the next. This change in perspectival focus happens within a passage that is perfectly coherent and on the formal level bound together with a number of cohesive links—the consistently used past tense, the two protagonists referred to with the pronouns she and he, the successive events taking place in time, the anaphoric pronouns (that).14 The role of cohesive ties in free indirect style has been investigated by Ehrlich (1994) who shows that even sentences, which do not display the typical linguistic features of free indirect style, can be interpreted as such if linked by discourse ties to sentences that do contain such cues.15 Ehrlich’s list of cohesive markers, which could be added to Brinton’s checklist, includes: referential and semantic links (including repetition), temporal and aspectual continuity and conjunctions. All of these cohesive ties feature in the extract from Sons and Lovers. For example, Ehrlich’s semantic links are most obviously displayed in the numerous repetitions: kiss in (4), (6), (8) and (9); agony in (6) and (8); the anaphoric that linking (7) to (6) and (10) to (9) and the prior discourse; Ehrlich’s sentence-initial connectives also feature in the extract: and in sentences (9) and (11). But the effects of these cohesive ties on readers do not seem to always accord with the analysis proposed by Ehrlich (1994). Rather than triggering continuous interpretations of point of view, these cohesive ties often prompt shifts in perspective. One explanation for these shifts, in spite of cohesive markers, would be that in free indirect style, 12

See for instance, Salgado (1966) for a classic interpretation of the novel as biased towards Paul. Among recent critics, Baron (1998) has shown that free indirect style should be read with a degree of caution and the author should not be accused of taking the side of some characters. 13 For an account of this view see McHale (1983). 14 For a full account of cohesive devices and their functions in texts, see Halliday and Hasan (1976) and Brown and Yule, (1983). 15 Ehrlich relies on Banfield’s theoretical analysis of free indirect style. Brinton’s checklist, which I presented above in Section 3, is a simplified version of Banfield’s (1982: 65–110; 183–224) longer exposition.

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

123

Table 5 Undergraduates’ readings of single vs. dual perspective Sentence number

Single character perspective

Dual (multiple) perspective

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

14 12 13 15 47 27 24 23 30 50 30

26 15 14 17 29 34 17 31 37 17 30

sentence-initial connectives and repetition function on analogy with spoken discourse where their use across speakers is very prominent.16 As such, they act as dialogic links across viewpoints. Another effect of the heavy use of such cross-perspectival links is that the further we get into the passage the more complicated the assignment of viewpoint becomes. It would probably be correct to say that from sentence (6) onwards the responses lose their unanimity which is more obviously noticeable in the first five sentences. Sentence (6) is in fact one of the most problematic: it shifts the grammatical subject focus too quickly, after such a shift has occurred in (5); it mentions the two characters, and it also repeats the verb kiss which in its first occurrence in (4) seemed to trigger readings of narrator’s report. Thereon, sentences (7), (8), (9) and (11), although resulting in fewer majority options than (6), also spread the interpretations across the whole range of options in the table. Again, all of these sentences are linked to prior discourse and, with the exception of sentence (7), mention both protagonists. It is only sentence (10) which again neatly distributes the responses into two majority options and only two further minority choices. (10) is different from (6), (8), (9) and (11) in that it only mentions Paul and is expressive of his emotional state. It is probably more clearly attributable to Paul’s subjective viewpoint, or the dual viewpoint of Paul and narrator. What is also interesting in the overall pattern of distribution of responses is that individual readers make clear choices about perspective: this is supported by the fact that there are very few Don’t Know answers on their sheets and very few selections of the dual perspective of Miriam and Paul or the triple perspective of the protagonists and the narrator. So, it seems that each individual reader has a clear idea about the interpretation of voice and perspective; what complicates matters is the ambiguity created by discourse links and reflected in an uneven pattern in the distribution of responses. Discourse links, then, have the potential to complicate perspective and allow for a variety of interpretations. Perhaps it is also not coincidental that precisely sentences (6), (8), (9) and (11) are the ones with a majority dual voice readings from undergraduates (see Table 5). The dialogic use of repetition and sentence-initial connectives across viewpoints is probably direct linguistic evidence in favour of the dual voice hypothesis.

16

For a full treatment of repetition and connectives in free indirect style, see Sotirova (in press) and Sotirova (2004). Ehrlich (1994) also analyses the repetition of event predicates at points of perspectival shift.

124

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

5.5. Experienced versus inexperienced readers A very interesting and unexpected aspect of the results is the clear difference in the dual versus single voice interpretations of undergraduates and researchers. What emerges as a crucial factor in assessing the informants’ intuitions about narrative perspective is their experience with reading and thinking about language, based on age and years of studying. We see from Table 4 that a significantly greater percentage of the responses of researchers, 44.4%, are for multiple perspective, as opposed to 31.5% of all undergraduates’ responses. However, this result is not statistically significant ( p = .14; p > .05) perhaps due to the small size of the research group. The perspective of the narrator is also unequally chosen by the two groups: in 33.6% of all undergraduates’ responses and in 40.4% of all researchers’ responses. Finally, there is a significant difference in the two groups’ intuitions for single character perspective: in 33.6% of undergraduate responses and only in 12.1% of researchers’ responses. This difference, for the first time, is also statistically significant ( p = .019; p < .05). A question we may ask here is whether the undergraduates are actually marking finer gradations of voicing with more clearly marked sentences of free indirect style interpreted as single voiced and with sentences of Internal Narration, or represented perception interpreted as dual voiced. Table 5 summarises the single versus dual voice readings of the undergraduate informants for each sentence and will allow me to analyse more closely their choices of single versus dual perspective. For all sentences in the passage we have a number of undergraduates assigning the viewpoint to a single character and a number of undergraduates choosing multiple perspectives. An overwhelming majority going for single character perspective is only apparent in response to sentences (5) and (10). While I analysed sentence (10) as the most straightforward case of free indirect style, still nine undergraduates assign it to the viewpoint of the narrator. Sentence (5), which in narratological terms would be analysed as Internal Narration, invites only one reading as narratorial report. We cannot, therefore, say that all prominent dual voice interpretations of undergraduates are allocated to sentences which are not clear-cut examples of free indirect style. Rather, what seems to distinguish sentences (5) and (10) are the semantic possibilities for interpretation that they offer. Both of these sentences, more easily than the others in the passage, can be correlated with the viewpoint of one character—Paul. Formally, these two sentences, together with (1) and (7), are the only ones that make reference to only one of the characters. It may well be the case that the complex intertwining of the thoughts of the two characters in the passage accounts for the undergraduates’ interpretation of dual and multiple perspective, a result suggested also by the distribution of sequential readings analysed in the previous section. For the researchers this was not the case: any sentence which draws towards the subjectivity of the character was felt by the majority to be dual voiced. Another detail in Table 4 supports this division: the multiple perspective readings of the researchers always included the narrator whether in combination with one character or with both. Notice that no single respondent of the group of researchers ever selects the dual perspective of the two characters whereas some undergraduates do. This would seem to suggest that for the researchers the voice of the narrator, embodied at the very least in the past tense and third person references, was almost always present. Overall, the undergraduates distribute the perspective in the passage among the narrator alone, one of the characters, and (slightly less prominently) two or three narrative personae

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

125

simultaneously. The researchers, on the other hand, unequivocally choose dual or triple perspective as dominant in the passage; the perspective of the narrator is prominent too, and only very marginally the perspective of a single character. It may be tempting to draw a conclusion concerning the reading practices of naı¨ve versus experienced readers, but the statistical significance of the results does not yet warrant any definitive conclusions on the association of dual perspective with reader sensitivity developed through experience. The statistically significant difference between undergraduates’ and researchers’ interpretations of single voicing could be taken as evidence that linguistic experience is a crucial factor in interpreting narrative perspective. The fact that no significant result was obtained for the difference in multiple perspective readings might be due to the unequal number of participants in the two groups of informants. At this stage we can only hypothesise that dual (or multiple) voicing comes as an accomplishment only after developing a sensitivity to language and discourse, but future research will have to provide more evidence in support of this hypothesis. 6. Conclusion: dual versus single voice Among proponents of the dual voice hypothesis, it is Bakhtin (1981 [1934–1935]) and Voloshinov (1973 [1929]) who go beyond the syntactic structure of sentences of free indirect style in order to elucidate their semantic depth.17 Both theorists posit the presence of two subjectivities whose voices sound in dialogue because they are juxtaposed on the same syntactic plane. Thus, the formal syntactic fusion of two perspectives only reflects a semantic phenomenon of deeper significance: the dialogic orientedness of narrative personae toward each other. So, free indirect style becomes the meeting point of two subjectivities (one of which is of course fictional), a meeting point at which the fictional voices come into conflict or sound in harmony. This theory offers a powerful explanation of the effects of the style on those readers who spontaneously opted for multiple perspective interpretations. The empirical results offered here complicate dual voice theories with a new factor which has to be taken into account: reader experience. It may be possible, when more data is collected, to show that dual voicing is perhaps a rather subtle effect of free indirect style to which only some ‘untrained’ readers respond, but which is felt more strongly by ‘experienced’ readers. Multiple perspectives and polyphony in narrative, then, may be a matter of perceptual sensitivity in the reader. How and why we can locate them in the language of texts remain questions to be answered. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their constructive advice throughout the various stages of its writing. I also thank the editor of Poetics, Kees van Rees for his helpful suggestions in the final stages before publication.

17

For a semantic analysis of free indirect style, see also Adamson (1994).

126

Appendix A A.1. Experiment sheets

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

127

128

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

129

130

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

131

A.2. Results Tables A.1–A.4. Table A.1 Responses of Group I (25 undergraduates) M (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

3 5 5 5 2 2 1

7

P

N

M&P

5 9 11 4 2 8

P&N

M&P&N

6 3 3 4

1 1 1 1

M&P&N

3 1 1 2

2 2 1 1

1

6

1 1 1 1 12 6 3 8 11 7 1

M&P

M&N

P&N

6 1 1

1 9

2 2 2 1 9 2 1 9 10 4 1

M&N

P&N

14 15 15 14 11 6 8 4 7 16 2

M&N

Don’t Know

1 1

Table A.2 Responses of Group II (23 undergraduates) M (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

P

2 2 2 3 1 2

11 6 7 6 6 12

9

N 13 17 17 18 1 7 7 5 4 5 4

1 1 2

2 5 1

2 3

Don’t Know

1

2 1

3

1

Table A.3 Responses of Group III (nine researchers) M (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

P

8 7 7 5

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

N

1 2

M&P

1 1 1 1

1 5 4 1

5 1

2

5

M&P&N

Don’t Know

2 8 1 1 3 5 7

1 2 1 1

132

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

Table A.4 Responses of Group IV (29 undergraduates) M (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11)

P

9 5 6 7 5 1 3

12

N

M&P

10 17 17 12 23 7 5 10 17 22

4 16 6 1 2 5

2

M&N 10 5 4 8 1 2 1 2

2 2

8

P&N 1 1 1 5 7 6 4 5 5

M&P&N

Don’t Know 1 1 1

2 3 3

1 1

2

References Adamson, S.M., 1994. Subjectivity in narration: empathy and echo. In: Yaguello, M. (Ed.), Subjecthood and Subjectivity. Ophrys, Paris, pp. 183–198. Adamson, S.M., 1995. Empathetic narrative: a literary and linguistic problem. In: Ayres-Bennett, W., O’Donovan, P. (Eds.), Syntax and the Literary Text. Cambridge French Colloquia, Cambridge, pp. 17–42. Adamson, S., 2001. The rise and fall of empathetic narrative: a historical perspective on perspective. In: van Peer, W., Chatman, S. (Eds.), New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. State University of New York Press, New York, pp. 83–100. Bakhtin, M., 1981 [1934–35]. Discourse in the novel. In: Bakhtin, M. (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination (trans., Emerson, C., Holquist, M., edited by Holquist, M.). University of Texas Press, Austin, pp. 258–422. Bally, C., 1912a. Le style indirect libre en franc¸ais moderne I. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4, 549–556. Bally, C., 1912b. Le style indirect libre en franc¸ais moderne II. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4, 597–606. Banfield, A., 1973. Narrative style and the grammar of direct and indirect speech. Foundations of Language 10, 1–39. Banfield, A., 1982. Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Boston. Baron, H., 1998. Disseminated consciousness in Sons and Lovers. Essays in Criticism 48, 357–378. Brinton, L., 1980. Represented perception: a study in narrative style. Poetics 9, 363–381. Brown, G., Yule, G., 1983. Discourse Analysis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cohn, D., 1966. Narrated monologue: definition of a fictional style. Comparative Literature 18, 97–112. Dixon, P., Bortolussi, M., 1996. Literary communication: effects of reader–narrator cooperation. Poetics 23, 405– 430. Dixon, P., Bortolussi, M., 2001. Prolegomena for a science of psychonarratology. In: van Peer, W., Chatman, S. (Eds.), New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. State University of New York Press, New York, pp. 275–288. Dixon, P., Bortolussi, M., Twilley, L.C., Leung, A., 1993. Literary processing and interpretation: towards empirical foundation. Poetics 22, 5–35. Ehrlich, S., 1994. Repetition and point of view in represented speech and thought. In: Johnstone, B. (Ed.), Repetition in Discourse. Ablex, Norwood, NJ, pp. 86–97. Fludernik, M., 1993. The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction. Routledge, London. Halliday, M., Hasan, R., 1976. Cohesion in English. Longman, London. Lawrence, D.H., 1992 [1913]. In: Baron, C., Baron, H. (Eds.), Sons and Lovers. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Leech, G., Short, M., 1981. Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose. Longman, London. Lodge, D., 1990. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. Routledge, London. McHale, B., 1983. Unspeakable sentences, unnatural acts: linguistics and poetics revisited. Poetics Today 4, 17–45. McIntyre, D., Bellard-Thomson, C., Heywood, J., McEnery, A., Semino, E., Short, M., 2004. Investigating the presentation of speech, writing and thought in spoken British English: a corpus-based approach. ICAME Journal 28, 49–76.

V. Sotirova / Poetics 34 (2006) 108–133

133

Miall, D., Kuiken, D., 2001. Shifting perspectives: readers’ feelings and literary response. In: van Peer, W., Chatman, S. (Eds.), New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. State University of New York Press, New York, pp. 289–302. Millis, K., 1995. Encoding discourse perspective during the reading of a literary text. Poetics 23, 235–253. Pascal, R., 1977. The Dual Voice. Free Indirect Speech and Its Functioning in the Nineteenth Century European Novel Manchester University Press, Manchester. van Peer, W., 2001. Justice in perspective. In: van Peer, W., Chatman, S. (Eds.), New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective. State University of New York Press, New York, pp. 325–338. Redeker, G., 1996. Free indirect discourse in newspaper reports. In: Cremers, C., den Dikken, M. (Eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, pp. 221–232. Salgado, G., 1966. D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers Edward Arnold, London. Sanders, J., Redeker, G., 1993. Linguistic perspective in short news stories. Poetics 22, 69–87. Semino, E., Short, M., Culpeper, J., 1997. Using a corpus to test a model of speech and thought presentation. Poetics 25, 17–43. Short, M., Semino, E., Culpeper, J., 1996. Using a corpus for stylistics research: speech and thought presentation. In: Thomas, J., Short, M. (Eds.), Using Corpora for Language Research. Longman, London, pp. 110–131. Sotirova, V., 2004. Connectives in free indirect style: continuity or shift? Language and Literature 13, 216–234. Sotirova, V., in press. Repetition in free indirect style: a dialogue of minds? Style. Toolan, M., 1988. Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. Routledge, London. Voloshinov, V., 1973[1929]. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (trans., Matejka, L., Titunik, I.R.). Seminar Press, New York. Wynne, M., Short, M., Semino, E., 1998. A corpus-based investigation of speech, thought and writing presentation in English narrative texts’. In: Renouf, A. (Ed.), Explorations in Corpus Linguistics. Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp. 231–245. Violeta Sotirova is a Lecturer in Stylistics at the University of Nottingham. She has recently completed her Ph.D. dissertation on the dialogical presentation of viewpoints in D.H. Lawrence. Her research interests are in stylistics, narrative theory and discourse analysis. She is currently researching the historical transformation of free indirect style from the nineteenth-century to the modernist novel.