The ‘dual voice’ of free indirect discourse: a reading experiment
- 1 February 2007
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics
- Vol. 16 (1), 37-52
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0963947007072844
Abstract
The emergence of cognitive poetics has focused attention on how stylistic features are processed by readers. One area ripe for empirical investigation in this respect is point of view. Little attention has previously been paid in cognitive science to the specifics of how point of view is identified during reading. This essay reports on an experiment designed to examine how readers respond to a narrative style that has attracted a great deal of interest from both stylisticians and literary critics: free indirect discourse. The experiment tested two questions in particular: (1) Do readers hear a ‘dual voice’ when reading passages of free indirect discourse? and (2) What kind of ‘contexts’ influence the identification of point of view? Some critics have noted the importance of the preceding co-text in deciding whose point of view is present in ambiguous passages; this experiment suggests that the succeeding co-text might also be relevant. This in turn has implications for the flexibility of the reading process, especially when more than one point of view may be present.Keywords
This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit:
- Cognitive StylisticsCreative Confluence, 2002
- Twentieth-Century FictionPublished by Taylor & Francis Ltd ,2002
- Women's Reading in Britain, 1750–1835Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1999
- The influence of types of character on processing background information in narrative discourseMemory & Cognition, 1998
- Linguistics and literature: Prospects and horizons in the study of proseJournal of Pragmatics, 1996
- Linguistic signals and interpretative strategies: linguistic models in performance, with special reference to free indirect discourse.1Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics, 1996
- FROM EMPATHETIC DEIXIS TO EMPATHETIC NARRATIVE: STYLISATION AND (DE‐)SUBJECTIVISATION AS PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE CHANGETransactions of the Philological Society, 1994
- Unspeakable Sentences, Unnatural Acts: Linguistics and Poetics RevisitedPoetics Today, 1983
- ‘Represented perception’: A study in narrative stylePoetics, 1980
- Point of view in narrative comprehension, memory, and productionJournal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1979