Point of View in Plays: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Viewpoint in Drama and Other Text-types (Linguistic Approaches to Literature)

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Point of View in Plays

Linguistic Approaches to Literature Linguistic Approaches to Literature (LAL) provides an international forum for researchers who believe that the application of linguistic methods leads to a deeper and more far-reaching understanding of many aspects of literature. The emphasis will be on pragmatic approaches intersecting with areas such as discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, ethnolinguistics, rhetoric, philosophy, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and stylistics.

Editors Willie van Peer

Peter Verdonk

University of Munich

University of Amsterdam

Advisory Editorial Board Timothy R. Austin

Paisley Livingston

Loyola University Chicago

University of Copenhagen

Douglas Biber

Colin Martindale

Northern Arizona University

University of Maine

Lubomir Dolezel

Sara Mills

University of Toronto

Sheffield Hallam University

Donald C. Freeman

Mick Short

University of Southern California

Lancaster University

Harald Fricke

Michael Toolan

University of Fribourg

University of Birmingham

Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.

Reuven Tsur

University of California, Santa Cruz

Tel Aviv University

Rachel Giora

Jean Jacques Weber

Tel Aviv University

University Centre Luxemburg

Volume 3 Point of View in Plays: A cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other text-types by Dan McIntyre

Point of View in Plays A cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other text-types

Dan McIntyre University of Huddersfield

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McIntyre, Dan, 1975– Point of view in plays : a cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other text-types / Dan McIntyre. p. cm. (Linguistic Approaches to Literature, issn 1569–3112 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Drama--Technique. 2. Prose literature--Technique. 3. Point of view (Literature). I. Title. PN1695.M35 2006 808.2--dc22

2006049871

isbn 90 272 3335 7 (Hb; alk. paper)

© 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Acknowledgements Preface

ix xi

chapter 1 Point of view and plays 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Aims of the book 2 1.3 Prototypical and non-prototypical dramatic texts 3 1.4 The prototypical discourse structure of drama 5 1.5 Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van 6 1.6 The discourse structure of The Lady in the Van 7 1.7 Text and performance 11 1.8 Stage plays, screenplays, readers and audiences 13 1.9 Outline of the book 14 chapter 2 Narratives, narration and point of view in prose 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 Defining ‘narratives’ and ‘narration’ 18 2.2.1 Formalist distinctions in narrative structure 19 2.3 Narrative connections 21 2.4 Types of narrators 23 2.4.1 Internal and external narration 23 2.4.2 Fowler’s taxonomy of narration 24 2.4.3 Simpson’s development of Fowler’s work 29 2.5 Point of view in prose narration 31 2.5.1 Focalization 31 2.5.2 Point of view on the Uspenskian planes 37 2.5.2.1 Point of view on the spatial and temporal plane 2.5.2.2 Point of view on the ideological plane 39 2.5.2.3 Point of view on the phraseological plane 40 2.5.2.4 Point of view on the plane of psychology 41 2.5.3 Fowler’s development of Uspensky’s taxonomy 41

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2.5.4 Chatman’s work on point of view 42 2.5.4.1 Slant and filter 43 2.5.4.2 Center and interest-focus 45 2.5.4.3 Perceptual and conceptual point of view 46 2.5.5 Short’s checklist of linguistic indicators of viewpoint 47 2.5.5.1 Schema-oriented language 48 2.5.5.2 Value-laden language 49 2.5.5.3 Given versus new information 49 2.5.5.4 Deixis 50 2.5.5.5 Representations of thought and perception 51 2.5.5.6 Psychological sequencing 51 2.5.6 Additional linguistic indicators of viewpoint 51 2.5.6.1 Graphology 52 2.5.6.2 Presupposition 52 2.5.6.3 Grice’s Co-operative Principle 53 2.5.7 Summary 54 2.6 Conclusion 55 chapter 3 Perspectives on point of view in drama 3.1 Introduction 57 3.2 Mimesis and diegesis 58 3.3 Existing work on point of view in stage drama 60 3.3.1 Narration, dreams and the inner life 62 3.3.2 Richardson’s categories of narration 66 3.3.3 Applying Chatman’s taxonomy to dramatic texts 76 3.3.4 Stage and screen directions in drama 77 3.4 Point of view in film 82 3.4.1 Narration in light 82 3.4.2 Objective and subjective shots 83 3.5 Conclusion 90 chapter 4 Deictic shifts in dramatic texts 4.1 Introduction 91 4.2 Deictic shift theory – a brief overview 92 4.3 The concept of the deictic centre 92 4.4 Traditional categories of deixis 94 4.4.1 Place deixis 94 4.4.2 Temporal deixis 96 4.4.3 Person deixis 96

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4.5

4.6

4.7 4.8

4.4.4 Social deixis 97 4.4.5 Empathetic deixis 98 Deictic shift theory and reader involvement 99 4.5.1 Deictic fields, PUSHes and POPs 99 4.5.2 Edgework 105 4.5.3 Deictic fields revisited 106 4.5.4 Deictic decay 107 4.5.5 Problems with PUSHes and POPs 108 Modifying deictic shift theory 111 4.6.1 Contextual frame theory 112 4.6.2 Binding and priming in deictic shift theory 114 Deictic fields and point of view in Our Town 117 Conclusion 121

chapter 5 Possible worlds, possible viewpoints 5.1 Introduction 123 5.2 The development of possible worlds theory 124 5.2.1 Limitations of truth conditional semantics 124 5.3 Ryan’s typology of possible worlds 126 5.3.1 Alternative possible worlds 127 5.3.2 Fantasy universes 131 5.3.3 The principle of minimal departure 133 5.4 Mapping deictic shifts and possible worlds 133 5.4.1 Recentering 134 5.4.2 Increasing and decreasing the prominence of possible worlds 135 5.5 Conclusion 139 chapter 6 Logic, reality and mind style 6.1 Introduction 141 6.2 Defining mind style 141 6.2.1 World view, ideological point of view and mind style 142 6.3 Logic and mind style 144 6.3.1 Deductive and inductive logic 145 6.3.2 Logic, mind style and Miss Shepherd 146 6.4 Mind style and paradigms of reality 153 6.4.1 Miss Shepherd’s reality paradigm and its effect on her mind style 154 6.5 Conclusion 157

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chapter 7 Point of view in The Lady in the Van 7.1 Introduction 159 7.2 Alan Bennett 1 meets Miss Shepherd (Act One, turns 1 to 109) 160 7.3 Miss Shepherd’s confession (Act Two, turns 651 to 673) 170 7.4 The mysteries surrounding Miss Shepherd (Act Two, turns 732 to 798) 173 7.5 The truth about Miss Shepherd (Act Two, turns 900 to 976) 176 7.6 Conclusion 185 chapter 8 Conclusion 8.1 Summary 187 8.2 Concluding remarks 189 References Index

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191 199

Acknowledgements

In Chapter six: material drawn from Dan McIntyre (2005) ‘Logic, reality and mind style in Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van’, Journal of Literary Semantics 34(1): 21– 40, by permission of the publishers, Mouton de Gruyter. All quotations from The Lady in the Van by Alan Bennett (2000) are by permission of the publishers, Faber and Faber.

Preface

This book has grown out of my PhD thesis and so the acknowledgements that I made in the introduction to that are equally pertinent here. First and foremost I owe a great deal to Mick Short, who was everything that a supervisor should be, and far more. It is difficult to overstate the generosity, academic and personal, that he has shown me over the years, and if he were the sort of person to keep account of his expenditure on this front I would be in his debt for a long, long time. Many friends and colleagues have given me comments on the ideas contained in this book, as well as on draft sections of the text at various stages of completeness. Among those who have suffered this task are Dawn Archer, Derek Bousfield, Jonathan Culpeper, David Gill, John Heywood, Lesley Jeffries, Rocío Montoro, Elena Semino, Mick Short, Peter Stockwell and Rachel Toddington. I am grateful to them all. More fool me where I have ignored their advice. I am also grateful to the series editors, Gerard Steen, Willie van Peer and Peter Verdonk, for their extremely thorough commentary on the initial proposal for this book, and to Willie van Peer and Peter Verdonk particularly, for their generous advice and assistance throughout the writing process. I must also thank Faber and Faber for granting me permission to quote substantially from Alan Bennett’s play The Lady in the Van. This book is dedicated to my parents, John and Sue, for the constant encouragement and support they gave me during times when they must surely have despaired that I really was destined to be an eternal student. Finally, and most importantly, I owe more than I can ever say to Eszter, not for her unwavering campaign to persuade me of the merits of a Hungarian diet, but for her love and support, and unfaltering ability to feign interest in point of view.

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Chapter 1

Point of view and plays

. Introduction In Spike Jonze’s quirky comedy Being John Malkovich (USA Films 1999), Charlie, an out-of-work puppeteer, inadvertently stumbles across a portal which leads directly into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. Anyone entering the portal is transported into the inside of Malkovich’s head and is able to see the world literally through his eyes, before being spat out into a ditch at the side of the New Jersey turnpike after approximately fifteen minutes. Sensing a business opportunity, Charlie begins selling tickets to this unique attraction – the chance to experience the world exactly as someone else experiences it, if only for a few minutes. The central concept of the film – the idea of being able to see through someone else’s eyes – is something that has intrigued novelists and critics of fiction for many years. How are authors able to create the impression that what we are reading is a presentation of events seen through the eyes of a particular character – in effect, from that character’s point of view? For stylisticians, this question was arguably the most widely studied aspect of prose fiction during the last century (Short 1996: 256) and point of view continues to be a central concern in the stylistic analysis of prose fiction today. Indeed, an understanding of the workings of point of view is often seen as one of the hallmarks of a good novelist. Hilary Mantel, a novelist and critic and one of the compilers of the literary magazine Granta’s list of the best young British novelists, claimed to be disappointed with the overall standard of many of the books she was asked to read to decide the 2003 list, citing ‘an inability to keep the viewpoint steady’ as one of the indicators of poor quality fiction (Bedell 2003). However, despite the profusion of work on the topic of point of view in prose (see, for example, Booth 1961; Uspensky 1973; Chatman 1978 and 1990; Genette 1980; Fowler 1986; Simpson 1993; Bal 1997), relatively little attention has been paid to point of view in drama. And even in those cases where point of view is discussed in relation to drama, it is rare to find critics taking a linguistic approach to the issue. Amongst the few papers published on the topic, Groff (1959), Weingarten (1984) and Richardson (1988) all approach the issue from a literary critical rather than a linguistic standpoint. Indeed, the majority of work on point of view in drama has been carried out within film studies (see, for example, Sontag 1969;

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Brannigan 1984; Wilson 1986), and with the exception of a handful of studies (Poole 1994 touches on the subject; van Peer 2001 is another rare exception, and I have outlined some of the issues involved in McIntyre 2004), the linguistic analysis of point of view in dramatic texts has been largely neglected by stylisticians. As I shall attempt to make clear in this chapter, the reason for this neglect has more to do with the complications surrounding the study of point of view in drama than with arguments that point of view is not an issue in this text-type. Indeed, recent work on the stylistics of drama has suggested the need for more research in this area (see, for example, Poole 1994 and Culpeper 2001). This book is an attempt to address this issue. Throughout, for the sake of variety, I use the term viewpoint as a synonym for point of view.

. Aims of the book Why, then, has point of view been so neglected in the study of drama? The most obvious reason is that point of view is generally considered to be a narratological phenomenon. Since prototypical dramatic texts do not include narrators, point of view is consequently not usually thought to be of much interest in these texts. However, this argument does not take into consideration those dramatic texts which do feature narrators among the dramatis personae. Nor does it consider the extent to which point of view may be realised in stage directions. And it does not take into account the position from which readers of dramatic texts interpret events in the fictional world. This book attempts to address all of these issues, and, in so doing, to clarify some of the complicated and often confusing explanations of point of view in language that have been proposed in the past. Specifically, this book addresses the following questions: 1. How is the notion of point of view, which is normally applied to narratorial texts, applicable to dramatic texts? 2. Where point of view effects are present in dramatic texts, how are these created linguistically? 3. How far can existing taxonomies account for viewpoint effects in dramatic texts? 4. Where existing taxonomies fail to account for the range of point of view phenomena manifested in dramatic texts, how can such phenomena be described and explained? In attempting to answer the above questions, throughout the book I will stylistically analyse brief extracts from a variety of dramatic texts. In addition, and in order to demonstrate fully the way in which viewpoint can be manifested in drama, in the penultimate chapter I present an analysis of a series of lengthy ex-

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Chapter 1. Point of view and plays

tracts from one particular play, Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van (Bennett 2000). I have chosen this play as a particularly good example of how playwrights, as well as novelists, can integrate point of view effects into their writing, and my analysis brings together the theoretical frameworks for the analysis of point of view in drama that I introduce in the book.

. Prototypical and non-prototypical dramatic texts Before we can move on to a full consideration of how point of view might be manifested in drama, there are one or two preliminary issues that need to be discussed. The first of these is the notion of prototypicality in relation to dramatic texts. I explained above (1.2) that one of the reasons why viewpoint has been so neglected in the stylistic analysis of drama is because point of view is generally seen as a narratological issue, something that Richardson (1988) is quick to point out. Since prototypical dramatic texts do not have narrators, critics have been less concerned with the issue of point of view in the analysis of such texts. Central to this position is the notion that prose fiction and drama are two markedly different genres, characterised by the presence of a narrator in the former and the absence of a narrator in the latter. However, this distinction can only be made between prototypical members of each category, and the difference between prose fiction and drama is arguably more complex than this. It is now well established within cognitive linguistics that categories are very rarely (if ever) discrete, and that instead, membership of a category is defined by the extent to which potential category members can be compared to a prototype for that category (Ungerer & Schmid 1996: 1ff.). To take a classic example, in strict zoological terms a penguin belongs to the category bird. However, if we consider the ability to fly as a defining attribute of a bird, then a robin or a sparrow would be a much better example of a bird than a penguin. This is because robins and sparrows are prototypical birds (at least for British people) whereas a penguin is a less prototypical member of the category (see Katz & Postal 1964; Rosch & Lloyd 1978; Lakoff 1987; Taylor 1995; Ungerer & Schmid 1996 for a comprehensive treatment of prototype theory). By the same token there are prototypical and less prototypical examples of dramatic texts. Despite the fact that narrators were traditionally a mainstay of the dramatis personae (see, for example, the Greek chorus plays and much medieval drama), most modern dramas do not include narrators. Because narrator-less plays make up the majority of modern dramatic texts it is arguable that most people think of these as being prototypical of the category. Harold Pinter’s play Old Times would be an example of such a text, as would Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Conversely, dramatic texts that do include narrators would nowadays most likely be considered non-prototypical, or ‘marked’ members of the category. Alan Ben-

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nett’s The Lady in the Van, the focus of Chapter seven, is one such example of this non-prototypical type of play. However, even dramatic texts which do not have narrators can exhibit narrative aspects. Consider the following extract from J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan: [Context: Peter has been complaining to Wendy that he cannot re-attach his shadow, which fell off earlier as he tried to escape through the nursery window.] Wendy I shall sew it on for you, my little man. But we must have more light. She touches something, and to his astonishment the room is Illuminated [sic]. (J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, p. 16)

The stage direction following Wendy’s turn is biased towards Peter’s point of view of events. Our background knowledge of the world tells us that for the room to be suddenly illuminated Wendy must have switched on the light (be this electric or, given the period in which the play was written, gas) and so could not herself be surprised by it. However, this is not made explicit in the stage direction. We are only told that she touches ‘something’, not that ‘she switches on the light’ or ‘she touches the light switch’, and this description is consistent with Peter’s viewpoint, not Wendy’s or ours. We are also told something about Peter’s internal state following Wendy’s action. Peter is astonished, which suggests that switching on a light is something new to him. It seems that the phrase ‘touches something’ is used in the stage direction to reflect Peter’s lack of vocabulary to describe Wendy’s action; he is, in Fowler’s (1986) terms, underlexicalised. Of course, this effect is only realised in the reading of the text, but it constitutes an indication by Barrie as to the kind of effect that should be created in a performance of the play. It appears, then, that in the Peter Pan extract there is some degree of authorial or narratorial mediation. This is something that can also be found in another type of dramatic text, the film script, as can be seen in the following extract from Bruce Robinson’s screenplay for the film Withnail and I: [Context: Marwood and Withnail, two out-of-work actors from London, have gone to a cottage in the Lake District to recuperate from a seemingly endless series of hangovers. The cottage belongs to Withnail’s Uncle Monty and is dilapidated. Neither Withnail nor Marwood have visited it before.]

40. INT. COTTAGE. NIGHT. The door opens, revealing a smudge of headlight from outside. Marwood strikes a match and Withnail whispers, ‘Christ Almighty.’ In the instant before the match goes out they see crumbling walls and stale shadows and giant atlases of damp on the floor. They also see an oil lamp. The match goes out. Another one is lit. A yellow glow and the lamp reveals all. (Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 46)

The first line of the extract tells us that this is scene 40 in the film, and that it takes place at night in the interior (‘INT.’) of Monty’s cottage. In the description

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of the action that follows in the screen directions (akin to the stage directions in play scripts), it is clear that Withnail and Marwood are initially outside the cottage while the viewing position of the camera (and hence the viewer) is inside. This is apparent from the grammatical structure of the first clause, ‘The door opens’. If we compare this to a possible alternative, ‘Marwood opens the door’, it becomes clear that the author’s decision to make the noun phrase ‘the door’ the subject of the verb ‘opens’ reflects a particular perception of the event – we do not know which character opens the door. In their discussion of prose fiction, Leech and Short (1981: 177) refer to this effect as ‘psychological sequencing’, this being the ordering of events to reflect a particular point of view, a technique which is commonly used in prose fiction. The same technique is used again in the Withnail and I extract, when a passive construction with agent deletion is used to obscure the identity of the character who lights the second match – ‘Another one is lit’. A final indication of viewpoint in this example is the reference to ‘a smudge of headlight’. The word ‘smudge’ suggests that the light emanating from the car headlamps is not clear and sharp, possibly due to the bad weather mentioned in the screen directions of earlier scenes. As a consequence, we can infer that our view of Withnail and Marwood might not be clear, and that they might possibly be obscured by the inclement conditions, perhaps by mist or fog. It would seem, then, that despite the absence of a reified narrator figure amongst the characters in Withnail and I and Peter Pan, there is still some degree of mediation in these texts. What is not clear is just where this mediation originates from. Are we to conclude that the mediation derives from the author or from some unspecified narrator? Although we are not, as yet, in a position to answer this question confidently, what should at least be clear by now is that not all dramatic texts are purely non-narrative, and that some include aspects that are more prototypical of prose fiction. The distinction between the categories of prose fiction and drama, then, is not clear-cut, but is better described as ‘fuzzy’ (see Ungerer & Schmid 1996: 15), a term from cognitive linguistics used to describe cognitive categories that do not have clear boundaries. In the next section, I look in more detail at where the effect of narrative mediation in dramatic texts might originate from by introducing Short’s (1996) notion of discourse architecture. This also demonstrates further the similarities between prose fiction and some dramatic texts, and shows up the variety of viewpoints that need to be taken into account when analysing point of view in drama.

. The prototypical discourse structure of drama Short (1996: 169) says that the prototypical discourse structure of a dramatic text (what he terms its ‘discourse architecture’) is made up of two levels. The topmost

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level consists of an ‘addresser’ (the playwright) giving a message to an ‘addressee’ (the reader/audience). Embedded within this is the second level, consisting of characters addressing each other within the fictional world of the play. The discourse structure can be represented diagrammatically as in Figure 1.1 below:

Figure 1.1 Discourse structure of a prototypical dramatic text (based on Short 1996: 169)

In drama, the reader/audience is a sanctioned overhearer of the conversations that all the characters engage in. In effect, the reader/audience ‘looks in’ on the story that is being enacted. Note that when we read play texts this act of ‘looking in’ is metaphorical, but when we watch a performance of a play the ‘looking in’ becomes a literal, non-metaphorical act. In considering the notion of point of view in drama, then, it is necessary to look at this issue, and the extent to which viewpoint is expressed at the higher level of Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram. The differences between text and performance are discussed briefly in 1.7, and the issue of point of view at the top level of the discourse structure diagram is covered in detail in Chapter three, along with the notion of ‘looking in’ on the dramatic action. Of course, not all plays will have the discourse structure illustrated in Figure 1.1. Short’s (1996) diagram shows the discourse structure of a prototypical dramatic text but some plays will have more discourse levels, as Short himself points out. Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van is an example of one such play. Before we come to discussing its discourse structure, and because I refer to the play throughout the book, it will be useful at this point to provide a brief synopsis of The Lady in the Van.

. Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van The Lady in the Van began life as a short autobiographical memoir which Alan Bennett first published in the London Review of Books in 1989. It tells the story of his dealings over the years with Miss Shepherd, an eccentric and cantankerous old lady who, when Bennett first met her, was living in a battered old van which

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she subsequently parked in the street where he lived in Camden Town, London. When the police threatened to move Miss Shepherd on because her van was illegally parked, Bennett sympathised with her plight and invited her to park the vehicle in his garden. Despite the fact that this was supposed to be only a temporary refuge, Miss Shepherd stayed for fifteen years, all the time living in a series of dilapidated old vans, and hardly ever showing any gratitude to Bennett for his generosity. Much of the humour in Bennett’s fictionalised version of the story comes from Miss Shepherd’s cantankerous manner and her ungrateful attitude towards him. In 1999 Bennett rewrote the story as a play in two acts. It opened on 7th December that year at The Queen’s Theatre, London, directed by Nicholas Hytner, with the acclaimed British actress, Maggie Smith, in the title role. Praised by the critics, it was described as ‘a hilarious and quietly devastating play’ (Wolfe 1999), with John Peter in The Sunday Times calling it ‘one of [the West End’s] saddest, funniest and most distinguished offerings for years’ (Peter 1999). The play focuses on the quirky relationship between Bennett and Miss Shepherd and how this developed over the years. Miss Shepherd is an eccentric character, and displays a degree of paranoia that is markedly odd. As the play progresses it transpires that, many years previously, Miss Shepherd was involved in a car accident in which she hit and killed a motorcyclist. Having no insurance and realising that she would be implicated in the motorcyclist’s death (although it is suggested in the play that she was not entirely to blame), Miss Shepherd panicked and drove away from the accident without contacting the police to identify herself. In the play, Miss Shepherd is blackmailed over this action by the sinister Underwood, and there appears to be a link between her guilt with regard to the accident and her strange view of the world. One of the innovative features of the play is its use of two Alan Bennett characters. One of the Alan Bennetts has the function of a narrator, and when the play begins he is sitting at his desk, supposedly in the process of writing the play. Embedded within this framing fictional world is the world in which the events happen that Bennett the narrator describes. It is in this world that Alan Bennett the character exists, and this Alan Bennett plays out the scenes that Bennett the narrator describes. For the purposes of clarity, in the extracts that I use, I refer to Alan Bennett the character as AB1, and Alan Bennett the narrator as AB2.

. The discourse structure of The Lady in the Van The atypical structure of The Lady in the Van, incorporating as it does an extra discourse level of narration and two distinct fictional worlds, makes for a more

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complex discourse architecture than that of a prototypical play. The discourse structure of The Lady in the Van is shown in Figure 1.2:

Figure 1.2 Discourse structure of The Lady in the Van

At the top level of the diagram in Figure 1.2 is the playwright communicating a message to the reader/audience. Underneath this is the discourse level at which AB2 narrates the story of The Lady in The Van to the reader/audience. The play itself is a fictionalised account of Alan Bennett actually writing a play based on Miss Shepherd’s life, and this is represented by the third discourse level. At this level, AB2 is effectively addressing himself when he writes up his notes on Miss Shepherd in diaries and notebooks. Finally, the fourth discourse level represents the fictional world that AB2 describes in his narration. This fictional world is embedded within, and framed by, the fictional world in which AB2 is writing the play. In the embedded fictional world communication is not simply one-way, as it is at the other discourse levels. Instead, AB1 and the other characters within that world communicate with each other, and this is indicated by the bi-directional arrows on level 4.

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The brackets on the left and right of the diagram indicate what Short (1996) refers to as the possible ‘collapsing’ of discourse levels. In the case of The Lady in the Van AB2 occupies several discourse roles: he is a character in the fictional world of the play (where he is writing a play based on his experiences with Miss Shepherd), a narrator who addresses the audience, and a character in the embedded fictional world that he, as a narrator, describes. However, at various points in the play AB2 occupies more than one role simultaneously. So, for example, at times he narrates from within the embedded fictional world that he describes to the audience, and within this world he acts as a character, interacting with AB1 (and, as the play draws to a close, Miss Shepherd), as in the following example: [143] Interviewer Oh, incidentally, does someone actually live in that van across the street? I saw a woman getting in. [144] AB1 What van? (Looks) I don’t know. I’ve never noticed it before. She’s a journalist. She’d only have written about her. I thought you were wanting to do that. [145] AB2 No fear. [146] AB1 You make notes. [147] AB2 Only as a diary. And on the Everest principle. She’s there. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 16)

In turn 144, AB1 switches from addressing the journalist to addressing AB2, the narrator. This is marked by the use of the third person pronoun. Clearly this pronoun could not be used if AB1 were addressing the interviewer and so we interpret his speech as being aimed at AB2. AB1 changes from addressing a fellow character to addressing the narrator of the story of which he is a part. It would seem then that the narrator, AB2, (himself a part of the fictional world of the play) is able to converse with the character of AB1, who exists in the embedded fictional world of the play generated by AB2’s narration. At several points in the play AB2 appears to move between these two fictional worlds, and his action raises interesting issues related to viewpoint. For example, AB2 appears to have both an external view of the embedded fictional world of which AB1 is a part, and an internal view, as a result of his being able to move in and out of this world. These are issues that I consider throughout the book and specifically in the extended analyses of The Lady in the Van that I present in Chapter seven. Towards the end of the play it is also the case that AB1 (the character version of Alan Bennett) also crosses discourse levels, taking on AB2’s narrator role. As the play progresses, the distinction between AB1 and AB2 becomes less clear-cut, until, at the very end of the play, the two appear to be united as they leave the stage together, AB2 with his arm around AB1’s shoulders. Figure 1.2, then, describes the general discourse structure of The Lady in the Van, though it should be borne in mind that this changes from scene to scene, and even within scenes.

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What Figure 1.2 also shows is that in The Lady in the Van, the reader/audience is the addressee of both the playwright and the narrator. This is not always the case in dramatic texts that include narrators. In some plays the narratee is not the reader/audience but a character (or group of characters) in the fictional world. An example would be Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, where one of the characters narrates a story to the other characters who then act out the story he tells. However, in The Lady in the Van, because the reader/audience occupies both the ‘Addressee 1’ and ‘Addressee 2’ slots, these two levels on the right hand side of the discourse structure diagram can also be said to ‘collapse’ together. The presence of a narrator in The Lady in the Van is particularly important for point of view, since, as Short (1996) explains: [. . .] plays with narrators have a mechanism for guiding audience reaction which is not present in plays with a more prototypical dramatic discourse structure. (Short 1996: 172)

This capacity for ‘guiding audience reaction’ is one of the prototypical features of narrative prose, and in this respect plays with narrators are similar to prose fiction. Indeed, narrative drama shares the same multi-layered discourse architecture as prototypical novels, providing further evidence for the notion that, in terms of discourse structure, the boundaries of the categories of ‘prose fiction’ and ‘drama’ are not distinct but fuzzy. In The Lady in the Van the narrator, AB2, tells the story of how he met Miss Shepherd (the ‘lady in the van’ of the title) and how she came to play such a large part in his life. He introduces particular scenes which are then played out by the other characters, and he comments on the action on stage by addressing the reader/audience directly. It is AB2’s narratorial mediation that creates the potential for viewpoint effects in the play, and it is these effects that are the focus of my analysis in this book, particularly in Chapter seven. So far in this section we have seen how the discourse structure of The Lady in the Van lies at the heart of what makes it an interesting play to study in viewpoint terms. What the discourse structure diagram in Figure 1.2 also highlights is the number of different potential viewpoints that need to be taken into account if we are to arrive at an adequate description and explanation of point of view in The Lady in the Van, and assess what makes it such an interesting play. Beginning at the most embedded level, it is necessary to consider the viewpoints expressed by the characters in the drama and how these are taken into account by the characters being addressed. At the next level up there is the viewpoint expressed by AB2 within the fictional world, and at the next level up from that there is the viewpoint expressed by AB2 as narrator and how this is received by the narratees. Finally, at the topmost level, there is the point of view expressed by the author and the reader/audience’s point of view of events. Add to this the complexity of the collapsing of discourse levels involved and the fact that there may be multiple addressers

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and addressees in any one play, and it is little wonder that point of view is such a complex issue. These aspects are all discussed in more detail throughout the book. There is, though, one further characteristic of drama that I have not yet mentioned but which needs some initial discussion before we move on to any detailed analysis, and that is the issue of performance and how this relates to the dramatic text itself.

. Text and performance Just as the linguistic construction of point of view has rarely been studied in drama, the general characteristics of dramatic texts were also largely neglected by stylisticians and literary critics until the early 1980s (Culpeper et al. 1998: 3). Prior to then, in those instances when drama was the object of study, the kind of analysis performed was generally of the sort more commonly carried out in relation to poetry, with critics approaching dramatic texts as if they were simply long poems. Of course, this is not to say that the techniques used in the stylistic analysis of poetry have no place in the analysis of drama (for verse drama in particular they may in fact have special relevance), but simply that this type of analysis cannot explain the full range of effects created by dramatic texts. It was only with the advent of more appropriate tools from such areas of linguistics as pragmatics, conversation analysis and discourse analysis that the stylistic study of drama was made fully possible (for examples of early work on the stylistics of drama utilising these approaches see Burton 1980; Short 1981; Herman 1991, 1995; Bennison 1993). A further obstruction to the linguistic study of dramatic texts was the longheld view that in the analysis of drama, performance was of greater significance than text. Styan (1969), for example, states that: A play is not an art of words, any more than a film is an art of pictures: it is the art of exercising them. (Styan 1969: 68)

Likewise, Wells (1970: ix) asserts that ‘the reading of a play is a necessarily incomplete experience’, a view propagated more recently by Knapp (2003). However, there are several problems with studying performance as opposed to text, as Short (1981, 1998) has pointed out. The most significant of these concerns the ontological status of dramatic performances. Short (1998) explains that: In ontological terms, each production of a play would appear to be a play PLUS an interpretation of it, in that the director and actors have to decide which elements to focus on, emphasize in performance, etc. (Short 1998: 8)

The ramifications of this are made clear by Short in an earlier article on the subject:

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Both meanings and values will change not just from one production to another but also from one performance of a particular production to another. There then becomes no play to criticise [. . .] critical discussion becomes impossible unless the two critics concerned have both seen and are arguing about exactly the same performance. (Short 1981: 181)

What this suggests for the analysis of drama is that the more sensible approach is to begin by analysing the dramatic text itself. Indeed, a significant number of performance features can be inferred from careful analysis of the dramatic text, as, for example, Aston and Savona (1991), Dervan (1993) and Short (1998) have demonstrated. Nevertheless, performance remains an important matter in the analysis of drama, as Elam (1980) points out: [. . .] the written text/performance text relationship is not one of simple priority but a complex of reciprocal constraints constituting a powerful intertextuality. (Elam 1980: 209)

Short (1998) himself does not argue against this position and performance remains important, particularly with regard to the analysis of viewpoint, for several reasons. In prose fiction and in those dramatic texts where I would want to argue that viewpoint is an issue, point of view is, obviously enough, conveyed almost entirely by language. In performance, though, viewpoint can be conveyed by additional means, such as a character’s position on stage, lighting effects, etc. Of course, to some degree, these factors can be imagined in an idealised reading of a dramatic text. Some of these additional means of conveying viewpoint are discussed in more detail in Chapter three. Toolan (2001) makes a similar point with regard to film drama when he says that: Everything in the novel is achieved through written language (including its representations of speech and thought, its showing or reporting of emotion, etc.). But in film there is a blend of several modalities: visual representation (depictions of setting, of characters, of actions. . .); non-verbal aural representation (music, sound effects, indices of setting); non-verbal human noises (of fingers typing on a keyboard, of someone brushing their teeth, etc.); speech; and even writing (as a distinct sub-type of non-iconic visual representation). (Toolan 2001: 104)

In film particularly, the notion of point of view can often apply literally, as the camera position can reflect exactly what a particular character would see. The difference between text and performance is that in films and in the theatre, point of view is experienced directly whereas when reading a dramatic text viewpoint is experienced indirectly, and is imagined as a result of interacting with the language of the text, just as fictional worlds and characters are imagined while reading novels. In analysing point of view in drama, then, it is necessary to consider the additional viewpoint effects that may arise in a performance of the drama in question.

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However, for the reasons and complexities pointed out by Short (1981 and 1998) I do not propose to analyse particular performances, but rather to restrict my comments to hypothesised aspects of viewpoint that may come out in performance in general. The short analyses of the extracts from Peter Pan and Withnail and I, which I discussed in 1.3, illustrate what I mean. These analyses, though brief, show how a stylistic analysis can begin to illuminate features of performance. In every instance, the dramatic text – i.e. the written script – will be the main focus of my analyses.

. Stage plays, screenplays, readers and audiences Throughout this book I make use of examples from a wide variety of dramatic forms, encompassing stage plays and film and television drama. It is useful at this point, then, to outline in detail the terms I use with regard to these different forms of drama. I use drama as a generic term for stage, television, film or radio drama. My use of the term drama does not make a distinction between text and performance. When I want to make such a distinction I use the terms dramatic text and dramatic performance. I use the term play-text to mean a dramatic text written specifically for the theatre, and when talking about dramatic texts written for the cinema I use the term screenplay. When referring to the non-dialogue aspects of a dramatic text I use the term stage directions for stage drama, and screen directions for screenplays. Quotations that I give will always be from a published version of the relevant script if this is available. Where no reference to a published script is given, it can be assumed that none exists, as far as I am aware, and that I have transcribed the dialogue from video or audio recordings. In such cases, where original stage or screen directions are not available, I make it clear that I have constructed these from watching or listening to original recordings. I indicate this by using bold italics. It should also be noted that in those instances where I have constructed the stage or screen directions myself I do not make any analytical comments about these, but restrict my discussion to the dramatic dialogue. When discussing the characters in The Lady in the Van, as mentioned in 1.5 above, I use the abbreviations AB1 to refer to ‘Alan Bennett’ (the character) and AB2 to refer to ‘Alan Bennett 2’ (the narrator). I use dramatic figure as a generic term when I do not want to specify either narrator or character in a drama, but simply a member of the dramatis personae. In discussing the likely effects on the reader of the viewpoint triggers in The Lady in the Van, I use the term reader/audience in those instances where I think the effects are roughly the same for a person reading the play and a person watching a

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performance of it. Sometimes, however, a particular effect will only be noticed in either the reading of the play or the viewing of a performance of it, and not both, and in such cases I use the terms reader or audience as appropriate. An example would be a viewpoint effect in the stage directions of a play (as, for example, in the Peter Pan extract discussed in 1.3) that would not necessarily be realised in a production of the play. Finally, as already mentioned in 1.1, simply for the sake of variation I use the terms point of view and viewpoint interchangeably.

. Outline of the book In this introductory chapter I have outlined the reasons why point of view has not previously been thought to be an issue in dramatic texts, and I have also begun to explain, with examples, why I believe viewpoint should be a consideration in the stylistic analysis of drama. I have considered the discourse structure of dramatic texts in relation to prose fiction and, whilst it is clear there are obvious differences between the two genres, what I have begun to demonstrate in this chapter is that (i) some dramatic texts do have narrative aspects to them and possess discourse structures that are similar to prose fiction texts, and that (ii) this aspect cannot be ignored in a comprehensive descriptive and explanatory stylistic analysis. In the chapters that follow I consider in greater detail the extent to which the notion of point of view can be applied to dramatic texts. I begin in Chapter two by considering existing taxonomies for the analysis of point of view in prose fiction, the strengths and weaknesses of these, and the potential for applying them to dramatic texts. In Chapter three I examine work carried out specifically on point of view in drama, and offer a critique of this and a summary of its usefulness for the development of a taxonomy for the linguistic investigation of point of view in dramatic texts. I suggest that a major weakness of all existing taxonomies of point of view (for either prose texts or drama) is their failure to take account of the variety of viewpoints that arise in the reading of a text. They also fail to capture the subtleties of point of view, the way in which viewpoints co-occur in texts and the way in which readers are exposed to different viewpoints. In an attempt to explain these factors and integrate them into the study of point of view in drama, I introduce in Chapter four a concept from cognitive science known as deictic shift theory (see Duchan et al. 1995). I suggest that this theory, with some modifications, can be used to explain how readers move around within a text and experience different viewpoints, and I integrate Emmott’s (1997) work on narrative comprehension into deictic shift theory in order to be clearer about how this movement happens. In Chapter five I extend the notion of deictic shift theory by mapping this on to what has become known as ‘possible worlds’ theory (see, for example, Ryan 1991).

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After introducing possible worlds theory, I show how concepts from deictic shift theory can explain how readers move in and out of characters’ alternative possible worlds, and hence how readers can experience particular characters’ perspectives on the world and their notions of reality. In Chapter six I consider in more detail the idiosyncratic way in which particular characters view the world, by looking at the concept of mind style (Fowler 1986) and how this relates to point of view. I examine existing work on mind style in prose fiction and suggest that, in addition to grammatical patterns and metaphor (which have been discussed by, for example, Bockting 1990; Halliday 1971; Hoover 1999; Semino & Swindlehurst 1996; Semino 2002) one further way in which mind style might be indicated is through a character’s idiosyncratic use of logic. I discuss the relationship between point of view and mind style, and show through analysis how readers can experience particular viewpoints at the character-to-character level of Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Having considered the variety of ways in which point of view might be indicated in drama, in Chapter seven I carry out an extended analysis of the viewpoint features in Alan Bennett’s play The Lady in the Van. I look at the narrative aspects of the play and how these affect viewpoint, as well as looking at how individual characters express point of view, and how readers and audiences might react to these. I argue that the point of view effects in The Lady in the Van are part of what make it such an innovative (and successful) play. Finally, I provide a summary of my analytical findings and some potential answers to the questions raised in 1.2, above. I suggest that studying viewpoint features in dramatic texts can give us better insights into how point of view works in prose fiction as well as drama, and in language and communication in general. I also suggest that a cognitive approach to point of view is useful if we are to explain more adequately how viewpoint is manifested in language and how we, as readers or members of an audience, experience it.

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Chapter 2

Narratives, narration and point of view in prose

. Introduction In Chapter one I began to show how drama often has a more complex discourse structure than has previously been suggested, and that features associated with narration can often be found in dramatic texts. However, before we can make any firm claims about viewpoint in drama it is first necessary to consider how far the terms narrative and narration apply to dramatic texts. This is a fundamental issue, since in many cases it is the presence of a narrator in a text that makes possible the expression of complex point of view relations. As most of the work to date on narration and point of view has been done in relation to prose fiction, I concentrate in this chapter on a description and critique of seminal work in this area, and a consideration of the extent to which these existing concepts of narratives, narration and point of view can be applied to dramatic texts. My main point in this chapter is that whilst narrative elements can be found in dramatic texts, taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction do not adequately explain the viewpoint effects that can arise in drama. Neither do they explain how points of view can co-occur within a text or how readers move between different viewpoints when they read. To fully understand this, I suggest that it is necessary to consider cognitive models of how readers navigate texts, since the dynamic nature of such models allows us to describe and explain more clearly the processes involved in the creation and interpretation of point of view effects in texts. Applying such models in the stylistic analysis of dramatic texts should, then, also contribute to a clearer taxonomy of viewpoint in language in general. This will be my focus from Chapter four onwards, where I also consider how viewpoint is manifested in those dramatic texts that do not have narrators. First of all, though, since narration and narrators are an integral part of the expression of viewpoint, we will concentrate on establishing a workable definition of these terms.

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. Defining ‘narratives’ and ‘narration’ To explain the terms narrative and narration, it is perhaps useful to begin with a dictionary definition. Wales (1989) defines a narrative as: [. . .] basically a story, of happenings or events, either real or imaginary, which the narrator considers interesting or important. [. . .] Narratives are most commonly narrated in words, in speech (as in oral literature and jokes) or (chiefly) in writing; but they can be enacted dramatically on stage, or visualized in the images of film and gestures of mime. (Wales 1989: 313)

This definition is useful as a starting point, but it is apparent from the use of the uppercase letters (the convention for cross-references in Wales’s dictionary) that in defining narrative Wales considers it necessary to look also at the terms story and narrator. To begin with the latter term, the notion of distinguishing between narrative and narrator is discussed by Genette (1980: 25–6), who states that it is necessary to make a distinction between the act of telling a story and the story that is actually told. Genette refers to the act of telling as narration, and so, by implication, the person doing the telling as a narrator. Bal (1997) incorporates the notion of narrator into her definition of narrative, saying that ‘a narrative text is a text in which an agent relates (‘tells’) a story in a particular medium, such as language, imagery, sound, buildings, or a combination thereof ’ (Bal 1997: 5). The story that the narrator tells, then, is what Genette and Bal call the narrative. For example: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles is the story of the renowned fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his attempt to solve the case of who is trying to frighten Dr James Mortimer into leaving his Devon home, Baskerville Hall. This, then, is the narrative – the succession of events that occur in the fictional world. In The Hound of the Baskervilles this succession of events is recounted by Holmes’s compatriot, Dr Watson, the narrator of the narrative. However, we can imagine that Conan Doyle might have written the book differently, perhaps with Holmes himself recounting the events that occur in the fictional world. In this case, although in general the events that occur would be the same (thereby meaning that the narrative would be the same), the narration would be different. For example, Holmes’s narration might reveal different aspects of the narrative than Watson’s, as a consequence of Holmes having access to additional information within the fictional world. In effect, changing the narrator would change the point of view that the reader is exposed to (the various different categories of narrator are discussed in 2.4 below). Genette’s (1980) distinction between narration and narrative allows us to see more clearly how the expression of point of view can come about. However, Wales’s (1989: 313) definition of narrative also suggests that we should look at the mean-

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Chapter 2. Narratives, narration and point of view in prose

ing of the term story. Indeed, Bal (1997) appears to use story as a synonym for narrative. Since story is a potentially confusing term, used in a variety of ways by different writers, it is worth trying to be clear about its various meanings. In the lay sense of the word a story, fictional or non-fictional, is simply a sequence ‘of happenings or events’, as Wales (1989: 313) puts it. It is clear that in Wales’s definition of narrative, the term story is being used in this lay sense. However, if story and narrative are equivalent terms, why then is narrative preferred by many writers? One possible reason is that story has an alternative technical meaning within narratology. It is worth considering this technical sense of the word because of its relevance to the study of point of view, and to fully understand the issue it is necessary to consider the distinctions that the Russian formalists (particularly Shklovsky 1993) made between what they termed fabula and sjuzhet. .. Formalist distinctions in narrative structure The Russian formalists’ term fabula refers to the natural, chronological order of a series of events. Sjuzhet, on the other hand, refers to the order in which those events are presented as having happened. For example, Julian Rathbone’s novel The Last English King begins with Walt Edwinson, a former bodyguard of King Harold, returning home to England after several years spent wandering abroad. After this opening, the remainder of the narrative is told in flashback and describes how Walt came to leave England following his part in the Battle of Hastings, and what happened to him during his travels. In the fabula of the narrative (i.e. the events in chronological order), Walt’s return to England obviously occurs after the battle, but in the sjuzhet it occurs before – accounting in part for the in medias res effect at the beginning of the novel. This distinction between events in their natural, chronological order and events in a specially reconstructed order is one that has been made by other writers, and it is here that confusion arises. In an effort to disassociate themselves from what have been perceived as the limitations of the formalist approach, such writers have produced a surfeit of alternative terms for what are essentially the same phenomena described by the terms fabula and sjuzhet. Thus, Benveniste (1966) uses histoir in place of fabula, and discours instead of sjuzhet, and Chatman (1978) suggests instead the English terms story and discourse in place of fabula and sjuzhet respectively. There are, though, several disadvantages with these terms – particularly Chatman’s – which contribute to the difficulties that have been noted so far in defining narrative. Benveniste’s (1966) terms run the risk of being misinterpreted because of the different potential ways of translating histoir and discours (Wales 1989: 219), as Chatman’s (1978) translation of these terms shows. First of all, using story as a synonym for fabula can be confusing for those readers more acquainted with the lay sense of the term. It also causes problems if we want to use story in its most

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general lay sense as well as its narratological sense, and retaining this possibility is, in my opinion, useful for expository purposes. The term discourse is equally problematic as it is suffused with so many nuances of meaning within different areas of linguistics and sociology (see Fairclough 1992: 3–4 for an overview of these) that to add another simply increases the potential for confusion among readers familiar with alternative meanings of the word. It is for these reasons that I prefer to use the Russian Formalists’ terms fabula and sjuzhet. What should also be apparent at this stage is that Wales (1989), in her definition of narrative, is clearly not using the term story as Chatman (1978) defines it. Instead, it appears that she is using story simply as a synonym for narrative, which makes for an unfortunate circular definition, especially when Wales says that in ordinary usage story ‘refers to a narrative, whether fact or fiction, which is regarded noteworthy of being told’ (Wales 1989: 431). The importance of making the distinction between fabula and sjuzhet, of course, is that the order in which events are presented as having happened in the fictional world can create point of view effects. This can be seen if we return to our Sherlock Holmes example. In The Hound of the Baskervilles, the death of Sir Charles Baskerville (an incident central to the whole plot) is the cue for James Mortimer (Baskerville’s friend and doctor) to visit Holmes and Watson and request their help in solving the mystery surrounding Sir Charles’s death. In the fabula of the narrative, the chronological order of events in the fictional world up to this point are as follows: 1. Dr James Mortimer discovers Sir Charles’s body outside Baskerville Hall. 2. Mortimer visits Holmes and Watson but finds them not at home. 3. Holmes and Watson return home and discover that in their absence they have received a visitor (Mortimer) who has inadvertently left his walking stick behind. 4. Holmes and Watson make deductions about who the owner of the walking stick might be. 5. Mortimer returns and tells his story to Holmes and Watson. However, in the sjuzhet of the narrative the events are narrated to the reader in the following order: 3, 4, 5, 2, 1. The above example shows that the sjuzhet does not represent the chronological order in which the events in the fictional world happened. Instead, the sjuzhet represents the order in which Holmes and Watson experience these events. We can therefore begin to see from this example how the sjuzhet of a narrative can contribute to the presentation of a particular point of view. The formalist distinction between fabula and sjuzhet, then, offers a further insight into what a narrative text is, and goes beyond Wales’s (1989) rather circular definition. Indeed, Chatman (1990: 9) suggests that this ‘doubly temporal’ element

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of a text, as he puts it, is a defining component of narrative. However, some writers have also suggested that it is necessary to introduce a third distinction to separate out the act of telling a story (what in 2.2 I defined as narration) from the presentation of that story (what I have referred to previously as the sjuzhet). For example, Bal’s (1997) justification for distinguishing between narration and sjuzhet centres around the various possible forms of a text. She claims that it is possible to have many different versions of the same story, and uses as an example the fairy-tale Tom Thumb. Bal says that some versions of the story will be considered literary, while others will not, and that some will be written specifically for young children while others will be aimed at a higher age group and thus be more complicated. Bal uses this as the basis for her argument that we should consider the narration to be distinct from the sjuzhet. Clearly, this distinction is an important one and further adds to our understanding of what a narrative text is. Nevertheless, to be fully clear about the terms narrative and narration it is also necessary to consider how narratives differ from non-narrative texts. We shall need to consider this in more detail before we can determine the extent to which narration is a part of drama. Only after we have established some criteria of narrative texts can we then go on to consider in more detail typologies of narration and how these might apply to dramatic texts.

. Narrative connections So far we have seen that narration is the process of telling a story, whereas a narrative is the specific telling of the presentation of that story. In attempting to be clear about this, I have explained some of the difficult terminological problems associated with narrative structure and briefly mentioned the potential viewpoint effects that can arise as a result of the way in which the fabula of a narrative text is presented in the narration. However, there still remains the issue of what makes a narrative different from other kinds of writing. Explanations of how narrative texts differ from other text-types (e.g. advertisements, notes to the milkman, etc.) largely focus on issues such as the presence or absence of temporal sequencing of events and states of affairs, and causality and logical relations, all of which are acknowledged to be essential elements of narrative texts (see, for example, Brooks 1984; Chatman 1990; Toolan 2001). Bal (1997: 5), for instance, explains that a fabula is ‘a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors’ (Bal 1997: 5 defines actors as ‘agents that perform actions’). However, such structural definitions of narrative can be hard to sustain. Carroll (2001) acknowledges this, pointing out, for example, that not every event in a narrative will be causally related to succeeding events:

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[. . .] it is too demanding to expect that, in all cases, the narrative connection involves an earlier event that causally necessitates the succeeding state. (Carroll 2001: 28)

To support this position, Carroll refers to the following invented narrative: “the thief enters the bank to rob it, but subsequently, as he exits, he is apprehended by the police” (Carroll 2001: 27)

Carroll points out that although the arrest of the thief comes about as a result of his robbing the bank, the action of robbing the bank does not necessarily entail the arrest. Because of this, Bal’s (1997) definition of narrative would, strictly speaking, discount Carroll’s example. Carroll argues, however, that the action of the thief robbing the bank constitutes what Mackie (1976, 1980) refers to as an INUS condition; that is, ‘an insufficient but necessary part of a condition that itself is unnecessary but is sufficient for an effect event’ (Carroll 2001: 28). Chatman (1990: 9) refers to this phenomenon as ‘contingency’, defining it as a somewhat weaker form of causality. Carroll (2001) goes on to argue that the presence of INUS conditions within a text generates what he terms narrative connections. In effect, narrative connections are the underlying fabula of a narrative (Carroll 2001: 31), and Carroll argues that if it is possible to determine narrative connections within a text, then that text will constitute a narrative. The problems inherent in defining narrative would seem to suggest that it is all but impossible to arrive at a purely structural definition of the term that will satisfy all possible objections. What makes Carroll’s (2001) explanation of narrative particularly attractive is that it allows for the fact that some texts may contain more narrative elements than others. Carroll himself says: I suspect that when we call more large-scale discourses, such as histories or novels, narratives, we do so because they possess a large number of narrative connections or because the narrative connections they contain have special salience or a combination of both. (Carroll 2001: 21)

What this suggests is that it is perhaps more useful to think of narrative as being the kind of ‘fuzzy’ category that I introduced in Chapter one in relation to prototype theory. If we take this to be the case then texts that exhibit numerous narrative connections would be more easily classifiable as narrative than those that exhibit only a few. Dramatic texts, too, would have their place within such a category, with some dramatic texts being more peripheral category members than others.

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. Types of narrators As Genette (1980) and Bal (1997) note, integral to the definition of a narrative text is the presence of a narrator. Let us now consider some of the different categories that have been proposed to explain the various types of narrators, and narration, that can be found in narrative texts. Because of the connection between narration and the expression of viewpoint this invariably leads us into considering existing frameworks for the analysis of point of view in prose fiction, which in turn inform our discussion of narration. .. Internal and external narration In his seminal work on point of view, Uspensky (1973) initially distinguishes two basic types of narration: When an author constructs his narration, he usually has two options open to him: he may structure the events and character of the narrative through the deliberately subjective viewpoint of some particular individual’s (or individuals’) consciousness, or he may describe the events as objectively as possible. (Uspensky 1973: 81)

Uspensky refers to these two potential types of narration as internal and external narration. The term internal describes the type of narration that is restricted to the ‘subjective viewpoint’ (Uspensky 1973: 81) of a particular character or characters, whereas external refers to the type of omniscient narration that purports to be objective, and seemingly includes narratorial comment on the characters and actions described. The following two examples from prose fiction illustrate internal and external narration respectively: Of course, businesses took some time to get established – Mma Ramotswe understood this – but how long could one go on at a loss? She had a certain amount of money left over from her father’s estate but she could not live on that forever. She should have listened to her father; he had wanted her to buy a butchery, and that would have been so much safer. What was the expression they used? A blue-chip investment, that was it. But where was the excitement in that? (Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, p. 86) [. . .] Morris Zapp has just discovered what it is that’s bugging him about his flight. The realization is a delayed consequence of walking the length of the aircraft to the toilet, and strikes him, like a slow-burn gag in a movie-comedy, just as he is concluding his business there. (David Lodge, Changing Places, p. 29)

The distinction between an internal, subjective presentation of events (as in the example from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) and an external narration (as in Changing Places) has clear consequences for point of view effects. In the extract

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from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency the reader is likely to feel that the point of view is more restricted than in the example from Changing Places (due in no small part to the profusion of free indirect thought in the passage; see Semino & Short 2004 for a description of this phenomenon). In the David Lodge example, on the other hand, the point of view expressed seems to belong more to the narrator than to the character of Morris Zapp (the simile, for instance, is the narrator’s). The linguistic construction of internal and external points of view will become clearer in the next section, though it should already be apparent that the notion of a purely objective viewpoint is problematic. For the moment though, we can note that Uspensky’s distinction between internal and external narration provides a useful starting point for the analysis of different types of narration. Uspensky’s work is developed by Fowler (1996 [1986]) in an effort to provide a more comprehensive description of the two narration types. Fowler’s work is in turn developed by Simpson (1993), whose framework we will consider in 2.4.3. Since Fowler’s work develops directly out of Uspensky’s, we will examine Fowler’s (1996 [1986]) taxonomy of narration next. .. Fowler’s taxonomy of narration Fowler’s (1996 [1986]) work on narration utilises a greater number of categories than Uspensky’s (1973) framework. Fowler (1996; see also 1982) subdivides Uspensky’s internal and external categories, making two further divisions. To begin with internal narration, he makes a distinction between what he terms Internal Type A and Internal Type B. Internal Type A is ‘narration from a point of view within a character’s consciousness, manifesting his or her feelings about, and evaluations of, the events and characters of the story’ (Fowler 1996: 170). Fowler explains that Type A narration can occur in the first-person (i.e. from an ‘I’-narrator) or third-person. The most subjective form of Type A narration, according to Fowler, is that produced by a first-person narrator. By ‘subjective’ Fowler appears to mean ‘most obviously displaying the world-view (see Chapter six, Section 6.2.1) of the particular character from whose point of view the story is being told’. An example of Type A first-person narration would be Roddy Doyle’s novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, told entirely from the perspective of a 10 year old boy. To illustrate Type A third-person narration Fowler uses an extract from James Joyce’s Ulysses which contains several instances of internal monologue from the character of Leopold Bloom. Type B internal narration, on the other hand, reflects ‘the point of view of someone who is not a participating character but who has knowledge of the feelings of the characters – a narrator, or the so-called “omniscient” author’ (Fowler 1996: 170). The following extract from Louis de Bernières’s novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, illustrates this type of narration. In it, the underlined terms do not

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necessarily reflect Dr Iannis’s feelings about his day but seem instead to be the narrator’s evaluations of events. Dr Iannis had enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation. (Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, p. 1; my underlining)

Of course, within the example from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin there are also terms which seem to reflect Dr Iannis’s point of view. The description of the calving as ‘surprisingly easy’ and of his female patient as being a ‘lady of easy virtue’ might indicate the doctor’s viewpoint just as much as the narrator’s. This is a problem with Fowler’s taxonomy that we will consider in more detail later on in this section. For the moment, though, let us consider the taxonomy as Fowler describes it. Turning to Fowler’s categories of external narration, then, here he makes a distinction between Type C and Type D narration. Of external narration, Fowler claims that: [. . .] its basic characteristic is avoidance of any account of the thoughts or feelings of characters, or at least, avoidance of any claim to the fidelity of such an account. (Fowler 1996: 177)

To begin with Type C narration, Fowler describes this as follows: First, in relation to the characters, it declines to report their inner processes, and so verba sentiendi are as much as possible banished from the discourse; it claims to be objective in not offering to report what an ordinary unprivileged observer could not see. Second, it is impersonal in relation to the author or narrator, declining to offer judgements on the characters’ actions; this claimed authorial objectivity is indicated by avoidance of evaluative modalities. (Fowler 1996: 177)

Fowler cites Ernest Hemingway’s writing as displaying many of the components of Type C narration, though he acknowledges that it is virtually impossible to write without including at least some reference to characters’ internal states and some modal indicators. Finally, Fowler describes Type D as being different from Type C by virtue of the fact that in Type D narration ‘the persona of the narrator is highlighted, perhaps by first person pronouns, and certainly by explicit modality’ (Fowler 1996: 178). Fowler claims that in Type D narration the author pretends to have no access to the internal states of characters and establishes this pretence by the use of, for example, non-factive verbs such as ‘seemed’ and ‘appeared’, and what Uspensky (1973: 85) terms ‘words of estrangement’. These include adverbs of manner, such as evidently, apparently and perhaps.

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There are a number of problems with Fowler’s categories, most notably concerning the difference between Type C and Type D narration. However, before examining these issues in detail we might consider some examples of the extent to which Fowler’s categories can apply to narration in dramatic texts. To begin with Fowler’s first category, Type A narration manifests a particular character’s ‘feelings about, and evaluations of, the events and characters of the story’ (Fowler 1996: 170). We can observe this in the following extract from The Lady in the Van: [Context: Miss Shepherd is being put in an ambulance that is to take her to a day care centre for the elderly.] [846] AB2 I note how with none of my own distaste the ambulance driver does not hesitate to touch her and put his arm round her as he lowers her into the chair. I note too his careful rearrangement of her greasy clothing, pulling the skirt down over her knees in the interest of modesty. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 73–4)

Here we have first-person narration from AB2 that reveals how he perceives the actions of the ambulance driver. To AB2 the driver appears ‘careful’ when he rearranges Miss Shepherd’s clothes. AB2 also notes that the driver shows no visible sign of distaste at dealing with Miss Shepherd. What is also revealed in this extract is something of AB2’s opinion of Miss Shepherd. We can infer that, unlike the ambulance driver, AB2 does find the idea of touching her distasteful, presumably because of her lack of personal hygiene. This is further reinforced in his description of her clothing as ‘greasy’. What we have, then, is AB2’s point of view of events rather than anyone else’s, and this seems to fit within Fowler’s Type A category. Type B narration, on the other hand, reflects ‘the point of view of someone who is not a participating character but who has knowledge of the feelings of the characters – a narrator, or the so-called “omniscient” author’ (Fowler 1996: 170). This category would seem to describe the stage directions in the following extract from J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan: [Context: This extract comes towards the end of the play. Wendy’s mother, Mrs Darling, has forbidden her from returning with Peter to the Never Land, but she has agreed that Wendy can visit Peter once a year to do his spring cleaning.] Wendy revels in this, but Peter, who has no notion of what a spring cleaning is, waves a rather careless thanks. (J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan, p. 81)

The fact that ‘spring cleaning’ is preceded by an indefinite article is grammatically deviant and reflects Peter’s lack of knowledge as to what this activity is. Clearly, most readers of the play script will understand the term, as does the character of Wendy. Peter, however, does not, and this is reflected in the stage directions by ‘spring cleaning’ being treated as a countable compound noun, preceded by an in-

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definite article. The stage directions appear to be a kind of third-person narration with a particular emphasis on Peter’s point of view, and as such, would seem to fit within Fowler’s Type B category. Turning to Fowler’s Type C narration, this is described as ‘the most neutral, impersonal, type of third person narration’ (Fowler 1996: 177). It is this type of narration that is perhaps most commonly associated with stage directions in drama. An example can be seen in the following extract from Les Smith’s dramatisation of Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (Smith 1995), where there is no insight into the internal states of the characters but simply a description of their actions: [Context: Moll has just been married to Robin Wiseman. The attendant wedding guests now begin their celebrations.] The two groups come together. Bells peal. Mr and Mrs Wiseman join the celebrations. Robin and Moll pass through a line formed by the others and pose as though for a wedding photograph. (Les Smith, Moll Flanders, p. 31)

Here, the point of view is clearly external, with no focus on the viewpoint of any particular character. Type D narration is similar to Type C in that it reveals no access to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. However, according to Fowler, Type D narration goes one step further by actually making clear ‘the limitations of authorial knowledge’ (Fowler 1996: 170). An example can be seen in the following screen directions from Bruce Robinson’s screenplay for the film Withnail and I: [Context: Marwood and Withnail, two out-of-work actors, are sitting in Regent’s Park, nursing hangovers and lamenting their bad luck. Marwood has just offered the opinion that things can surely only get better. Up to this point in the text, it has not been revealed what Marwood and Withnail do for a living.] Withnail Easy enough for you to say ‘lovey’, you’ve had an audition. . . Why can’t I have an audition? An audition? Can these two wrecks be actors? Evidently they are. It’s ridiculous. I’ve been to drama school. I’m good looking. I tell you, I’ve a fuck sight more talent than half the rubbish that gets on television. Why can’t I get on television? Marwood has clearly listened to this before. He turns away cold. Marwood I dunno. It’ll happen. . . Withnail Will it? That’s what you say. The only programme I’m likely to get on is the fucking news. The assessment is probably correct.

(Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 12)

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The interrogatives in the screen directions (‘An audition? Can these two wrecks be actors?’) give the impression that the narrator does not have full knowledge of the characters or the goings-on in the fictional world. The sentence adjuncts ‘evidently’ and ‘clearly’ provide further support for this interpretation, suggesting that there is external evidence for the assertions that are made in the screen directions, rather than the narrator simply being able to state these propositions as fact. The uncertainty inherent in the screen directions is also made apparent by the use of ‘probably’ in the assertion that follows Withnail’s final turn. The impression that is created here is that the characters in the fictional world are entirely autonomous and independent of the narrator, and the screen directions were most likely written in this way in order to represent the effect on an audience that the writer wanted the actors to achieve. It is possible then to identify examples of Fowler’s categories in the stage/screen directions of dramatic texts. However, there are problems with Fowler’s taxonomy of narration and these problems raise the question of whether defining types of narrators is the best way to explain how particular point of view effects are created. There is a clear problem, for instance, with the degree of crossover between Type C and Type D narration. If the only difference between the two categories is that in Type D the narrator actually states (or implicates) that he or she does not have access to the internal states of the characters, then this does not seem to warrant referring to this type of narration as a category in its own right. In effect, this is the same as the ‘avoidance of any claim to the fidelity of such an account’ (Fowler 1996: 177) that Fowler says is a determining feature of Type C narration. It would therefore seem that Type D narration is, at the most, best described as a special case of Type C. However, the notion of Type C narration is itself problematic. There are a very small number of texts that do not reveal anything of the internal states of a least one character. Even Fowler admits that in the example he uses to illustrate Type C narration (Ernest Hemingway’s short story ‘The Killers’) there are ‘a few phrases indicating internal states’ (Fowler 1996: 178). With so few examples to be found, this does raise the question of whether identifying types of narration is the most profitable way of understanding viewpoint in texts. There are also problems with some of Fowler’s assertions about the features that make up his categories. For example, Fowler states that Type C narration ‘is the formula for the most neutral, impersonal, type of third person narration, which we associate with epic among the older literatures, and, in the modern period, with the ideal of objective realism proposed by Flaubert; and with news reporting’ (Fowler 1996: 177). There are several problems with this contention. First, Fowler presents no evidence to support his claim that the ‘epic’ form does actually make use of neutral and impersonal narration. It is also debatable how many people would really assume news reporting to be an example of ‘objective realism’. Certainly, research into news reporting in the tabloid press would seem

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to challenge this assumption (see, for example, Short 1988 and, indeed, Fowler’s own 1991 work). A more significant problem, however, is with Fowler’s assertion that Type C narration is exclusively third-person. It is easy to imagine an instance of a first-person narrator who gives no access to his or her thoughts but simply describes what he or she experiences, giving no evaluation of these events. Since Type C is restricted to third-person narration, it would appear that there is no place within Fowler’s categories for such a narrator. Herein lies a major problem with Fowler’s typology. The taxonomy he presents does not allow for the fact that there may be other types of narration that are not covered by the categories he defines (for example, second-person narration). Thus it does not account for the variety of viewpoints that might occur within a text. Furthermore, despite the fact that Fowler acknowledges that no text is likely to exhibit one type of narration alone, the categories he suggests restrict us to compartmentalising narrators, when in fact the type of narration in a text may change from sentence to sentence. It would seem, therefore, that there is little to be gained from asserting that a narrator belongs to a particular category. Rather it would seem that it is more helpful to look at the effects generated by changes in narration, and to look particularly at how specific point of view effects are created. This would certainly allow us to say more interpretatively about a narrative text. This is the approach taken by, for example, Short (1996), whose work is discussed in 2.5.5. Before considering this, though, it is necessary to consider Simpson’s (1993) modification of Fowler’s typology of narration. .. Simpson’s development of Fowler’s work Simpson’s (1993) work on point of view attempts in part to resolve some of the problems that we have noted with Fowler’s taxonomy. Simpson takes Fowler’s categories of narration as a starting point and tries to introduce more precision into this framework in an effort to identify the linguistic components common to each category. Central to Simpson’s model of point of view is the concept of modality, which he explains as referring to ‘a speaker’s attitude towards, or opinion about, the truth of a proposition expressed by a sentence’ (Simpson 1993: 47). Simpson attempts to extend Fowler’s work on modality as an indicator of viewpoint by not only identifying the various ways of expressing modal commitment (e.g. modal auxiliaries, modal adverbs, etc.), but also by looking in detail at the different types of modality in English. As a result, he suggests an initial distinction between what he terms category A narratives and category B narratives. Category A narratives, according to Simpson (1993: 55), are narrated in the first person by a participating character in the story. As Simpson explains, this category corresponds with Genette’s (1980) category of homodiegetic narration. Category B narratives, however, are more complicated. All category B narratives

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are third-person and all have narrators who are not participants in the story. In this respect, Simpson’s category B is similar to Genette’s heterodiegetic narration. Simpson goes on to explain that category B narratives can be subdivided, according to whether the events of the story are related from outside or inside the consciousness of a particular character. Where events are told from outside the consciousness of any character, Simpson describes this as category B in narratorial mode. However, if the third-person narrator moves into the consciousness of a character then that character is said to be the reflector of the fiction, and Simpson describes this type of narration as category B in reflector mode (this is similar to Genette’s notion of focalisation, discussed in 2.5.1). There is, of course, an issue about how much internalisation it is necessary to have before a reflector/focaliser can be said to exist in a text (see Short 2000 for more discussion of this problem). Category A and category B narratives can also be subdivided on the basis of the patterns of modality that they reveal, and Simpson refers to the three possible subdivisions as positive, negative and neutral ‘shading’. He explains that in texts with positive shading the deontic and boulomaic systems of modality are foregrounded (i.e. the modal expression of duty/obligation [deontic modality] and desire [boulomaic modality]). Negatively shaded texts, on the other hand, are those in which the epistemic and perception systems of modality are foregrounded. Epistemic modality concerns the modal expression of confidence or lack of confidence in the truth of a proposition (expressed, for example, by adverbs such as possibly and by modal auxiliaries such as could and might). Simpson (1993: 50) describes perception modality as ‘a subcategory of epistemic modality’, explaining that in this modal system ‘the degree of commitment to the truth of a proposition is predicated on some reference to human perception, normally visual perception’ (Simpson 1993: 50). The examples that Simpson gives of this type of modality are adjectives such as clear and obvious and modal adverbs such as apparently and evidently. Finally, neutrally shaded texts in Simpson’s framework are those where ‘unmodalized categorical assertions’ are predominant (Simpson 1993: 75). Simpson’s (1993) model of point of view, with its emphasis on the various types of modality within texts, provides a more precise method of distinguishing between types of narrators than is possible with Fowler’s (1996) framework. However, Simpson’s framework still has some of the disadvantages of Fowler’s. It is still the case that very few texts will exhibit one type of narration alone, and there remains the possibility that there are types of narration that Simpson’s model could not account for. Since it is common for a variety of viewpoints to be displayed within texts, it would seem more profitable to acknowledge this as a feature of linguistic point of view, rather than trying to arrive at a definitive typology of narration. My concern from Chapter four onwards is to try and account for how these various viewpoints are constructed linguistically, and how readers move between them, without resorting to the categories of narration proposed by Fowler,

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Simpson and others. Nevertheless, before I go on to outline this approach, it will be helpful to take account of the categories of point of view and frameworks for analysing viewpoint that have been proposed by Uspensky, Fowler and others.

. Point of view in prose narration In addition to defining various types of narration, writers on point of view have also attempted to distinguish different categories of viewpoint. In this section I consider the various proposals in this area, before going on to look at the linguistic indicators of point of view that are inherent in prose texts, and the extent to which these can be found in dramatic texts. .. Focalization It is worth noting at this point that the term point of view is itself controversial, with numerous writers preferring alternative terms. Genette (1980) explains his objection to the term point of view by referring to the work of Brooks and Warren (1943), who suggest the term focus of narration as an alternative. Genette’s work, however, has not been without its critics. I myself have several reservations about some of Genette’s proposals, so I will begin with an examination of Genette’s work in order to make clear my dissatisfaction with it. In a discussion of Brooks and Warren’s (1943) proposed equivalent to point of view (as mentioned above, Brooks and Warren favour focus of narration), Genette summarises their observations as to the variety of narrative options available by drawing up the following table: Table 2.1 Genette’s (1980) summary of Brooks and Warren’s (1943) ‘focus of narration’ Internal analysis of events Narrator as a character in the story Narrator not a character in the story

Outside observation of events

1. Main character tells his 2. Minor character tells main characstory ter’s story 4. Analytic or omniscient 3. Author tells story as observer author tells story

Referring to this table, Genette says: Now, it is obvious that only the vertical demarcation relates to ‘point of view’ (inner or outer), while the horizontal bears on voice (the identity of the narrator), with no real difference in point of view between 1 and 4 (let us say Adolphe and Armance) and between 2 and 3 (Watson narrating Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie narrating Hercule Poirot). (Genette 1980: 186–7)

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The problem with Genette’s assertion is that it is not obvious that there is no difference in point of view between categories 1 and 4 in the table and categories 2 and 3. There is, for instance, a clear difference in point of view between Watson narrating a Sherlock Holmes story, and Agatha Christie’s narrator narrating a Hercule Poirot novel. Watson is a first person narrator and therefore his point of view will be restricted by the information available to him in the fictional world (as already discussed in 2.2). Agatha Christie, on the other hand, might choose to use third-person narration, in which case the option of a much less restricted point of view of events becomes available. Similarly, a minor character narrating a main character’s story will relate this differently to a main character relating his or her own story. Contrary to what Genette claims, point of view is an issue in each of the situations described in the four numbered cells of Table 2.1. It is also the case that Genette’s suggested example here is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, in narratological terms Agatha Christie would not be considered the narrator of her novels. In such examples where it might appear that Christie is the narrator, what is actually the case is that the levels of author and narrator on Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram ‘collapse’ together (see Chapter one, Section 1.4). The second problem is that the example of Agatha Christie narrating Hercule Poirot is not the clearest illustration to use, simply because so many of the Poirot stories are narrated in the first-person by the character of Captain Hastings. Nevertheless, Genette chooses not to use point of view on the grounds that writers who favour this term are in fact conflating two different facets of narrative that should be studied separately (Genette 1980: 186). These two aspects of narrative are referred to by Genette as narrative mood and narrative voice. He explains the distinction by saying that mood is concerned with the question ‘Who is the character whose point of view orients the narrative?’, whereas the category of voice is more concerned with the question ‘Who is the narrator?’ (Genette 1980: 186). Genette himself paraphrases these questions, reformulating them as, respectively, ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’. Mood, according to Genette, is what we should concentrate on describing if we are to explain point of view in texts, and the term itself equates roughly with what Fowler (1996) terms ‘psychological’ point of view (Simpson 1993: 33). Genette then explains that mood may be further sub-divided into the categories of distance and perspective. These categories are not precisely explained by Genette, but it seems that distance refers to the extent to which a text exhibits narratorial mediation (or ‘interference’ as Leech & Short 1981: 324 describe it) and the extent to which that narratorial mediation is perceived by readers. This might be paraphrased as the extent to which readers are aware of the narrator in a text. For example, in the following extract from Ian Fleming’s novel Dr No, the absence of reporting clauses after the direct speech creates the effect that this is an impartial presentation of the conversation between Bond and M:

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[Context: M, the head of Britain’s Secret Service, is explaining to his top agent, James Bond, the identity of the man suspected of being behind the murder of one of Bond’s colleagues.] ‘Who is this man?’ ‘Chinaman, or rather half Chinese and half German. Got a daft name. Calls himself Doctor No – Doctor Julius No.’ ‘No? Spelt like Yes?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Any facts about him?’ (Ian Fleming, Dr No, p. 26)

In such an example, Genette would presumably argue that the reader feels relatively close to the action in the fictional world, since there is no obvious sense of the event being presented by a narrator with his or her own agenda (note the similarity here with the free direct speech of characters in prototypical dramatic texts). However, readers can be made to feel more distant from events if there is a more obvious narrator presence. Compare the effect created by incorporating reporting clauses into the above example: ‘Who is this man?’ Bond asked, warily. ‘Chinaman, or rather half Chinese and half German. Got a daft name. Calls himself Doctor No – Doctor Julius No,’ scoffed M. ‘No? Spelt like Yes?’ asked Bond, quizzically. ‘That’s right,’ M sneered. ‘Any facts about him?’ asked Bond, distastefully. (adapted from Ian Fleming, Dr No, p. 26; my interpolations in bold)

In the adapted version of the Dr No example we are made much more aware of the story being told by a narrator, from a particular point of view. This is due to the addition of the reporting clauses and the fact that the reporting verbs and adverbs that are used have such strong connotations. The impression created by the addition of these reporting clauses is of a narrator reporting the conversation between Bond and M, thereby mediating the reader’s impression of the fictional world. This appears to be what Genette means by distance. This usage of the term equates roughly to the classical distinction between mimesis and diegesis (introduced by Plato in Book III of The Republic) and is discussed in greater detail in Chapter three. Perspective, on the other hand, is explained by Genette as referring to the regulation of information within a narrative, giving rise to the effect of ‘the narrative adopting or seeming to adopt what we ordinarily call the participant’s “vision” or “point of view”’ (Genette 1980: 162). The means by which this regulation of information is brought about is referred to by Genette as focalization. RimmonKenan (1983) and Bal (1997) also follow Genette’s lead and prefer focalization over point of view. In his later work Genette himself appears to change his mind about

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the term focalization and suggests instead the term foyer (Genette 1983: 49; see Chatman 1986 for a discussion of this terminological change). However, because focalization has been the most influential of Genette’s terms, I will reserve my discussion of Genette’s writing to this aspect of his work. Genette distinguishes three different types of focalization. Before we consider these, let us first note some of the problems with Genette’s term. Genette explains that he chooses the term focalization as a means of avoiding the visual connotations of point of view and because it corresponds to Brooks and Warren’s (1943) expression focus of narration. This, however, appears to contradict Genette’s argument so far. Genette disagrees with Brooks and Warren’s (1943) position on point of view, therefore why he should want to adopt a term that evokes their original expression is something of a mystery. It is also the case that focalization as a term is no less visual in connotation than point of view. Because of this, using focalization as an alternative does nothing to solve the problems that Genette observes with point of view. Instead, these problems are simply transferred to the term focalization, as Chatman (1986) has pointed out. The fact that point of view has overt visual connotations is a criticism often levelled at those writers who prefer this term, but this criticism is itself open to question. It is not made clear by Genette or other writers who favour the term focalization just what is so objectionable about retaining the visual connotations of point of view. The literal (i.e. non-metaphorical) sense of point of view (an ‘angle of vision’ as Wales (2001: 306) defines it) is an important aspect of the phenomenon of viewpoint, and it is from this that the metaphorical senses of the term are analogised (these non-literal senses are discussed in Sections 2.5.2 and 2.5.3). Therefore, retaining these visual connotations may actually help us to better understand their metaphorical counterparts. We might also observe that Genette’s terms perspective and distance and his question ‘Who sees?’ all carry the visual connotations that he claims to want to avoid. There are, then, several problems with the term focalization. Nevertheless, it is worth considering Genette’s taxonomy in full in order to understand its implications for the study of point of view. Genette distinguishes three types of focalization. These are zero focalization (also described by Genette as nonfocalized narrative), internal focalization and external focalization. Zero focalization is explained only very briefly by Genette, who says that the category is represented by ‘the classical narrative’ (Genette 1980: 189). Genette, however, does not give an example of a narrative with zero focalization. Simpson (1993: 33), in his own summary of Genette’s categories, describes zero focalization as ‘the narrative with omniscient narrator, where the narrator says more than any of the characters know.’ As such, this zero focalization would therefore seem to correspond with Fowler’s Type B narration.

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Internal focalization, on the other hand, is described by Genette, as being found in those narratives in which the omniscience of the narrator is restricted. Genette explains that internal focalization can be fixed (i.e. restricted to the point of view of one character), variable (i.e. alternating between the viewpoint of two or more characters) or multiple (where the reader may be given more than one perspective on the same event, as occurs sometimes in epistolary novels). Internal focalization would seem to correspond with Fowler’s Type A narration. Unlike Fowler, Genette does not specify whether internal focalization is restricted to being either third-person or first-person (Fowler notes that Type A narration can occur in both), though he does make the valuable point that it is not restricted to one particular character. Finally, Genette explains that external focalization is found in those narratives where the narrator does not reveal all that he or she knows about the characters, and where the reader is not given access to the characters’ thoughts and feelings. As examples, he cites the work of Dashiell Hammett and Ernest Hemingway. External focalization would therefore seem most closely related to Fowler’s Type C narration. Having considered Genette’s categories of focalization, we are now in a position to consider some of the weaknesses of his taxonomy. To begin with zero focalization, the difficulty here is that Genette gives almost no explanation of what is meant by this term, other than saying that it is best exemplified in ‘classical narrative’. Simpson (1993: 34) explains that zero focalization seems to differ from internal focalization due to ‘the greater degree of omniscience which it manifests’. However, if this is indeed the difference between the two categories then it becomes extremely difficult to draw the line between them, as Simpson points out. How, for example, are we to decide on the quantity of ‘omniscience’ that a text must exhibit before it may be classed as zero focalization? Significantly, Rimmon-Kenan (1983) abandons the notion of zero-focalization in her own work, preferring to develop the distinction between internal and external focalization. Even these two remaining categories are not without their problems. External focalization appears to equate roughly to Fowler’s category of Type C narration, the problems with which have already been discussed in 2.4.2. If an otherwise purely externally focalized narrative contains just one instance of the presentation of a character’s internal state, does this mean that the whole narrative should not be considered an example of external focalization? Or should we just say that the external focalization has been momentarily interrupted by an instance of internal focalization? These are questions that Genette leaves unanswered. Internal focalization, too, is problematic. How, for example, do we define fixed internal focalization? Does this have to be fixed throughout the whole text? Does one instance of variation prevent us from classifying a text as having fixed internal focalization? Again, Genette does not say, and this is a problem with all his categories of focaliza-

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tion; Genette provides no linguistic criteria for these, which consequently makes it extremely difficult to apply his categories analytically. Simpson (1993) comments on this, saying: Recognitions of categories such as internal and external focalization may vary from reader to reader, and while this is not undesirable, the view taken here is that it is possible to specify on clearer linguistic criteria the different types of point of view realized in narrative fiction. (Simpson 1993: 34)

There is also an issue with Genette’s claim that the distinction between ‘who sees’ and ‘who speaks’ is entirely separate. Rimmon-Kenan, defending Genette’s distinction, cites the following example from the opening of James Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. . .. His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass. He had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. (James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, p. 1)

Rimmon-Kenan explains that in the above passage, what we have is a representation of the character of Stephen’s perceptions as a child (Rimmon-Kenan 1983: 74). However, she states, this does not mean that the language in the passage is Stephen’s language, or that Stephen is the narrator. This is certainly true. Stephen is referred to in the third-person which would be unusual – though not impossible – if he were the narrator. Instead, according to Rimmon-Kenan, Stephen is the focalizer and is entirely separate from the narrator; and Genette claims that it is only focalization that constitutes point of view in narrative. However, what Rimmon-Kenan overlooks is that Joyce has chosen to have his third-person narrator of this passage relate events from a particular perspective. For example, the narrator says ‘his father looked at him through a glass’ rather than ‘he saw his father through a glass’. The choice of making the noun phrase ‘his father’ the grammatical subject of the sentence generates a slightly different point of view effect to the alternative example, illustrating that point of view is inherent in the narrator’s presentation of events, not just in the focalizing character. It is the choices that an author makes as to how the narrator tells the story that create the effect of focalization, therefore to study focalization without considering the narrator (‘who speaks’) would seem to be a logical impossibility. Finally, Genette’s taxonomy does not adequately account for how changes in point of view are effected. This, I would suggest, is one of the most important aspects of viewpoint, and one that is not often considered in existing frameworks for

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the analysis of point of view; namely how readers are manipulated by writers into witnessing events in the fictional world from particular perspectives. Genette does explain that commitment to a particular type of focalization may not necessarily be retained throughout a whole narrative, but his explanation of these changes is unconvincing. Where changes in focalization occur in a text, Genette terms these alterations, and sub-divides them into the categories of paralipsis and paralepsis (Genette 1980: 195). Paralipsis and paralepsis, he says, refer respectively to ‘giving less information than is necessary in principle, or giving more than is authorized in principle in the code of focalization governing the whole’ (Genette 1980: 195). Again though, there is the problem of how we are to decide what the ‘focalization governing the whole’ actually is, when Genette also states that focalizations are not fixed over a whole text. Whether alterations are defined according to the quantity of one particular type of focalization, or by some other method, is not made clear. It is also questionable how much sense it makes to talk about narrators being ‘authorized’ to present information, since this gives the false impression that narrators are autonomous and independent of the author, an issue that has already been discussed in relation to fabula and sjuzhet (see 2.2.1). It will be clear by now that I have some reservations about Genette’s (1980) taxonomy of point of view in narrative. It is for these reasons that I do not adopt his terminology in my analyses, despite its popularity among narratologists. Having said this, Genette’s taxonomy is not adopted unquestionably by such writers as Rimmon-Kenan (1983) and Bal (1997). Rimmon-Kenan (1983), for example, suggests that there are various facets to focalization, these being the perceptual component, the psychological component and the ideological component. Within these divisions she discusses such aspects as space, time, cognition and emotion. It is to these divisions within viewpoint that we will turn next. .. Point of view on the Uspenskian planes I mentioned in the previous section the efforts that some writers have made to disassociate the term point of view from its non-metaphorical meaning of an ‘angle of vision’ (Wales 2001: 306), noting that the numerous metaphorical extensions of the term are analogised from this most literal sense. The relationship between non-metaphorical and metaphorical point of view is important and is covered systematically in Uspensky’s (1973) work on point of view in narrative, later developed by Fowler (1986, 1996). In this section I discuss Uspensky’s categories of viewpoint and also consider the potential for applying these to dramatic texts. Uspensky asserts that point of view exists on four ‘planes’, these being the spatial and temporal plane, the ideological plane, the phraseological plane and the psychological plane. Let us begin by considering point of view in space and time.

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... Point of view on the spatial and temporal plane Uspensky (1973) considers spatial point of view and temporal point of view to exist on the same ‘plane’. Fowler (1996) also chooses to conflate these two senses of point of view, referring to the category of spatio-temporal viewpoint, and we will consider his reasons for doing this shortly. However, let us consider the two as separate for the moment, in order to see how temporal point of view is metaphorised from spatial viewpoint. To begin with spatial point of view, this is the non-metaphorical sense of the term point of view and refers to the position in space from which a scene is viewed. Chatman (1978) refers to this type of viewpoint as perceptual point of view. Uspensky (1973) notes that the spatial position of a narrator in a narrative does not necessarily equate to the spatial position of a specific character. For example, an omniscient narrator is able to describe much more than a specific character would be able to see of a particular scene. Spatial point of view can also be realised in the stage directions of dramatic texts, and is often used to express what the spatial point of view of an audience watching a performance of the play would be. Consider the following example from the stage directions at the beginning of Harold Pinter’s play Old Times: Light dim. Three figures discerned. Deeley slumped in armchair, still. Kate curled on a sofa, still. Anna standing at the window, looking out.

(Harold Pinter, Old Times, p. 7)

Here, the stage directions appear to reflect the spatial position of the audience in the theatre, and the use of the verb ‘discerned’ suggests that it may be initially a little difficult to perceive the characters on stage – perhaps due to the dim lighting. As we have seen in 2.4.2, however, narrators can restrict the point of view to that of a particular character, and in such instances we might assume that what the narrator describes is only that which the character in question can physically see. Representing a particular character’s spatial point of view is a more difficult task in stage drama, and is discussed in more detail in Chapter three. However, this is a relatively common occurrence in film and can be seen in the following example from Withnail and I: [Context: The screen directions have just described the character of Marwood and the fact that his hair could do with a good wash, a point made more obvious by Marwood running his hands through it.] Marwood reaches for a bottle of beer instead. Swallows a stale inch with eyes on the move. . . they navigate the globe and it seems to disgust him. Keep moving and good God in heaven is this what he sees?

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2. P.O.V. Marwood. A kitchen extends off the living room. But much worse. The living room doesn’t have a sink. This room does and it looks like it’s vomited. The unwashed and the unwashable are stacked to the height of the taps. Every horizontal surface is covered in nasovisual horror. (Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 2)

The expression ‘P.O.V. Marwood’ indicates a change in camera shot from an omniscient position to a representation of only that which the character of Marwood is able to see (‘P.O.V.’ being a commonly used acronym in film for ‘point of view’). The screen directions that follow then describe in detail the scene that Marwood observes. Temporal point of view refers to the presentation of events in a fictional world from a particular position in time. The notions of distance and proximity that pertain in spatial point of view apply metaphorically to temporal viewpoint. For example, a story may be told from a particular character’s position in time, as in the following example from Roald Dahl’s short story ‘Georgy Porgy’: I have never really had anything much to do with women. To be perfectly honest, up until three weeks ago I had never so much as laid a finger on one of them, except perhaps to help her over a stile or something like that when the occasion demanded. (Roald Dahl, ‘Georgy Porgy’ in Kiss Kiss, p. 109)

In this example, the reader is positioned in the same temporal location as the firstperson narrator, the phrase ‘three weeks ago’ relating to the narrator’s position in time rather than the reader’s. One of the effects of this is to bias the telling of the story. What the reader is presented with is the first-person narrator’s perspective of the order in which the events in the fictional world occurred. The representation of a particular character’s temporal point of view in drama may come about as a result of the temporal sequencing of events; i.e. the organisation of the sjuzhet in such a way that it reflects the order in which a particular character experienced events, rather than the order in which they actually occurred. Uspensky’s reasons for considering space and time to be part of the same ‘plane’ are most likely because any reference to a spatial point of view tends to assume some specific temporal point of view as well, and vice versa. We will consider this in more detail in 2.5.4.3. ... Point of view on the ideological plane Uspensky (1973) explains that point of view on the ideological plane is concerned with the following question: [. . .] whose point of view does the author assume when he evaluates and perceives ideologically the world which he describes? (Uspensky 1973: 8)

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Fowler (1996) explains that point of view on the ideological plane concerns the set of beliefs and values a person has, and the categories by which they comprehend the world. The vehicle for the ideology can be the narrative voice or the character. In dramatic texts, the expression of ideological viewpoint comes most often from the characters themselves, as in the following example from Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore’s sketch ‘Aftermyth of War’, a satire on the British people’s attitudes to the Second World War: [Context: This extract occurs towards the end of the sketch. Alan enters and very quickly summarises how the war finally came to an end.] Alan (entering) But the tide was turning, the wicket was drying out. It was deuce – advantage Great Britain. Then America and Russia asked if they could join in, and the whole thing turned into a free-for-all. And so, unavoidably, came peace, putting an end to organised war as we knew it. (Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore, ‘Aftermyth of War’ from Beyond the Fringe, p. 78)

In this example, the character Alan characterises war as a game by explaining it through terminology from cricket (‘wicket’, ‘drying out’) and tennis (‘deuce’, ‘advantage’). The collocation ‘organised war’ is also unusual, the most common collocate of the pre-modifying adjective organised being crime. In a search of the British National Corpus (World edition) for collocates of the adjective organised, I found that the most frequent collocate (out of 2086 different types) within a three word span was the noun crime. Crime appears as a collocate 60 times in 41 texts and has a log-likelihood value of 741.794178. In contrast, war appears as a collocate of organised only once in the 97,626,093 words of the BNC, and in this instance the noun war precedes organised: ‘When this war broke out organised Labour in this country lost the initiative’ (File CE7565). The other unusual sentiment in the extract comes about as a result of the adverb ‘unavoidably’. Using ‘unavoidably’ in the context in which it appears implies that the coming of peace was not necessarily welcomed. The ideology being expressed by Alan (and being satirised at the ‘author to reader’ level of the discourse structure diagram in Figure 1.1) is one in which war is treated as a fairly trivial matter, to be enjoyed in the same way as sports and games. Point of view on the ideological plane corresponds broadly with Chatman’s (1978) category of conceptual point of view, which is discussed in more detail in 2.5.4.3. ... Point of view on the phraseological plane In Uspensky’s (1973) taxonomy, point of view on the phraseological plane concerns the viewpoint effects that can arise as a result of an author’s choices with regard to the presentation of speech and thought. This plane also concerns the

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naming of characters and the consequences for the expression of point of view that this has. Fowler (1996: 162) argues that point of view on the phraseological plane does not constitute an independent level but is better thought of as being part of Uspensky’s ‘psychological plane’. Since the phraseological plane deals with particular linguistic indicators of point of view while Uspensky’s other planes concern broader categorisations of viewpoint, Fowler would appear to have a valid point when he says that ‘point of view on the phraseological plane’ does not seem to constitute an independent category. The creation of viewpoint effects via speech and thought presentation is covered by Short (1996), and Uspensky’s discussion of the relationship between point of view and naming correlates with Short’s (1996) discussion of the effects of socially deictic terms. Because of this, we will reserve discussion of what Uspensky terms ‘phraseological’ point of view till Section 2.5.5, where we will consider Short’s (1996) checklist of linguistic indicators of point of view. ... Point of view on the plane of psychology Point of view on the plane of psychology concerns the choices an author makes with regard to the various ways in which a story might be narrated. It is within this plane that Uspensky (1973) makes the distinction between internal and external narration (discussed in 2.4.1 above). Fowler’s (1996) taxonomy of narration, discussed above in 2.4.2, is developed from Uspensky’s description of point of view on the plane of psychology, and Fowler refers to it as psychological point of view. .. Fowler’s development of Uspensky’s taxonomy Fowler’s work on point of view (1996: 160–84) is developed from Uspensky’s (1973) taxonomy, with some modifications. Some of these have already been discussed in 2.5.2 above, such as Fowler’s subsuming of point of view on the phraseological plane within Uspensky’s category of point of view on the plane of psychology. One addition of Fowler’s that has not yet been mentioned, though, is his discussion of what he describes as world-view, and his introduction of the term mind-style. This is an important concept with regard to point of view, and is treated in detail in Chapter six. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning it briefly here since it constitutes an important aspect of Fowler’s work on point of view. Fowler explains that each individual’s understanding of the world will be slightly different as a result of the social environment into which they were born, the patterns of interaction they were involved in as they grew up, and the experiences in general that they have had. This understanding of the world is reflected in language and as Fowler says:

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The point is that every person’s sociolinguistic abilities are diverse, so that their language-use incorporates a repertoire of ideational perspectives. (Fowler 1996: 212)

In essence, what Fowler is saying is that every individual’s language experience and use (and, indeed, non-linguistic experience) will reflect their understanding of the world, and he refers to this understanding as a world-view. Fowler goes on to say: Discussing this phenomenon in literary fictions, I have called it mind-style: the world-view of an author, or a narrator, or a character, constituted by the ideational structure of the text. (Fowler 1996: 214)

Fowler then explains that he prefers the term mind style to Uspensky’s point of view on the ideological plane. Mind style as a concept has received a judicious amount of critical discussion. Semino (2002), for example, questions whether Fowler’s use of the term really is an equivalent to ideological point of view (I will consider this criticism in 6.2.1). What is important to note at the moment, though, is that any articulation of mind style will constitute the expression of a particular way of understanding the world, and this clearly relates to the expression of point of view. .. Chatman’s work on point of view Fowler’s and Simpson’s taxonomies of point of view, developed from the work of Uspensky (1973), have received considerable attention within stylistics. A further framework that has also been of interest to stylisticians is that proposed by Seymour Chatman (1978, 1986, 1990). Chatman’s work has been influential with regard to the study of point of view in prose fiction (see, for example, Sasaki 1994). But of particular relevance to this book is the fact that it has also been applied in the analysis of point of view in drama (see Weingarten 1984). Indeed, Chatman originally developed his framework through the analysis of both prose fiction texts and film. In this section I outline Chatman’s taxonomy of point of view before going on in Chapter three to look in detail at how it has been applied to drama. Chatman (1986) suggests that there are actually three senses of the term point of view. The first is a literal, non-metaphorical sense and refers to the angle from which we view an object. It is concerned with actually seeing or looking at something, and as such is equivalent to Uspensky’s (1973) and Fowler’s (1996) spatio-temporal viewpoint. An example would be ‘From my hotel window I can see Buckingham Palace,’ since here we are concerned with actually looking at and seeing a particular building. Chatman’s second and third point of view categories are metaphorical extensions of this first type. Chatman (1986) explains that the first type of figurative point of view covers the phenomenon of visual recall. Consider the following sen-

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tence: ‘From my point of view Buckingham Palace is an architectural disaster.’ Chatman suggests that a sentence such as this would still make sense even if it were said outside London because the ‘seeing’ now refers to an act of memory (Chatman 1986: 190). Chatman explains that it is not necessary to actually be able to see an object in order to talk sensibly about what it looks like. There is an obvious problem with Chatman’s categorisation here which I will deal with once we have considered his third class. Chatman’s third category is again figurative but is this time concerned with judgmental attitudes. That is, where an opinion is stated by the speaker, such as ‘From my point of view, the introduction of university tuition fees is immoral.’ Here, Chatman would consider the noun phrase ‘the introduction of university tuition fees’ as being the ‘object’ that is metaphorically seen. In such examples, then, the speaker’s point of view constitutes his or her stance on the subject, and as such is similar to Fowler’s (1996) category of ideological viewpoint. The problem with Chatman’s three way classification of point of view, however, is that there is basically no difference between his two types of figurative viewpoint. Both involve the speaker presenting an ideological position. What Chatman classifies as visual recall is actually judgmental too. In the example above (‘From my point of view Buckingham Palace is an architectural disaster’), we are not concerned with the actual appearance of Buckingham Palace, but with the speaker’s opinion that it is architecturally disastrous. Whether or not the speaker can actually see the palace when speaking is irrelevant. Despite this confusion, Chatman’s distinction between metaphorical and nonmetaphorical point of view is useful, and correlates roughly with Uspensky’s (1973) and Fowler’s (1996) distinction between spatio-temporal and ideological point of view. Chatman, however, favours different terminology to refer to these distinctions and in order to be clear about how they relate to other models of point of view, it is worth considering these in detail. ... Slant and filter Chatman proposes a terminological distinction between the point of view of the narrator and the point of view of the character (Chatman 1990: 143) and suggests the terms slant and filter respectively for these concepts. This division corresponds to Genette’s (1980) distinction between the questions ‘who sees?’ and ‘who tells?’, discussed in 2.5.1 above. Chatman illustrates the need for this distinction with reference to the following extract from Dombey and Son: Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great armchair by the bedside, and son tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a new muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new. (Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, p. 1)

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Chatman explains that it is clear that the analogy between the baby and a toasted muffin cannot be attributed to Dombey, on the basis that Dombey is ‘a man far too complacent about his first male offspring to entertain such a thought’ (Chatman 1990: 141). Because of this, Chatman says, it is clear that the analogy belongs to the narrator; in effect, what we have is the narrator’s point of view of the scene. Chatman’s choice of example here is not the most convincing, since he is relying on knowledge of the character of Dombey gained from reading the whole novel. As the extract he quotes occurs on the first page of the book, a reader new to the novel would not yet know that Mr Dombey is not the type of character to make such an analogy. Consequently it is not necessarily the case that a new reader would attribute the analogy to the narrator rather than Dombey. Chatman’s argument here relies on the benefit of post-processing, and does not take into account the online-processing that occurs when we read texts for the first time. However, on other occasions in the novel we are exposed to the character’s point of view rather than the narrator’s. Chatman quotes the following extract as an example: [Context: The narrator has just suggested that Mrs Dombey is ‘a lady with no heart to give’ to Mr Dombey.] [Mr Dombey] would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. (Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, p. 2)

Chatman explains that since the narrator has just suggested the opposite to what Mr Dombey ‘would have reasoned’, the indirect thought presentation inherent in the subordinate clause represents Dombey’s attitude rather than the narrator’s. Chatman uses this as support for his reasoning that it is necessary to make a terminological distinction between the point of view of the narrator and the point of view of the character. Having established this distinction, Chatman goes on to argue that the narrator is a reporter rather than an observer of events in the story world, saying that no-one ‘wonders whether the narrator ever inhabited the story world of Dombey and Son’ (Chatman 1990: 142). Because of this, Chatman suggests that the term ‘view’ to refer to the narrator’s perspective of events is misleading. Instead, what we appear to have is a written representation of the narrator’s mental experiences (Chatman 1990: 142). Chatman suggests that a new piece of terminology is necessary to capture this nuance and proposes the term slant. Filter, on the other hand, refers to ‘the mental activity experienced by the characters in the story world – perceptions, cognitions, attitudes, emotions, memories, fantasies and the like’ (Chatman 1990: 143). Chatman explains that only characters exist in the story world, not narrators, and that only characters are able to consider events from a position within that story world. Narrators, according to Chatman, always view events within the story world from outside that world. This, of course,

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raises the issue of how first-person narrators are treated in Chatman’s framework. Chatman explains this by saying that: The homodiegetic or first-person narrator did see the events and objects at an earlier moment in the story, but his recountal is after the fact and thus a matter of memory, not of perception. (Chatman 1990: 144–5)

Note, though, that this does not successfully explain present tense first-person narration. As we have already seen, the terms slant and filter correspond to Genette’s distinction between ‘who tells’ and ‘who sees’ (Chatman 1990: 144). As I have already discussed, however, (see 2.5.1) it seems that making a clear distinction between these two categories does not always adequately explain how particular viewpoint effects are created. For example, instances of free indirect discourse in a narrative would seem to blur the boundary between narrator and character. We might also question the argument that Chatman puts forward in favour of introducing the term slant, namely that narrators are reporters rather than observers of events in the story world. The problem here is that the practice of reporting seems to presuppose observation of some kind, unless the report is based on second-hand information. In addition, although narrators may not inhabit the story world of the characters they describe, it is the case that some narrators do inhabit some form of fictional world. In Chapter four I introduce a modified form of deictic shift theory (see Duchan et al. 1995) to take account of some of these problems with Chatman’s framework, and I propose that the categorical distinctions suggested by Chatman, Genette and others are often unhelpful. For the moment, though, it is worth continuing with an outline of Chatman’s framework, in order to be clear about his conceptualisation of point of view. ... Center and interest-focus In addition to slant and filter, Chatman proposes the concepts of center and interest-focus (Chatman 1986, 1990). Chatman explains that center refers to the phenomenon of one character being of paramount importance to the story throughout the text. However, center does not appear to equate to Bal’s (1997) notion of the focaliser of a story; Chatman explains that a ‘character who serves as filter may be central (the protagonist) or not (the “witness”)’ (Chatman 1986: 196). There is, then, a problem with center as a point of view category. Chatman’s definition of center suggests that this category is concerned with the extent to which a reader takes notice of a particular character, and this is not necessarily a point of view issue. For example, in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, the Count is arguably the most prominent character, the ‘central’ character in Chatman’s terms, yet at no point in the book do we get Dracula’s point of view manifested. Center may be

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an important concept in narratology but it does not seem explicitly connected to point of view. Interest-focus, by Chatman’s definition, seems very similar to the notion of center, and hence the same problems apply. Chatman states that if a character does not possess the mental capability to be a filter, or if he or she expresses no slant, he or she can still be interest-focused; that is, he or she can still be the main focus of a scene. Again, this does not seem to be a point of view issue, but appears more concerned with the extent to which we notice, or are prompted to identify with, a particular character. Chatman explains the concept as follows: Quite often we do not see things from some character’s optical point of view or know what she is thinking, but we identify with her, interpret events as they affect her, wish her good luck or good come-uppance. (Chatman 1990: 148)

Chatman notes that interest-focus differs from center in that even a minor character can be interest-focused for a short period of the narrative. Again though, this seems a somewhat puzzling definition, since it would seem from this that center is actually just prolonged interest-focus. If this is the case, then the introduction of two separate terms for what is essentially the same phenomenon seems somewhat counter-productive and confusing. For these reasons I do not consider center and interest-focus to be categories of point of view. ... Perceptual and conceptual point of view In his earlier work (Chatman 1978) Chatman stresses the distinction between what he calls literal and figurative viewpoints by defining these categorically as, respectively, perceptual and conceptual point of view. Perceptual point of view is an optical viewpoint, i.e. exactly that which a character physically sees. Wales (2001: 306) notes that this refers to an ‘angle of vision’. For example, in this extract from Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before we are given a report of exactly what the main character, Roberto, is able to see, indicated by the use of the verb of perception, ‘glimpsed’: He staggered to the other side of the ship and glimpsed, but distant this time, almost on the line of the horizon, the peaks of another mass, defined also by two promontories. (Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, p. 3)

Note, of course, that it is not just position in space that determines what Roberto is able to see, but also position in time. For example, on another day Roberto’s ship may not be in the same position and this would affect what he would be able to see. Perceptual viewpoint, then, can be seen to arise from a particular spatio-temporal location, which is the reason that Uspensky (1973) and Fowler (1996) run space and time together in their taxonomies of viewpoint. In drama, perceptual point of view can be indicated or implied in stage directions (as we have already seen) or

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through verbs of perception in the speech of characters, as in this example from The Lady in the Van, where Alan Bennett 2 (the narrator version of Alan Bennett) describes the moment he first encountered Miss Shepherd: [14] AB2 Cut to five years earlier. I am standing by the convent in Camden Town looking up at the crucifix on the wall, trying to decide what’s odd about it. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 7)

A character’s conceptual point of view, on the other hand, is not what he or she physically sees, but is rather a manifestation of his or her ideology, beliefs, attitudes or way of thinking, as this extract from All Quiet On The Western Front shows: The front is a cage in which we must await fearfully whatever may happen. We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. (Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet On The Western Front, p. 70)

Here the protagonist, a young German soldier in the First World War, explains his understanding of the trench warfare and front line fighting in which he is engaged. There is no mention of what he physically sees (no verbs of perception related to sight) only a manifestation of his attitude to the subject. This is apparent through his use of the adverb of manner ‘fearfully’, and in the negative connotations of the word ‘cage’ which he uses to describe the front metaphorically. Given that a cage is often used to keep an animal against its will, it seems that the first-person narrator is suggesting that he and his fellow soldiers are themselves nothing more than animals. The distinction between perceptual and conceptual point of view is a useful one to keep and equates to Uspensky’s (1973) distinction between spatial and ideological viewpoint. What Chatman’s framework does not take account of, however, is temporal point of view, and what we might term ‘social’ point of view; that is, the distance or closeness that we express to someone by the way we refer to them. This type of viewpoint arises out of the use of deictic terms, and is one of the indicators of point of view identified by Short (1996) in his checklist of linguistic indicators of viewpoint. .. Short’s checklist of linguistic indicators of viewpoint Short’s (1996) approach to point of view differs from that of Chatman, Uspensky and others, in that it does not attempt to categorise narration, but rather concentrates on the linguistic phenomena within texts that give rise to viewpoint effects. Short collates these into a checklist of prototypical linguistic indicators of viewpoint, though there is no suggestion that this is a comprehensive list (indeed, Short 2000 shows that graphology and style variation can sometimes be used to indicate viewpoint). Let us first of all consider Short’s original (1996) checklist:

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... Schema-oriented language Short’s first category takes into account the schemas that we use to help us understand situations and texts. It is now a commonly held assumption within cognitive psychology and linguistics that our understanding of particular events, activities and situations is shaped by the amount of prior knowledge we have about them. This background knowledge is referred to as schematic knowledge (see Arbib et al. 1987; Eysenck & Keane 1990 for a fuller explanation of schema theory, and Semino 1997 for a stylistic application), and a schema is simply a complex unit of schematic knowledge relating to a particular person, event, activity or situation. For example, university students all have a schema for professors, concerning how they behave, what they look like, how to address them, how to behave towards them and so on. Conversely, university lecturers all have schematic knowledge of students and what such people look like and how they behave. Such schematic knowledge can be exploited by writers to create viewpoint effects within a text, as van Peer (2001: 328) explains when he says that ‘In order to create a particular perspective, a writer may portray a protagonist systematically according to a particular schema’. An example of this can be seen in Willy Russell’s play Educating Rita, where the character of Rita, a mature student at The Open University, clearly deviates from our schema for students by her brash and outrageous behaviour. Short himself uses the play to discuss foregrounding effects as a result of schema clashes (see Short 1996: 229–31), though we can also notice point of view issues in the passage too. This can be seen in the following example, where Rita meets Frank, her tutor, for the first time: [Context: The conversation takes place in Frank’s office. Frank has just asked Rita her name.] Rita (noticing the picture) That’s a nice picture, isn’t it? (She goes up to it.) Frank Erm. . .yes. I suppose it is. . .nice. Rita (studying the picture) It’s very erotic. Frank (looking up) Actually I don’t think I’ve looked at it for about ten years, but yes, I suppose it is. Rita There’s no suppose about it. Look at those tits. (Willy Russell, Educating Rita, p. 1)

In the first scene of the play Rita deviates from most readers’ schema for students for numerous reasons. She initiates a conversation with Frank that is not academic in topic when we would usually expect new students not to initiate at all on first meeting their tutor in a formal environment such as his or her office. Even if they did so, we would at least expect it to concern academic issues. In initiating the conversation about the painting, Rita also ignores Frank’s earlier question regarding who she is. Rita also disagrees with Frank (‘There’s no suppose about it’) and uses language that we would not normally expect in such a situation when she says

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‘Look at those tits’. Rita’s deviation from our normal schema for students makes us evaluate her character differently to the way that we might have had she conformed with our expectations. Thus, Russell is able to make the reader see Rita in a particular way through his manipulation of our schema for students. ... Value-laden language Value-laden language expresses an attitude to whatever is being described or perceived, and as such can be indicative of viewpoint. Indeed, there is a strong relationship between the use of evaluative lexis and the expression of what Uspensky (1973) and Fowler (1996) term ideological point of view, and what Chatman (1978) refers to as conceptual point of view. In drama, value-laden language can be found both in characters’ speech and stage directions. The following extract from Shakespeare’s Richard III demonstrates how value-laden language can be indicative of the point of view of a particular character: [Context: Lady Anne, widow of Edward, Prince of Wales, is responding to Richard’s assertion that he did not kill her husband.] Anne

In thy foul throat thou liest: Queen Margaret saw Thy murd’rous falchion smoking in his blood; (William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 2, lines 94–5)

The adjectives ‘foul’ and ‘murderous’ are not simply descriptive but evaluative too, thereby indicating the extent of Anne’s hatred for Richard. In addition, the metaphorical use of ‘smoking’ also has negative connotations, contributing to our impression of Anne’s view of Richard. An example of value-laden language in stage directions can be seen in the extract below from Alan Bennett’s The Insurance Man: A large sawmill with lots of overhead belts. It is a dangerous and tricky looking place and there is a dreadful din. (Alan Bennett, The Insurance Man in Plays 2, p. 156)

Here, the adjectives ‘dangerous’, ‘tricky’ and ‘din’ suggest that the sawmill is not a pleasant place to be, and it is therefore likely that in a production of the play, the director would ensure that this attitudinal viewpoint would be represented to the audience through, perhaps, the set and sound effects. ... Given versus new information One method by which writers can control the point of view of a reader is by manipulating the amount of information they are given about a particular scene, event or character. One of the ways in which this can be done is by particular use of definite and indefinite reference. For example, the first stage direction of The Insurance Man (discussed briefly in the previous section) is as follows:

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A foreign city. A body hangs from a lamp-post. (Alan Bennett, The Insurance Man in Plays 2, p. 135)

The use of indefinite articles in the above extract gives the impression that this is new information to the reader and to the audience of the play. We do not yet know the name of the city, or the identity of the body hanging from the lamp-post. The use of the indefinite article works in the same way as an establishing shot in film, giving the reader/audience the necessary information for them to be able to fully comprehend the fictional world. Compare this with the opening speech of John Burgess and Charles Marowitz’s play The Chicago Conspiracy: Loudspeaker February 14th 1970. In the Federal District Courthouse in Chicago Judge Julius Hoffman sentences the seven defendants and the two defence lawyers to a total of fifteen years and five days imprisonment for contempt of court. (John Burgess and Charles Marowitz, The Chicago Conspiracy in Open Space Plays, p. 83)

The use of the definite article here suggests that the seven defendants and the two defence lawyers are already known to the reader/audience, thereby creating an in medias res effect where it appears that we have somehow been dropped into the middle of the story, thereby giving the reader/audience a very different perspective on the fictional world. Similar effects can be gained using anaphoric pronouns in place of proper nouns. ... Deixis Deixis is concerned with the issues of distance and proximity in space, time and social relations, and centres on the fact that speakers tend to interpret deictic terms in relation to where they themselves are positioned. Consider the following stage direction from Harold Pinter’s Old Times: Deeley comes into the room, places the tray on a table. (Harold Pinter, Old Times, p. 47)

Pinter’s use of the verb ‘comes’ to refer to Deeley’s movement suggests that the reader/audience is already positioned as if they were within the room in viewpoint terms, since the verb ‘come’ indicates movement towards a deictic centre inside the room. Had Pinter written ‘Deeley goes into the room’, we would be much more likely to interpret this as meaning Deeley moves away from us into another room, rather than towards us, since it implies a different deictic centre. Deictic terms tend to come in pairs. Some obvious examples are here/there and now/then as well as come/go, discussed above. In Chapter four I discuss the centrality of deixis in point of view theory and therefore I reserve most of my discussion of the concept till this later chapter.

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... Representations of thought and perception Short (1996: 287) explains that the thoughts and perceptions of characters can be represented through the use of particular verbs (including modal verbs) and adverbs relating to factivity. For example, the stage direction below from The Lady in the Van, establishes the point of view of AB2 by the use of the verb of perception ‘looking’: AB2 is paying no attention, but looking up the street. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 12)

Similarly, the use of the modal verb ‘may’ in the following extract suggests that AB2 is still not entirely convinced that Miss Shepherd was telling the truth, thereby giving some indication of his thoughts: [Context: Miss Shepherd has just informed Alan that she has seen a poisonous snake making its way towards the van.] [192] AB2 I do not believe in the snake, let alone the purposeful glint in its eye, but I do not say so, and when I find the next day that there has been a breakin at the pet shop in Parkway so there may have been a snake on the run, I feel some remorse. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 12)

... Psychological sequencing In 1.3, we saw briefly how psychological sequencing indicates viewpoint. To recap, this is the phenomenon where the order in which events are presented reflects a particular point of view. The following short example from Alan Bennett’s play The Insurance Man illustrates this: The door opens and the Tall Woman shows Franz into the office. (Alan Bennett, The Insurance Man in Plays 2, p. 175)

What is noticeable about the above stage direction is that the grammatical construction involving ‘the door’ as subject to the intransitive verb ‘opens’ does not make it clear who opens the door. This reflects the point of view of the characters of Pohlmann and Miss Weber, who are both already in the room. From their viewpoint the door would appear to open on its own. It is only when the door has been opened that we are able to work out that the Tall Woman is most likely to have been the person who opened it. .. Additional linguistic indicators of viewpoint In addition to the features on Short’s (1996) checklist, there are numerous other linguistic indicators of point of view. Some of these are noted by Short himself (see Short 2000) while others come from Simpson (1993) and McIntyre (2004). It is, of course, likely that others will emerge but here are some of the most noteworthy:

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... Graphology Short (2000) discusses how graphological deviation in Irvine Welsh’s novel Marabou Stork Nightmares is used to reflect the point of view of the main protagonist. Although less common in dramatic texts, the graphology of a text is sometimes manipulated to create particular viewpoint effects, as in this example from John Burgess and Charles Marowitz’s The Chicago Conspiracy: [Context: The scene takes place in the Federal District Courthouse in Chicago, where seven defendants and two defence lawyers have been accused of contempt of court.] Caption: WHEREUPON AN ADJOURNMENT WAS HAD AT 4.15 O’CLOCK P.M. UNTIL THE FOLLOWING DAY, NOVEMBER 6th 1969, AT THE HOUR OF 10.00 O’CLOCK A.M. (John Burgess and Charles Marowitz, The Chicago Conspiracy in Open Space Plays, p. 116)

The caption is indicated graphologically in the play-text by having a border around it, and the propositional content appears to have the effect of a stretch of narration in prose fiction. The complex lexis and grammatical structures are reminiscent of legal language and the graphological deviation seems to emphasise the fact that this presentation of the adjournment is given from the point of view of the members of the court rather than the defendants. ... Presupposition Presupposition (see Levinson 1983: 181–5) can indicate what a character believes to be the case within the fictional world. It can also indicate the extent to which one particular character takes into account the point of view of another. Consider this example from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s sketch Hello: [Context: Peter and Dudley are discussing Dudley’s son.] Dudley And of course, young Martin’s going to school now. (An Evening with Peter Cook & Dudley Moore and E. L. Wisty)

Dudley’s use of the adverb ‘now’ presupposes that when he last spoke to Peter, Martin was not going to school. His use of the proper noun ‘Martin’ also implies that Peter knows Dudley’s son. The humour in the sketch comes about as a result of the fact that Dudley and Peter have never met before. Peter is therefore thoroughly confused by the presupposition and by the fact that Dudley fails entirely to take into account his point of view.

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... Grice’s Co-operative Principle Characters’ observance (or non-observance) of Grice’s (1975) Co-operative Principle can also indicate a particular point of view, and this is something that I consider in more detail in Chapter six, where I relate this to Harris’s (1984) work on paradigms of reality. Briefly, Grice’s (1975) Co-operative Principle provides a means of explaining how we differentiate between what speakers say and what they actually mean. Grice proposed that in prototypical conversation there is a tacit assumption that we will be as truthful, relevant and clear as it is possible to be, and that we will provide the right amount of information for others to be able to make sense of what we are saying. Famously, Grice formulated these propositions as four maxims, these being the Maxim of Quality (the tacit assumption that speakers will always try to tell the truth), the Maxim of Relation (the assumption that speakers will try to be relevant), the Maxim of Manner (the assumption that speakers will try to be clear) and the Maxim of Quantity (the assumption that speakers will try to give the right amount of information in an exchange). Of course, it is often the case that speakers do not adhere to these maxims, and it is in flouting the maxims that additional meanings become apparent, as a result of implicatures being generated. An example of how flouting a maxim can create a point of view effect can be seen in the extract below. In this example, the repetitive and unrealistic propositional content of the characters’ speech suggests that this is not what was actually said, but is instead representative of how the characters themselves perceived the exchange. This flouting of the maxim of manner (at the ‘author to reader’ level of the discourse structure diagram; see Figure 1.1) may be seen to represent the monotony of the two characters’ daily conversations, and their conceptualisation of their habitual activities: At lights up on stage 2, Mum and Dad mime the following actions, at the same time monotonously repeating the single words given below: Dad (reads newspaper) Paper, paper, paper, paper, paper. . . Mum (washes dishes) Dishes, dishes, dishes, dishes, dishes. . . (pours coffee) Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. . . Dad (takes three lumps of sugar) Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar. . . Dad gets up, Mum helps him on with his jacket. Dad Jacket, jacket, jacket, jacket, jacket. . . Mum (straightens Dad’s tie) Tie, tie, tie, tie, tie. . . (inspects Dad’s hands) Hands, hands, hands, hands, hands. . . Mum and Dad kiss. Kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss. . .

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Mum opens the door, Dad goes out, Mum closes the door behind him. Both scream. (Alan Burns and Charles Marowitz, Palach in Open Space Plays, p. 200)

However, despite the fact that flouting of Grice’s maxims is common in both reallife and dramatic conversation, point of view can also be conveyed when characters observe the Co-operative Principle. Consider the following example (discussed in more detail in McIntyre 2004): [Context: Bates and Mrs Bates are discussing their daughter, Pattie, who has been brain-damaged following a car-accident. Mrs Bates has just suggested that, although she cannot communicate with them, Pattie can hear what they are saying to her.] Bates (whisper) That is too much to bear. (Loudly) Horrible. Horrible. Horrible! Mrs Bates No, Tom. It’s a sign of improvement. It shows that things are going on inside her. The doctors don’t know everything. They’re not right all the time. She’s getting better! (Dennis Potter, Brimstone and Treacle, p. 2)

In the above example, all the assertions that Mrs Bates makes state what she believes to be the case. Although it is impossible for her to know for sure whether Pattie can hear what is being said to her, Mrs Bates’s use of present simple, factive verbs suggest that she at least believes that she is telling the truth about the situation, thus indicating what Chatman (1978) would call her conceptual point of view. .. Summary Having described existing taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction it will be useful at this point to summarise my own position with regard to these models and to outline the terminology that I use throughout the remainder of the book. Because of the problems associated with categorising narration (discussed in 2.4 and 2.5.3 above), I prefer to take the approach favoured by Short (1996), which is to begin by looking at small-scale linguistic features and considering their potential to act as indicators of a particular point of view. Indeed, I utilise Short’s checklist of point of view indicators (1996: 263–87) in my analysis of The Lady in the Van in Chapter seven. From this it is possible to build up a gradual picture of the point of view being conveyed in the text in question. Nevertheless, I find it useful to keep some of the terms discussed in this chapter for talking about categories of viewpoint. So, I retain Uspensky’s (1973) important distinction between internal and external point of view. This has particular relevance in the analysis of The Lady in the Van in Chapter seven. I also find it useful (at least heuristically) to use Chatman’s (1978) terms perceptual and conceptual point of view. I use perceptual point of view to refer specifically to non-metaphorical viewpoint, and, for reasons outlined in 2.5.4.3, I consider temporal point of view to be inherent within this category. I use Chatman’s (1978) conceptual point of view to refer to metaphorical

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viewpoint. I prefer this term to Uspensky’s (1973) point of view on the ideological plane and Fowler’s (1996) ideological point of view as (i) it is less cumbersome and (ii) it avoids the sometimes negative connotations of the term ideological, as well as better capturing those aspects of viewpoint that are not religious or political in nature. Taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction provide a useful starting point, then, for examining viewpoint in drama. However, none of the existing models of point of view in prose fiction can account for all the subtleties involved in viewpoint, such as the way in which points of view can co-occur in texts, and the means by which readers are exposed to a variety of viewpoints. In Chapter four I consider a cognitive model of deixis in order to take account of these issues. Before we look at this, though, it will be useful to consider the small amount of work that has been done on point of view in dramatic texts, much of which has taken existing taxonomies of viewpoint in prose fiction as a starting point. We will turn to this in the next chapter.

. Conclusion In this chapter I have suggested that, contrary to traditional opinion, dramatic texts do contain narrative aspects, and that as a result of this they are open to point of view analysis. I have demonstrated this through the analysis of a number of extracts from plays, screenplays and radio plays, looking at both character speech and stage directions, and in so doing I have outlined the major frameworks of point of view to have had influence within stylistics and narratology. I have also explained the problems with some of these existing taxonomies of point of view, such as their over-reliance on the classification of types of narrators, and the fact that many frameworks fail to adequately explain how point of view can shift within a text. Movement between different points of view is, I believe, an aspect of viewpoint that needs to be considered far more seriously that it perhaps has been in the past, especially since this appears to be of particular importance in the stylistic analysis of drama. I look in detail at this in Chapter four where I also suggest that the kind of categorisation suggested by such theorists as Uspensky (1973), Genette (1980), Fowler (1996) and Simpson (1993) is not the best way of characterising point of view in language. Rather I suggest that as we read we become either more or less aware of particular points of view within a text, and that these viewpoints can be foregrounded or backgrounded as an author chooses. Before moving on to discuss these possibilities though, it will be useful to consider the small amount of work that has been done on point of view in dramatic texts, much of which has taken existing taxonomies of viewpoint in prose fiction as a starting point. We will turn to this in the next chapter, where we will look in

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more detail at the issues of mimesis and diegesis and at the form and function of stage and screen directions in dramatic texts.

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Chapter 3

Perspectives on point of view in drama

. Introduction In the previous chapter I looked at some of the most influential taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction, the possibilities of applying these to dramatic texts and some of the problems inherent in such frameworks. In this chapter I will concentrate on outlining the small amount of work that has been carried out specifically on point of view in drama. I demonstrate the relative effectiveness of the frameworks proposed through the analysis of numerous extracts from dramatic texts, and I suggest that existing taxonomies of point of view in dramatic texts cannot fully account for the workings of viewpoint in drama. This standpoint provides the rationale for what follows in the remainder of the book. I begin this chapter with a brief discussion of the classical distinction between mimesis and diegesis, since this has often been considered to be one of the main distinctions between prose fiction and drama. Following Fludernik (1993), I suggest that this distinction is not as clear cut as many critics have previously proposed, and that this is one reason why dramatic texts often include narrative aspects. Having explained the notions of mimesis and diegesis I then turn to some of the misconceptions surrounding point of view in drama before moving on to consider the frameworks that have been proposed for its analysis, and the analyses that have been produced. One of the problems with much early work on viewpoint in drama is that it does not adequately take into account stage directions. I therefore look at the relatively small amount of work done in this area (see, for example, Aston & Savona 1991; Wales 1994), to see how an appreciation of these can assist our understanding of viewpoint effects in dramatic texts. Finally in this chapter I briefly consider some of the influential work on point of view that has been carried out in relation to cinematic drama. Here I consider the extent to which point of view in dramatic performance has a basis in the dramatic text.

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. Mimesis and diegesis In 2.5.1 I briefly discussed Genette’s (1980) distinction between what he terms distance and perspective, noting that distance has to do with the extent to which a text exhibits narrative mediation. Genette’s (1980) term distance corresponds roughly with the concepts covered by the classical terms mimesis and diegesis, the distinction between which was traditionally thought to be one of the defining differences between drama and prose fiction. Wales (1994: 244), for example, points out that drama ‘is commonly cited as being the most “mimetic” kind of discourse’. However, other writers (e.g. McHale 1978; Fludernik 1993) have suggested that the division between mimesis and diegesis is not as clear-cut as was once believed, and that consequently a narrator is always present in a fictional text, even if only implied. Wales (1994: 244) also adheres to this view, explaining that drama ‘cannot escape entirely from the “authority” of a directing (sic) voice’. Since this idea ties in with my own suggestion that the discourse structure of dramatic texts is more complex than Short (1996) proposes (see 1.6), it is worth examining more closely the notions of mimesis and diegesis. The terms mimesis and diegesis are often paraphrased as, respectively, showing and telling. Plato’s original definitions of mimesis and diegesis concentrate mainly on the representation of speech in language. Chatman (1978: 32) explains the difference between the two by contrasting examples from indirect and direct speech. An example of indirect speech such as ‘Dan said that he was tired of writing’ entails a narrator telling an addressee what Dan said. A free direct rendering of this example (‘I’m tired of writing!’) is different, in that here the narrator is backgrounded and instead what the addressee is presented with is seemingly an enactment, or showing, of what Dan said, apparently unmediated by a narrator’s voice. Mimesis is therefore often said to be an impersonation of a particular character. Prototypically we expect to find diegetic speech presentation in prose fiction and mimetic speech presentation in drama. This, though, is not always the case. Sometimes speech presentation can be found in stage directions, as in this example from Withnail and I: [Context: Withnail is about to try and persuade his eccentric and affluent Uncle Monty to lend him his cottage in the Lake District for a weekend holiday.] Withnail Listen, Monty, could I just have a quick word with you in private? Monty looks at him, preparing to say no. But Withnail is earnest. Groaning ‘very well’ he allows himself to be shunted towards a bedroom. (Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 37)

The stage direction in the above extract contains an instance of what Semino et al. (1999) term hypothetical indirect speech (‘preparing to say no’) and also an ex-

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Chapter 3. Perspectives on point of view in drama

ample of direct speech preceded by a non-finite reporting clause (‘groaning “very well”’). In this sense, the stage direction looks very much like the kind of narration typically found in prose fiction. The speech presentation within the stage directions has the effect of introducing a diegetic element into what has ordinarily been perceived as a mimetic genre. Speech presentation, of course, can also be found within the speech of particular characters, as in this example from The Lady in the Van: [Context: Alan Bennett 2 is ruminating on having put his mother in an old people’s home.] [514] AB2 So I get rid of one old lady and take in the other. These days it’s almost as if we’re married. ‘How’s your old lady?’ people say. [515] AB1 ‘Still there.’ [516] AB2 ‘Your mother died, didn’t she?’ [517] AB1 ‘No. She was in hospital, only now she’s in a home. Still, she doesn’t know where she is, so that’s a blessing.’ [518] AB2 ‘And where is she?’ [519] AB1 ‘Weston-super-Mare.’ [520] AB2 Except you’re seldom so frank as that. When people ask you don’t say she’s in a home; you lie and say she’s with my brother in Bristol. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 47)

In this extract, AB2 begins by presenting in direct speech the kinds of questions asked of him about his mother, with AB1 providing in direct speech the typical responses that he makes to these questions. McIntyre et al. (2004) describe this type of direct speech as ‘iterative’ – i.e. speech presentation that appears to be reiterated. In the example discussed, the question ‘How’s your old lady?’ appears to have been asked by more than one person on numerous occasions. The effect of this is to create a mimetic rendering of typical conversations about Alan’s mother. Then in turn 520, AB2 (the narrator version of Alan Bennett) comments on what AB1 really says in such circumstances. The speech presentation in turn 520 (ambiguous between direct and indirect speech) also includes narratorial comment – i.e. ‘you’re seldom as frank as that’ – and thus constitutes a diegetic element in the unfolding drama. Definitions of mimesis and diegesis are not, however, restricted to speech presentation. Aristotle’s definition of mimesis, for example, does not refer to direct speech presentation but is instead more concerned with ‘the representation of fictional reality’ (Fludernik 1993: 30). Stanzel (1984) too suggests that this is the case, arguing that all fiction is mediated to some extent. Fludernik (1993) summarises Stanzel’s view, saying:

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From this perspective scenic presentation (‘showing’) becomes a type of narrative mediation that backgrounds its diegetic quality, whereas ‘telling’ foregrounds the mediating role of the narrator. (Fludernik 1993: 29)

In dramatic texts the speech of the characters is always mediated to some extent by narrative devices in the stage directions, and by the fact that the sjuzhet has been organised by the author. What appears to be a mimetic genre, then, is not. Instead, the illusion of mimesis is created by diegetic means, and the diegetic elements of a drama may be foregrounded or backgrounded. In the case of reading a dramatic text, the diegetic elements will be more foregrounded than in a dramatic performance, since the text provides access to the stage/screen directions, many of which will not be obviously apparent in performance. Since dramatic texts are mediated, then, point of view effects can arise. For instance, if we look again at an extract from Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I, the screen directions clearly reveal a particular attitude to the character of Withnail that appears to come from some narrator persona: [Context: Withnail, complaining that his agent appears to have no interest at all in finding him any acting work, is beginning to see his unemployment as a desperate situation.] Withnail is beginning to look like some minor character from a nineteenthcentury Russian novel. Withnailovich. Incidental to the plot. (Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 15)

This sardonic appraisal of Withnail’s situation suggests a refusal to take seriously his concerns, and the description of him as ‘incidental to the plot’ betrays a sense that Withnail is not nearly as important as he believes himself to be. We turn now to previous work that has been done on trying to uncover viewpoint effects such as these in dramatic texts.

. Existing work on point of view in stage drama Work on point of view in drama has not been as prominent or as systematic as some of that undertaken on point of view in prose fiction. As we have already seen, the term point of view is fraught with complexities and has been interpreted in various ways by different writers. In the study of dramatic texts particularly, this has been a problem. The term point of view is often misinterpreted and what purports to be a study of viewpoint in drama is often something quite different. This failing can be seen in the work of Groff (1959) and Richardson (1988) (discussed in 3.3.2), and particularly in the work of Barnard (1984), whose paper ‘Point of view in The Man of Mode’ uses the term point of view in a variety of different

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ways, though never in the narratological sense defined in Chapter two. Barnard attempts to explain ‘how The Man of Mode encourages its audience to watch the comedy from a particular viewpoint’ (1984: 286), but his non-narratological use of the term point of view becomes apparent when he paraphrases Eugene Waith’s question: ‘how does Etherege’s play make a varied audience identify with Dorimant’s viewpoint?’ (1984: 289). It is this ‘identification’ that Barnard calls point of view, but this is problematic; when Barnard talks about the audience’s point of view, what he is actually talking about is their degree of empathy with the character of Dorimant. Whilst this is interesting in and of itself, (i) it is not a point of view issue per se (though there are possible connections between the two concepts) and (ii) Barnard does not provide textual evidence for the assertions he makes. This latter point is a particular problem for Barnard’s argument. As an example of the problematic nature of Barnard’s work, consider the following extract from The Man of Mode, which, according to Barnard, shows how the play ‘encourages its audience to watch the comedy from a particular viewpoint’ (1984: 286): Enter a Footman with a letter. Footm. Here’s a Letter, Sir. [to Dorimant. Dor. The Superscription’s right; For Mr Dorimant. Med. Let’s see; the very scrawl and spelling of a true bred Whore. Dor. I know the hand; the stile is admirable, I assure you. Med. Prethee, read it. Dor. Reads I told a you you dud not love me, if you dud, you wou’d have seen me again e’er now; I have no money and am very Mallicolly; pray send me a Guynie to see the Operies. Your servant to Command, Molly Med. Pray let the Whore have a favourable answer, that she may spark it in a Box, and do honour to her profession. Dor. She shall; and perk up i’the face of quality. (The Man of Mode, quoted in Barnard 1984: 286–7)

In reference to the above extract, Barnard notes that ‘it is obvious that Molly’s appearance at the opera in a box, perking up “i’ the face of quality”, will be an aggressive intrusion from the point of view of the staider [sic] and older members of that [modern] audience’ (1984: 287). There are, of course, numerous problems with such a claim. First of all, Barnard does not explain from whose viewpoint the audience are encouraged to watch the comedy – he simply says that they are meant to admire Dorimant. Secondly, it is unclear what he means by ‘an aggressive intrusion’. And why would Molly’s appearance at an opera be perceived as such

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by older members of a modern audience? Such a statement is effectively conjecture with no evidence to support it. Furthermore, Barnard refers frequently to the ‘audience’, suggesting that he is talking about dramatic performance rather than dramatic text. If this is the case, then his arguments are seriously undermined since, as we saw in Chapter one, dramatic performances will always vary from one performance to the next and, of course, from one audience to the next, as Short (1981, 1998) points out. This is a major problem with much existing work on point of view in drama. In Barnard’s case, since each performance of a play is different, what he says about audience reaction and ‘point of view’ will not be consistent across performances. He is therefore unable to make any convincing remarks about point of view in The Man of Mode, not only because of his imprecise (and varying) use of the term, but also because he is not talking about the text itself. To understand how point of view in dramatic texts really works we need to go beyond the kind of conjecture and inaccurate attempts at linguistic analysis to be found in Barnard’s paper, and consider the way in which the actual linguistic structure of such texts creates particular viewpoint effects. .. Narration, dreams and the inner life The earliest published discussion of the nature of point of view in drama seems likely to be Edward Groff ’s (1959) article, ‘Point of view in modern drama’. In it, Groff argues that the views expressed by such critics as Lubbock (1921) and Beach (1932), that drama is a purely objective genre (i.e. mimetic in the Aristotelian sense), are unfounded, and that contrary to popular belief, drama may be as subjective a medium as the novel in terms of the way that stories are told. By ‘subjective’, Groff appears to mean mediated by a narratorial presence in a way that prototypical dramatic texts are often thought not to be. He goes on to suggest that such mediation (‘subjective complexity’ as he terms it) accounts for much of the experimentation that has occurred in modern drama (by this Groff appears to mean twentieth century drama), as playwrights have attempted to explore the workings of their characters’ minds. Groff explains that establishing a limited point of view is one of the techniques that dramatists have used to do this. Groff proposes three methods of creating a limited viewpoint within a play, these being: (i) the dramatisation of ‘the inner life’ (Groff 1959: 274), (ii) dream sequences, and (iii) narratorial intervention. By ‘the drama of the inner life’ Groff appears to mean the way in which playwrights dramatise ‘their characters’ state of mind’ (Groff 1959: 274). This, he says, can result in dramatic irony, which is one of the devices that can be used to limit point of view – allowing the audience an insight into one particular character’s thoughts or actions which the other characters are unaware of. In fact, what this often results in is the dramatic equivalent of thought presentation in prose fiction (see Poole 1994 for a

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detailed exposition of thought presentation in drama). Groff (1959: 274) notes that this technique provides ‘another dimension for characterization and permits the dramatist to explore certain areas of human experience generally thought to be more accessible to the novelist’. In terms of how this might be achieved by the playwright, Groff suggests that the simplest method is via pantomime. Paul J. Curtis, the founder/director of the American Mime Theatre, and Chairman of American Mime Inc., explains the difference between mime and pantomime as follows: ‘Pantomime is the art of creating the illusion of reality by dealing with imaginary objects or situations. Its art rests on the ability to imply weight, texture, line, rhythm and force to the air around them. Mime, on the other hand, is the art of acting silently through various kinds of theatrical movement.’ (http://www.americanmime.org/intervie.html). Groff explains that this is one of the techniques employed by Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Although Groff himself does not discuss this further, an example can be seen in the following extract from the play: [Context: Whilst talking to his wife, Linda, Willy Loman begins to fantasise about a woman with whom he enjoyed a brief affair.] Music is heard as behind a scrim, to the left of the house, The Woman, dimly seen, is dressing. Willy (with great feeling) You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that? On the road – on the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you. The laughter is loud now, and he moves into a brightening area at the left, where the woman has come from behind the scrim and is standing, putting on her hat, looking into a ‘mirror’ and laughing. Willy ’Cause I get so lonely – especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything again, that I won’t make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys. (He talks through The Woman’s subsiding laughter! The Woman primps at the ‘mirror’.) There’s so much I want to make for – The Woman Me? You didn’t make me, Willy. I picked you. Willy (pleased) You picked me? [14 turns omitted] The Woman bursts out laughing and Linda’s laughter blends in. The Woman disappears into the dark. Now the area at the kitchen table brightens. Linda is sitting where she was at the kitchen table, but now is mending a pair of her silk stockings.

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Linda You are, Willy. The handsomest man. You’ve got no reason to feel that – Willy (coming out of The Woman’s dimming area and going over to Linda) I’ll make it all up to you, Linda, I’ll – (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, pp. 149–50)

In this extract, what we appear to be presented with is a scene that occurs only in Willy’s mind. The stage directions suggest that Willy’s conversation with The Woman does not take place within the real world of the play that he and Linda inhabit. This is made apparent by the fact that The Woman appears to exist in a different physical location to Willy (Linda is unaware of her, she is presumably not dressing in the Lomans’ house, etc). Despite this, Willy is able to move into this location with apparent ease (‘he moves into a brightening area at the left’), a physical movement that would not be possible in a real world scenario. It is this that creates the effect of the scene with The Woman being a projection of Willy’s imagination or ‘inner life’, as Groff would call it. Although it seems that Groff ’s suggestion that dramatising ‘the inner life’ can indeed work to create a limited point of view, the analysis above is rather vague. A much more detailed analysis, taking into account just how the reader moves between the external and internal viewpoints in the text, is necessary in order to make this a convincing account. Unfortunately, Groff does not present any textual analysis to support his claims, and neither does he make any suggestion as to the type of analysis that would be necessary to uncover viewpoint effects in dramatic texts. In order to address these issues we will return to the above extract from Death of a Salesman in Chapter five, where I present a more detailed cognitive stylistic account of how the effect is created of the conversation between Willy and The Woman being nothing more than a fantasy of Willy’s. Groff ’s second proposed method of limiting point of view in drama is via the dream sequence. This, he says, ‘represents a limited point of view, for what we see on the stage exists only in the consciousness of the dreamer’ (Groff 1959: 277). It seems reasonable to suppose that similar effects to those created by the presentation of a character’s state of mind can also be created by the presentation of a character’s dreams (Farrag 2002, for example, considers this in relation to the plays of Tom Murphy), but again Groff provides no evidence to support his proposal. What is also an issue here is that the mention of ‘what we see on stage’ suggests that Groff ’s proposals with regard to point of view in drama give preference to dramatic performance as opposed to dramatic text. Groff sometimes appears to concentrate more on performance than the text itself (often not providing textual evidence for the hypotheses about performance that he makes). As we have seen, this is a common problem with research on the analysis of drama in general but causes particular problems with regard to the study of point of view. Research on viewpoint in drama that examines dramatic performance often fails to make clear

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just whose point of view is being referred to. It is often confusing whether the term point of view refers to the viewpoint of the audience, that of the playwright, or a point of view arising from some form of narratorial mediation. In an effort to examine in more detail the presentation of point of view via dream sequences, in Chapter five I use the possible worlds theory approach outlined by Ryan (1991) to examine how dreaming may lead to viewpoint effects in dramatic texts. Groff ’s most basic suggested method of controlling point of view within a play, and that which is most clearly associated with point of view in prose fiction, is the use of a narrator. The presence of a narrator in a text automatically has consequences for viewpoint (as demonstrated in Chapter two), and it is this narratological sense of the term ‘point of view’ that is most prevalent and has most credence within stylistics. However, some of Groff ’s beliefs about the workings of narratological point of view in drama are open to question. Having introduced the topic of the dramatic prologue, Groff states that: This brief introduction to a play may be compared to a preface of a book in which the author acknowledges his indebtedness to patrons and friends, attempts to explain his purpose, or begs the indulgence of his audience. (Groff 1959: 279)

However, there is a significant difference between a preface to a work of prose fiction and a dramatic prologue. Both are written by the author of the work in question, but the dramatic prologue is spoken by a member of the dramatis personae. He or she presents the playwright’s voice – i.e. they take on the discourse role of ‘mouthpiece’ (Thomas 1986) – whereas in a preface to a work of prose fiction, the views expressed come directly from the author. Secondly, a dramatic prologue forms an integral part of the play whereas a preface is independent of the fictional work that follows it. The dramatic figure who recites a prologue is already part of the fictional world, whether he or she is at that point representing a character or not. Groff also states that ‘what we see on stage is only what our narrator has seen or wishes us to see’ (Groff 1959: 179), though again this is questionable. Certainly in The Lady in the Van what appears to be the case is that the narrator, AB2, provides commentary on the action of the other characters, and quite often frames their scenes. However, between instances of this framing are examples of what might be described as the (free) direct speech from the other characters. To what degree we can say this (free) direct speech is a representation of what was heard by the narrator is not clear. It is also the case that in The Lady in the Van there are scenes where AB2 does not appear at all, thereby reducing the sense that what the other characters say is somehow mediated by him. Indeed, this is likely to be true of most narrators in dramatic texts. Groff ’s discussion of narrators in drama appears to refer only to narrators within the fictional world of the play (as AB2 might

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be characterised in The Lady in the Van) and not to the notion of there being a narratorial presence within, say, the stage directions of a play, as discussed in 3.3.4. It would seem, then, that in order to gain a greater understanding of the effects of narration in dramatic texts, it is necessary to look in more detail at the types of narrators that appear. To this end, we will turn next to Richardson’s (1988) work, bearing in mind the problems associated with attempts to categorise narrators in prose fiction (see 2.6). Although his work is not without its faults, Groff does at least acknowledge the importance of point of view in drama and is, unlike Barnard (1984), clearly talking about point of view in the narratological sense of the term. He also provides several points of departure for the analysis of viewpoint in drama with his three proposed methods for limiting point of view within a play. Groff ’s article, then, may be seen as laying the groundwork for the systematic study of point of view in dramatic texts. .. Richardson’s categories of narration Richardson (1988) notes that it is generally assumed that because plays are nonnarrative forms of literature, issues to do with point of view have no place in the study of drama. Elam (1980: 111), for example, takes this view, stating that drama is a genre ‘without narratorial mediation’. Numerous writers have also shared Elam’s position, among them Scholes and Kellogg (1966), Veltrusky (1977) and Cohn (1978). Richardson, though, challenges this traditional view, suggesting that: [. . .] narration is a basic element of the playwright’s technique, that it appears throughout Western drama, and that its deployment calls for the kind of analysis of point of view usually reserved for modern fiction. (Richardson 1988: 194)

Richardson goes on to explain why it is important to look at point of view in drama, saying that: It is important to acknowledge the rich tradition of narration in drama [as] by doing so it will allow us to identify certain blind spots in theories of point of view based too narrowly on post-Jamesean novels. (Richardson 1988: 194)

However, there are problems with Richardson’s work, particularly with his definitions of the various kinds of narrators commonly found in dramatic texts. It is also problematic that his discussion of narration concentrates only on that which comes from the dramatis personae. All of the narrators discussed by Richardson also inhabit the fictional world of the play of which they are part, despite Richardson’s observations to the contrary. Richardson fails to consider the possibility of point of view indicators existing in the stage directions of the plays he discusses.

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Nevertheless, it is worth examining Richardson’s taxonomy of narrators in drama as a means of further uncovering issues relating to point of view in dramatic texts. Richardson (1988: 194) defines a narrator as ‘the speaker or consciousness that frames, relates, or engenders the actions of the characters of a play’. He gives as an example a speaker from the beginning of a Plautine comedy, Menaechmi, who comes onstage to introduce the play and summarise its plot for the audience, whom he also urges to behave themselves throughout. A similar example comes at the beginning of Brecht’s The Exception and the Rule, though this time we have a group of narrators, all presumably speaking as one: The Players We are about to tell you The story of a journey. An exploiter And two of the exploited are the travellers. Examine carefully the behaviour of these people: Find it surprising though not unusual Inexplicable though normal Incomprehensible though it is the rule. Consider even the most insignificant, seemingly simple Action with distrust. Ask yourselves whether it is necessary Especially if it is usual. We ask you expressly to discover That what happens all the time is not natural. For to say that something is natural In such times of bloody confusion Of ordained disorder, of systematic arbitrariness Of inhuman humanity is to Regard it as unchangeable. (Bertolt Brecht, The Exception and the Rule, p. 37)

According to Richardson, the important question for point of view theory here is: who narrates these lines? Richardson explains that such lines do not have the same status as, say, a preface to a novel, since they are attributed to a particular character (or group of characters in this instance). Because of this, it appears that the assertions made in the extract above are not meant to be read as the author’s own comments on the story that follows. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the above lines are ascribed to specific characters, Richardson would argue that the narration cannot be attributed to these characters since, at the time of speaking these lines, the characters will ‘have not yet emerged’ (Richardson 1988: 195). What Richardson appears to mean by this is that when speaking these lines, the characters are outside the boundaries of the fictional world which they are about to inhabit as the

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drama unfolds. Richardson points out that we do not have any categorical term for the type of speakers in the extract from Brecht (and in his own Plautine example): He [the speaker] speaks for the author even while asserting his difference from the author; he steps out of his character - and out of the story proper – while continuing to recite lines written for him to deliver. (Richardson 1988: 195)

Richardson suggests that it is more productive at this juncture to consider the purpose of the narration than to define its status, pointing out that the narration serves to frame the events that are about to be enacted. This, though, seems an easy way of avoiding a difficult question. To understand the status of such narration it is necessary to look in more detail at such instances. In the case of the Brecht example, although the speakers of these lines are characters in the play, the generic term ‘the players’ suggests that at this point in the play, the dramatic figures are not yet playing their individual character roles. However, the fact that the lines they speak were obviously written by Brecht himself indicates that ‘the players’ are inhabiting some form of fictional world distinct from the real world of the audience. In effect, the players’ speech forms a prologue to the play. The players act collectively like a third person omniscient narrator in the novel – i.e. they are different from the author and yet they are not characters in the fictional world that they describe. In prose fiction we would tend to see this type of narration as a collapsing of the author and narrator levels on Short’s (1996) discourse diagram. The oddity that we get when we find this type of narration in dramatic texts stems from the fact that, in dramatic performance at least, it appears as if the levels of author and narrator are not collapsed. In The Exception and The Rule there is a more obvious distinction between author and narrator than we might get in prose fiction, since in the text the narration is ascribed to a particular group of characters. What we would see in a performance, then, would be an embodiment of the narrator(s) on stage. A similar example occurs in the opening of Les Smith’s stage adaptation of Moll Flanders, the stage notes to which explain that ‘[t]his dramatisation of Moll Flanders is written for six actors, three male, three female. Each actress plays Moll at a different stage in her life’ (Smith 1995: 2). The following extract comes from the beginning of the play: Prologue Music. All three ‘Molls’ are present. Moll 1 is the youngest. Moll 2 is the older. Moll 3 is the oldest. [1] Moll 3 (to the audience) You are modest, I know. And honest. And chaste. You may go to a chapel meeting on a Sunday and see a gold watch without, even for a moment, plotting how to lift it from its pocket. You do not heat your blood with wine, or, if, on some rare occasion, you do drink, you allow

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no wicked gust in your inclinations to blow you towards the bedchamber. And so, I am taxed hard to place this history of my life in a dress fit to be seen by you gentlefolk for there is no escaping it ... the history of a wicked life must, of necessity, show wicked things. [. . .] [8] Moll 3 [...] I shall display my shame as a recommendation to your virtue. There is no case so low, so despicable, so dark in prospect, that it cannot be rescued by the brightness and beauty of penitence. And there is the honest moral of this history of Moll Flanders that you now shall witness. (Les Smith, Moll Flanders, pp. 3–4)

What appears to be the case here is that Moll 3 is the dramatic equivalent of a first person narrator in prose fiction. Moll 3 speaks in the first person and introduces what will be a reflective look back on her life. She is, then, a first person narrator narrating an account of her earlier life. Like the Brecht example above, though, this speech does not fit completely within the fictional world of the characters in the play. This is apparent for several reasons. First, the stage directions in turn 1 tell us that Moll addresses her speech to the audience. This is made obvious in the text by the fact that Moll addresses the audience as ‘gentlefolk’ and with the second person pronoun ‘You’. Moll thus crosses the boundary between the fictional world and the real world of the audience (though it may also be argued that Moll’s use of the term gentlefolk to refer to the audience is actually an address to an implied reader/audience). Secondly, in turn 8 Moll refers to ‘this history of Moll Flanders that you now shall witness.’ From this we infer that we are about to watch the history of her life, and that, necessarily, this will take place within a specific fictional world. Also in turn 8, Moll 3 refers to herself in the third person. The effect of this is to make it seem almost as though she is talking about another character. It distances the speaker from the character she is supposedly playing, and thus reinforces the fact that we are not yet completely within the fictional world in which the story of Moll Flanders takes place. Where this extract differs from the Brecht example though, is in the fact that, in performance, the actress playing the part of Moll 3 is clearly intended to be in character from her opening turn onwards. This is apparent when she refers to ‘this history of my life’. In the Brecht example, ‘the players’ have not yet taken on their individual character roles. It seems, then, that there is a kind of ‘half-way house’ between the real world of the reader/audience and the fictional world of the story. That is, a world in which a dramatic figure might exist, and which is composed of elements of the fictional world and elements of the real world of the audience. And the Brecht example is a less discoursally embedded world than that of the Moll Flanders extract, since the dramatic figures have not yet taken on their individual character roles. In Chapter four we will explore further how such a phenomenon might be explained using a

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model of deictic shifts developed within cognitive science. In Chapter five I suggest that writers are able to foreground and background real and fictional worlds in order to achieve the kinds of effects discussed above in relation to the Brecht and Moll Flanders examples. In the case of the example from The Exception and the Rule (and Richardson’s own Plautine illustration), the narration serves to frame the events that are about to be enacted. There are many examples of this type of narration in drama. It can be found in the prologues and epilogues to medieval and renaissance plays (for instance, in the speech of Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and it has also been exploited to comedic effect in such contemporary films as Bob Kellett’s Up Pompeii (1971) starring the late British comedian Frankie Howerd, a pastiche of drama that utilises such narratorial techniques. In this extract from the very beginning of the film, Howerd appears as both a narrator and character: The camera pans slowly across a slightly artificial-looking Roman landscape and then pulls back to reveal that this is in actual fact a rather cheap scaleddown model. Frankie Howerd stands up behind it, dressed in a toga. Frankie (Referring to the model) Impressive, isn’t it? I don’t dare tell you what it cost to build, what with the price of matchboxes these days. Still, copulatum expensium, as we Pompeiians say. Now, I should be around here somewhere ... in the market-place. Yes, there! He points downwards with his index finger to a specific part of the model. Cut to the market-place, Pompeii. Lurkio (a slave, played by and dressed the same as Frankie Howerd) is standing next to a donkey. He looks up as Frankie’s index finger descends from the sky, heading in his direction. Lurkio I say! It’s rude to point!

(Sid Colin, Up Pompeii!, 1971)

In this example Frankie speaks directly to camera and thus, by implication, to the audience. However, despite being in costume it is uncertain what his actual discourse role is. Is he simply an actor waiting to begin his part or is he a narrator and already a part of the fiction? Because of the costume we are led to believe that he is a character in the film, but at the same time, Howerd comments on the fairly dreadful model, thus suggesting that he is not actually ‘in character’ at the moment, since he is well aware of the fact that he is appearing in a film. Only a few seconds later though, he is referring to himself as a character (‘Now, I should be around here somewhere’). It then transpires that Lurkio is Howerd’s actual character and the story proper begins. It seems that Howerd’s initial role is that of a narrator who is somehow distinct from the actual characters in the story, and whose role it is to ‘frame’ the fiction. Indeed, for this kind of speaker, Richardson (1988) suggests the term frame narrator.

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However, this is by no means the only type of narration that exists in drama. As Richardson points out, even greater complications arise in plays where the narrator takes a larger part in the action. He gives the example of Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle, where the play begins with a group of villagers discussing their plans for a particular piece of land. A storyteller then enters the scene and begins to tell a story. As he speaks, actors enter and the storyteller stops speaking as they begin to enact the story he has been relating. What we experience here is a fluctuation between mimesis and diegesis, demonstrating once again that drama is not a purely mimetic genre. Similar effects occur in many contemporary films, Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride being one such example. The screenplay for this film was written by William Goldman, based on his 1978 book, and tells the story of a Grandfather relating a fairy-tale to his sick Grandson. In this extract from the beginning of the film the Grandfather has just explained what The Princess Bride (the title of the fairystory) is about: Interior. The Grandson’s bedroom. Day. Grandson It doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try and keep awake. Grandfather Oh, well, thank you very much. That’s very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming. Oh. . .alright. . .The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern, Chapter 1. Cut from the Grandson’s bedroom to a farm, where we see the action that the Grandfather now describes as he narrates the story of The Princess Bride Grandfather Buttercup was raised on a small farm in the country of Florin. Her favourite pastimes were riding her horse and tormenting the farm boy that worked there. His name was Westley. But she never called him that. Isn’t that a wonderful beginning? Grandson Yeah. . .it’s really good. (William Goldman, The Princess Bride, 1987)

What we have here is a combination of mimesis and diegesis. Part of the humour in the film comes about as a result of the Grandfather interrupting the story he is telling in order to reassure the Grandson, or to skip ‘the kissing parts’ which the Grandson is not impressed with. The Grandfather, then, is a different type of narrator to ‘the players’ in The Exception and the Rule, and ‘Lurkio’ in the Up Pompeii example, since he does not address the audience directly. Richardson (1988) tries to account for the various different types of narrators in drama by proposing that the various roles which narrators play in dramatic texts can be placed within an analytical framework which begins from inside the fictional world and gradually moves outwards to the real world of the author. Let us first look at the various types of narrators that Richardson suggests there are, before we consider

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the problems with this taxonomy for uncovering the point of view effects that can arise in dramatic texts. Richardson states that narrators can be divided into the following types:

Internal narrators These narrators are characters in the fictional world of the play who take up a narrator role inside that fictional world by recounting to other characters events which occur off stage or prior to the first act. Richardson includes expositional soliloquies in this category, and suggests Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest as an example of an internal narrator. Another example of what Richardson terms internal narration can be found in the following extract from The Lady in the Van: [778] Social Worker I’ve talked to Mary. [779] AB1 Or Margaret. [780] Social Worker Or Margaret. Miss Shepherd anyway. She isn’t too well and you’re right to be concerned about her, though we ought, I think, to look at her all-round well-being. She smiles but AB1 says nothing. She tells me you don’t encourage her to get out and lead a more purposeful life and put obstacles in her way. [781] AB1 I don’t encourage her to think she can become Prime Minister. I do encourage her to try and get to the supermarket. [782] Social Worker These days women have other needs. They can do both. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, pp. 68–9)

In the above example, the Social Worker recounts to AB1 a conversation that she has had with Miss Shepherd. The reader/audience does not see this conversation between the Social Worker and Miss Shepherd, and the reason for this is clearly because Alan’s point of view is dominant throughout the play. Alan himself did not witness the conversation first-hand and therefore the original anterior discourse to which the Social Worker now refers is not given. The only way that we learn of it is by the Social Worker recounting the conversation to AB1. This, though, is the kind of narration that often occurs in everyday conversation, and in the play, is embedded within the fictional world in which the story that AB2 is narrating occurs. The Social Worker’s speech in this extract constitutes an extra layer of narration within the fictional world of the play.

Monodramatic narrators According to Richardson, the type of narration we get from monodramatic narrators constitutes the majority (sometimes all) of the play they inhabit. Examples would include such monologue plays as Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads series. Richardson (1988: 209) explains that with such narrators the ‘world of the play is

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largely coextensive with the narration of the character’. What exactly Richardson means by this is unclear, though it is possible that he is referring to what Tornqvist (1992: 60) describes as ‘audible thought’, this being when a character thinks aloud, thus giving the reader/audience access to their innermost feelings. If this is the case then the notion of the world of the play being ‘coextensive’ with the character’s narration would seem to mean that the reader/audience’s knowledge of the fictional world comes entirely from access to the thoughts of the monodramatic narrator.

Generative narrators Generative narrators, in Richardson’s framework, are characters, but are distinct from those persons who are embedded within the narrator’s discourse. Richardson suggests the storyteller in Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle as an example. A further example of a generative narrator can be found in Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. In this play, Michael, a young Irishman, recalls a series of events during his childhood in County Donegal. The story that the reader/audience is confronted with is embedded within the fiction of Michael recounting his memories. And since the story that unfolds takes place during Michael’s childhood, the adult Michael does not appear within this embedded fiction. The sense that the story is being told from the adult Michael’s point of view is achieved via an unusual theatrical convention, introduced in the following stage direction: The convention must now be established that the (imaginary) Boy Michael is working at the kite materials lying on the ground. No dialogue with the Boy Michael must ever be addressed directly to adult Michael, the narrator. Here, for example, Maggie has her back to the narrator. Michael responds to Maggie in his ordinary narrator’s voice. (Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa, p. 7)

In a performance of the play the actors would pretend to interact with the Boy Michael, though the audience would never see any such character. The audience’s only awareness of the Boy Michael would be as a result of the adult Michael’s responses whenever one of the other characters appears to address the boy. This technique gives rise to the impression that what the reader/audience is presented with is the adult Michael’s point of view. Logically, Michael would not be able to ‘see’ himself, and so neither is the audience able to see Michael as a boy. The technique is similar to a point of view shot in film; in such cases the audience is unable to see the character whose point of view is being represented, simply because the idea is that at such points we are inside the head of that particular character.

Frame narrators This category covers the type of narrators who give prologues and epilogues and who remain outside the fictional world which they describe and talk about. More often than not, Richardson says, the actor portraying such a figure will also ap-

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pear as a character in the main body of the play. This type of narrator can be found in classical Greek drama and is satirised in the example discussed above from Up Pompeii! A Shakespearean example can be found in As You Like It, where Rosalind, daughter of the banished Duke Frederick, acknowledges the fictionality of the story that has just been told, whilst remaining to some degree within the fictional world created by the playwright: Rosalind It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue: but it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it be true that good wine needs no bush, ’tis true that a good play needs no epilogue: yet to good wine they do use good bushes; and good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. . . What a case I am in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play! (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, epilogue: lines 1–8.)

In addition to the four narrator-types discussed above, Richardson also includes within his typology the categories of implied author and historical author. His reasons for including these are not made clear, and this constitutes a major weakness in his taxonomy since these categories cannot be considered types of narrator. Nevertheless, Richardson incorporates the above categories into a diagram where the different types of narrators are embedded within what he terms the ‘fictional world’ to varying degrees. Soliloquists, for example, are represented in the diagram as being firmly within the fictional world, whereas monodramatic narrators are on the edge of it and prologists are outside it. Unfortunately, Richardson’s diagram of narratorial roles in dramatic texts does not make his typology any more comprehensible. Why should a soliloquist, for instance, be more deeply embedded within the fictional world than a monodramatic narrator? Richardson’s typology also fails to fully encapsulate the variety of forms of narration that there actually are. This can be seen if we return to Brecht’s play The Exception and the Rule. In this extract, the character of the merchant makes his first ‘narratorial’ speech to the audience: The Merchant [. . .] I am Karl Langmann, a merchant. I am going to Urga to conclude arrangements for a concession. My competitors are close behind me. The first comer will get the concession. Thanks to my shrewdness, the energy with which I have overcome all manner of difficulties, and my ruthless treatment of my employees, I have completed this much of the journey in little more than half the usual time. Unfortunately my competitors have been moving just as fast. (Bertolt Brecht, The Exception and the Rule, p. 38)

The problem with Richardson’s framework is that none of his proposed categories can adequately describe this type of narration. We can straight away disregard the historical and implied author categories, leaving us with a choice of the merchant being an internal, monodramatic, generative or frame narrator. Since an internal

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narrator is defined as one who recounts to other characters, we cannot place the merchant in this category; his speech is to the audience and none of the other characters appear to be aware of it. Neither is the merchant a monodramatic narrator. His narratorial speeches are not monologues and constitute only a small part of the play as a whole. We cannot define him as a frame narrator since he does not provide a prologue or epilogue – neither does he remain outside the fictional world he describes. The closest of Richardson’s categories would be that of generative narrator. According to Richardson, a generative narrator is a character in their own right but is distinct from the characters embedded within their discourse. The problem here is that the merchant’s narratorial speeches do not serve the purpose of recounting events or relating stories. Instead his narration serves to provide commentary to the audience on the events occurring in the fictional world and his attitudes towards these. What is also unclear in Richardson’s framework is how a generative narrator is different from a frame narrator. The only observable difference from Richardson’s description of these categories is that a frame narrator appears at the beginning and end of a play whereas a generative narrator can turn up at various points throughout it. If the difference between the two categories is simply a matter of the position of the narrator within the text then this does not seem a significant enough difference to warrant separate categories. Richardson does rightly point out that point of view is an issue in drama and his article identifies some of the problems involved in analysing this phenomenon in dramatic texts. Ultimately, though, his proposed taxonomy of narration in drama contains too many ambiguities and problems of application to be of real use in uncovering how viewpoint effects are created. His failure to consider the narrative aspects in stage directions also further weakens his framework. Like Fowler’s (1996) taxonomy of narration, Richardson’s framework does not allow for the fact that a character may take on more than one narratorial role within a given text, or hold more than one narratorial role simultaneously. For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the character of Puck is an internal narrator, a soliloquist and provides the epilogue. Richardson’s model restricts us to categorising a particular character as just one type of narrator at any one time, and categorising characters’ narratorial roles within a play does not seem to be the most profitable way of understanding viewpoint effects in dramatic texts. It would seem that a different approach is necessary if we are to arrive at such an understanding. One such alternative approach is that of Weingarten (1984), who attempts to apply Chatman’s (1978) notions of conceptual and perceptual point of view in the analysis of a play by Antonio Buero Vallejo.

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.. Applying Chatman’s taxonomy to dramatic texts In his analysis of Antonio Buero Vallejo’s La Fundación, Weingarten discusses the playwright’s manipulation of reality and illusion using Chatman’s (1978) taxonomy of point of view to explain how this is effected. Although Weingarten stops short of a concentrated linguistic analysis, his work is significantly more considered than Barnard’s (1984) unconvincing attempt at explaining the workings of point of view in drama. Weingarten is strongly influenced by the work of Groff (1959) and draws also upon Chatman’s (1978) work in order to describe and explain the dramatic effects of the play. La Fundación (1974) is a play about five political prisoners being held in a death cell, one of whom has been so completely broken by torture and his subsequent betrayal of his comrades that, in order to block this out, he has convinced himself that the prison is actually a research laboratory, and that he and his fellow prisoners are researchers (Weingarten 1984: 146). Weingarten’s discussion focuses on how the playwright limits the point of view within the play to that of the deluded prisoner, Tomás, to such an extent that when the curtain rises, the audience sees not a prison cell, but a well furnished dormitory room, reflecting Tomás’s misguided perception of his surroundings. Weingarten adopts Chatman’s (1978) terminology in describing the workings of viewpoint within the play. Thus he argues that the audience ‘apprehends the drama from Tomás’s perceptual point of view’ (Weingarten 1984: 148), reflected in the decoration of the stage set, but that the audience’s conceptual point of view differs significantly as they gradually come to realise that Tomás is suffering severe delusions. There are two problems here, though. Firstly, it is not the case that the audience is seeing events from Tomás’s perceptual point of view. What Tomás sees is a result of his delusions and is thus not a literal (i.e. non-metaphorical, or as Fowler 1996 would put it, spatial) viewpoint, which is how Chatman (1978) defines perceptual point of view. Weingarten, then, is not using Chatman’s terms as Chatman himself would use them. It appears that rather than the stage set representing Tomás’s non-metaphorical point of view, this is instead some kind of representation of what Fowler (1996) would call Tomás’s mind style (I discuss this concept in detail in Chapter 6). The second problem with Weingarten’s analysis is that there is a difficulty in asserting that the audience’s conceptual point of view is different from that of Tomás. This is because it is almost impossible to infer and state conclusively the conceptual point of view of an audience as a whole. Coupled with this point is the fact that Weingarten appears to be talking about performance rather than text, which makes it difficult to generalise about viewpoint effects in the play since, as Short (1981: 181) points out, ‘meanings and value will change not just from one production to another but also from one performance of a particular pro-

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duction to another.’ And since the audience of a play varies from performance to performance, any statement about their conceptual points of view will be subject to variations arising from this. This is, in fact, the same mistake that Barnard (1984) makes in his discussion of point of view in The Man of Mode. However, if it is indeed the case that a reader may infer from the text that what is reflected on stage is not a true representation of events within the fictional world, but simply one character’s limited perception, then what we can state with certainty is that there will be a disparity between the character’s conceptual point of view and the reader’s. Weingarten’s article is further evidence that point of view remains an issue in dramatic texts. What Weingarten doesn’t do, though, is to explain how the reader is able to discern from the text that the story is being told from a limited point of view, and how they are able to gradually infer that the character of Tomás is, to use Booth’s (1961) term, ‘unreliable’. To do this, I suggest, in the next chapter, that it is necessary to consider in more detail the notion of deixis, and more specifically how writers are able to project the deictic positions of particular characters. There remains one aspect of the dramatic text that has not been considered in any of the work mentioned so far and which is of fundamental concern in the analysis of point of view in drama. This is the use of stage directions. .. Stage and screen directions in drama Throughout this and the two preceding chapters I have argued that stage directions are an integral part of the dramatic text, and that point of view effects are often inherent in them. Stage directions, however, have been a relatively neglected topic in the study of drama (Aston & Savona 1991: 71), whether in linguistics, literary criticism/theory or theatre studies. In this section I consider the small amount of work on this topic, and the extent to which stage directions can reveal particular points of view. The first significant treatment of stage directions is to be found in the work of Aston and Savona (1991). In their book, Theatre as Sign-system, they argue that stage directions occur in two forms, these being intra-dialogic and extra-dialogic. Intra-dialogic stage directions are those that occur within the speech of particular characters. Aston and Savona (1991: 75) note that intra-dialogic stage directions are often found in classical, medieval and renaissance drama, and that their presence refutes commonly held critical views (for example, Wilson 2000: 166) that such texts contain only minimal stage directions and are non-prescriptive as to how the text should be interpreted and/or performed. In effect they constitute implicit directions, as in the following example:

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Gloucester But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. (William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 1, Scene 1, lines 14–27)

The extract above from Richard III contains several implicit directions as to how the character of Gloucester should look in a performance of the play. We can infer, for instance, that he should be ugly, since we know that he is not ‘made to court an amorous looking-glass’. More specifically we can infer that he must be deformed in some way (‘Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,/Deformed, unfinished’), and that this deformity must be significant enough to be noticeable in Gloucester’s shadow (‘Unless to spy my shadow in the sun/And descant on mine own deformity’). It is arguably these implicit directions that have led to Gloucester often being portrayed as hunchbacked in productions of the play. Extra-dialogic stage directions, on the other hand, are what we might call explicit or prototypical stage directions. These cannot be inferred from what the characters say but are instead separated graphologically from the characters’ speech in some way, usually through the use of italicisation or parentheses. A typical example would be the following: (Voices of Vera and Lombard heard outside. Rogers stands at Centre doors ready to receive them. He is now the well-trained, deferential manservant. Vera and Lombard enter from Left on balcony. She is a good-looking girl of twenty-five. He is an attractive, lean man of thirty-four, well-tanned, with a touch of the adventurer about him. He is already a good deal taken with Vera.) (Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, p. 5)

With regard to what such stage directions reveal about viewpoint, Wales (1994: 250) makes the point that in examples such as the above there is a ‘double reference to the “worlds” of theatre and fiction’. What Wales appears to mean by this is that whilst such stage directions describe the fictional world of the play, they also re-

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flect the actors’ perceptual viewpoints since the conventions of theatre scripts are such that directions in the vein of ‘enter from left’ are interpreted from the perspective of the performers (since the terms ‘stage left’ and ‘stage right’ refer to the real world of the actors rather than the fictional world). Wales (1994: 250) claims that as a result of this, the distinction between the real world and the fictional world is ‘blurred’. This is an important point with regard to the way in which readers/audiences are exposed to different viewpoints with dramatic texts and I consider this issue in more detail in Chapter five, where I introduce the notion of possible worlds in drama. Extra-dialogic stage directions such as the Agatha Christie example above are what Veltrusky (1977: 37) refers to as ‘the author’s notes’, pointing out that these constitute narrative elements in dramatic texts. Numerous literary critics have disagreed with this position, however, and are instead of the opinion that the narrative elements of a dramatic text come solely from the speech of the characters. Aston and Savona (1991) summarise this position when they say that: [. . .] for critics whose orientation is narrowly literary, stage directions appear to do little more than impede the flow of the dramatic narrative. (Aston & Savona 1991: 72)

Such a position appears to arise out of a misunderstanding of the function of extradialogic stage directions in dramatic texts, a confusion that Feng and Shen (2001) address when they attempt to make clear just what the functions of stage directions actually are. Feng and Shen (2001) argue that in dramatic texts the concept of the ‘reader’ should be more explicitly spelled out, and that the addressee of the author’s message should be seen as: a collective concept covering various kinds of readers: the director, the editor, the stage producer, the setting designer, actors/actresses, etc. in theatrical situations and ordinary readers in their armchairs. (Feng & Shen 2001: 82)

Feng and Shen argue that the function of stage directions is different for each of these proposed addressees. For example, when a dramatic text is being used as a recipe for performance, then set, lighting and costume designers may interpret stage directions as a series of instructions as to what a performance of the play should look like. However, when the same dramatic text is being treated purely as a text to be read, then the stage directions take on a narrative function. Feng and Shen go on to argue that playwrights use an assortment of pragmatic strategies to take into account the variety of potential readers of a dramatic text. For example, hedging may be used to tone down stage directions that may otherwise be interpreted by a director as too direct a command and thereby too artistically

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constraining. This can be seen in the use of ‘probably’ in the extract below from The Lady in the Van: [Context: Miss Shepherd, having returned from the grave, now finds that she is able to see both Alan Bennetts in the fictional world, whereas prior to her death she was, like all the other characters in the play, unaware of the presence of AB2, the narrator.] [946] Miss Shepherd (catching sight of AB2) Oh, hello. Two of you now. Is that because you’re in two minds? [947] AB2 Yes. [948] AB1 No. [949] Miss Shepherd I’ve been wondering. Would either of you object if the van were to become a place of pilgrimage, possibly? [950] AB2 No. They should probably be on either side of her. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 84; my underlining)

In the same extract modality is also used (‘should’) to impose the playwright’s wishes regarding how the scene should be played in performance. In addition to hedging and modality, Feng and Shen note that a major pragmatic strategy used by playwrights is that of the empathetic device. They explain (2001: 87) that empathetic devices are ‘those that a speaker uses in sharing someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in their situation’. A clear example of what Feng and Shen mean by this can be seen in the opening stage direction of The Lady in the Van: A front cloth with, inset, the bay window of an early-nineteenth century house.A hymn begins, sung by a chorus of young girls. Alan Bennett 2 looks through the window briefly then disappears.The hymn is cut off abruptly and the front cloth rises to reveal Alan Bennett 2 sitting at his desk.He reads from what he has been writing. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 5, my underlining)

The event-coding (see Short 1996: 287) of the underlined parts of the above extract demonstrates how the playwright’s perceptual point of view here reflects that of the intended reader/audience; i.e. when writing the play, Bennett the author clearly imagined how an audience would view the scene when the play was staged. This is apparent for several reasons: 1. The reference to a front cloth in the first sentence suggests that the play is to be staged on a traditional, proscenium arch stage. This in itself indicates that an audience’s perceptual point of view would be limited in a way that it wouldn’t

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be if the play were to be staged ‘in the round’ on an arena stage (i.e. with the acting area encircled by the audience on three or four sides of the stage). 2. Inset from the front cloth is the bay window of a house. Since the playwright describes this, the audience’s perceptual point of view is that of someone positioned outside the house. The reference to Alan Bennett 2 looking through the window and then disappearing codes this occurrence from the perceptual point of view of the audience. Obviously, Alan Bennett 2’s disappearance is not magical – he simply disappears from the audience’s ‘angle of vision’ (Wales 2001: 306), due to the audience’s perceptual viewpoint being restricted by the positioning of the flat on to which the bay window is painted. 3. As the front cloth rises to reveal the interior of the house, the audience’s perceptual point of view changes from being outside the house to being inside it. In essence, the playwright creates the illusion for the audience of moving closer to the action, even though the audience remains in their seats at all times. The effect of this is similar to a camera closing in on the action in a film. Empathetic devices in stage and screen directions can also be used to indicate a character’s perceptual point of view, especially in film drama, as in this example from Michael Frayn’s screenplay Clockwise: [Context: Brian Stimpson, a comprehensive school headmaster obsessed with punctuality, is attempting to get to an education conference at the University of East Anglia, at which he is to be a plenary speaker. He must be in Norwich by 5.00pm, though the likelihood of this actually happening has just diminished significantly due to his car getting stuck in a muddy field. This is the latest in a series of setbacks for Stimpson, and his patience is wearing extremely thin. In desperation he turns to a passing farmer for help.] Stimpson (calls out of view) Excuse me. . . Hello. . .! Cut to over the shoulder shot. The Tractor Driver in the foreground, looking over the hedge at the meadow. Away down at the bottom of the meadow is the 1100. Struggling uphill towards the Tractor Driver as fast as he can is the mud-covered, breathless Stimpson. Can you tell me. . .? Do you know. . .? Is there anyone round here with a tractor? Cut to reverse. Over the shoulder shot with Stimpson in the foreground. The top part of the Tractor Driver can be seen over the hedge. The tractor itself is invisible. (Michael Frayn, Clockwise, p. 61)

The screen direction immediately following Stimpson’s first turn (‘Over the shoulder shot with Stimpson in the foreground. The top part of the Tractor Driver can be seen over the hedge. The tractor itself is invisible.’) sets up the scene from Stimpson’s perceptual point of view. The camera takes up a position behind Stimpson,

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and reflects the fact that he is unaware that the man behind the hedge is actually sitting on a tractor. However, there is perceptual viewpoint-related dramatic irony here, since the initial stage direction in this extract (‘Cut to over the shoulder shot. The Tractor Driver in the foreground, looking over the hedge at the meadow.’) sets up a camera shot from over the shoulder of the Tractor Driver, thereby taking in the Tractor Driver’s perceptual point of view. The audience is aware of the tractor, and it is this exposure to both men’s perceptual viewpoints, coupled with the knowledge that in Stimpson’s angle of vision the tractor is not visible, that creates much of the humour in the scene (Stimpson eventually storms off in frustration at the Tractor Driver’s loquaciousness). Stage directions, then, play a significant role in establishing points of view in dramatic texts, and, as we have seen, similar effects can be noticed in film. Since this is the case, it is useful to examine more fully the techniques for the creation of point of view in film drama, and to consider the extent to which these can be emulated in dramatic texts written for the theatre.

. Point of view in film Point of view has received a significant amount of coverage within film studies (see, for example, Brannigan 1984) and continues to be a topic of major interest. However, since this book is concerned with the creation of point of view effects in dramatic texts, my coverage of point of view in film will not be comprehensive since many of the techniques for creating viewpoint effects in the cinema arise primarily out of camera positioning and editing techniques, and, as a result, are of more concern to the analysis of dramatic performances. Nevertheless, a number of cinematic point of view effects can also be achieved in stage drama and are often reflected in the dramatic text itself. It is these effects that I concentrate on in this section. .. Narration in light The notion of the concept of narration existing in film has been widely debated (see, for example, Perkins 1972; Brannigan 1984; Bordwell 1986) but for reasons of space I do not propose to deal with this discussion in any detail here. In this section I am primarily concerned with outlining some of the point of view effects that can be achieved in the cinema, and the extent to which these can be realised in dramatic texts written for the theatre. Hence, I follow Sontag (1969) and Wilson (1986) in assuming that such cinematic viewpoint effects arise as a result of some form of narratorial mediation.

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Wilson (1986: 85) suggests that in film by far the most prominent type of narration is that which might be seen as equivalent to omniscient narration in prose fiction, where ‘narrational authority is unrestricted’. Wilson explains that: [. . .] the narration is authorized to show, shot by shot and scene by scene, whatever is demanded by a predesigned and maximally articulated overview of the narrative action. This means, first, that the camera views may arise from any position within the fictional space and time of the film’s story which dramatic effectiveness dictates. These views may change as freely as normal continuity and intelligibility permit from one locale to another and from ‘bird’s eye’ perspective shots to the most intimate and detailed close-ups. Second, the camera views are also allowed to vary freely between ‘objective’ shots and ‘subjective’ shots that render the visual field of another character. (Wilson 1986: 85)

Sontag (1969) agrees that narration in film arises as a result of the combination of various different shots, but is adamant that the viewpoint effects such narration can create cannot be realised in the theatre: In the cinema, narration proceeds by ellipsis (the ‘cut’ or change of shot); the camera eye is a unified point of view that continually displaces itself. But the change of shot can provoke questions, the simplest of which is: from whose point of view is the shot seen? And the ambiguity of point of view latent in all cinematic narration has no equivalent in the theatre. (Sontag 1969: 110)

Clearly, point of view in stage drama does not work in exactly the same way as point of view in film. However, the notion that cinematic point of view effects can never be achieved in the theatre seems misplaced. In order to demonstrate this, let us consider the concept of subjective and objective shots in film and how these might be rendered in play-texts. .. Objective and subjective shots Wilson (1986: 85) makes a distinction between what he terms ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ camera shots. Objective shots correspond roughly to Uspensky’s (1973) notion of external narration in prose fiction, while subjective shots correspond to his notion of internal narration. In film, objective shots essentially work to provide the viewer with an external view of a particular scene and/or character(s). Such shots can also work to force the viewer into a particular viewing position – in effect, inducing a specific perceptual point of view on the part of the audience. Such an example can be seen in James Brailsford’s short film Filling, in which a young boy’s fear of a trip to the dentist compels him to brush his teeth ever more vigorously:

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2. INT. WERD RESIDENCE, BATHROOM - CONTINUOUS C.U. Ben Werd. Ten years old yet looks a couple of years younger and is treated as such by his mother and others. He is dressed smartly. Butter would not melt in his mouth. He is frantically brushing his teeth. There is a desperate urgency to his actions. He pauses and grimaces into the mirror inspecting his teeth. (James Brailsford, Filling, p. 1)

In the final cut of the film, this scene is shot in such a way that the viewer never sees the mirror. Instead Ben looks directly at the camera, giving the effect of the viewer having been positioned as if they were the mirror. Exactly the same effect can be used in the theatre, as indeed it is in Egressy Zoltan’s Sóska, Sültkrumpli (in Egressy 2005; translated as Spinach ’n Chips by Mike Kelly). The play is set in the changing room of an amateur football club, where the referee (Lacikám) and his two linesmen (Soapy and Artist) are getting ready for an important match. The play begins with Soapy entering the changing room alone and seemingly pulling faces at the audience. It is only when Soapy takes out a toilet bag that we realise that the actor playing Soapy is in effect miming the presence of a ‘fourth wall’ (the invisible barrier that separates the actors on stage from the audience, and which in a conventional theatre is represented by the open space of the proscenium arch; see Stanislavskii 1980) on which there hangs a mirror, and is not simply making faces at the audience but examining his reflection. What this does is to establish the audience’s perceptual point of view of the events on stage by defining their ‘angle of vision’ (Wales 2001: 306). Similarly, it indicates to the audience the character’s perceptual point of view. Such point of view effects are easily achievable in dramatic performance as a result of specific instructions within the stage directions of the text. A further way in which an audience’s perceptual point of view can be manipulated in film is by the introduction of figures into a particular scene. Bordwell (1986) says of this phenomenon: One of the cinema’s most important cues for object identification and spatial relations is the fact that figures move into the frame. This creates a continuous flow of overlapping contours, strengthening figure/ground hypotheses and often generating transformations of illumination (movement into shadow or light, glitter as highlights play across a moving surface). (Bordwell 1986: 114)

The ‘figure/ground’ hypothesis that Bordwell mentions comes from the work of the Gestalt psychologists of the early twentieth century (see Koffka 1935: 177– 210 for a detailed exposition of this hypothesis, and Stockwell 2002a: Ch. 1, for a discussion of the figure/ground hypothesis in relation to cognitive poetics) and essentially provides further support for the notion of foregrounding theory (outlined in Leech 1969; van Peer 1986; Douthwaite 2000; see also the seminal work by

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Shklovsky 1917; Jakobson 1960 & Mukaˇrovský 1964a, b). Briefly, the figure/ground hypothesis suggests that particularly bright objects will stand out against dull backgrounds and will consequently be perceived as figural and therefore prominent. From this it is relatively easy to see how the notion of a figure in the visual arts equates to linguistically foregrounded elements in written language. Bordwell’s (1986) suggestion is that foregrounding in film can direct an audience’s attention, thereby forcing a particular perceptual point of view. Bordwell’s (1986) discussion of figure and ground in film also relates peripherally to distancing effects that some critics (e.g. Gilbert 1995) have claimed are greater in film and television than in stage drama. Such arguments work along the lines that, when watching drama on screen, viewers feel somehow more distant from the action than when watching a theatrical performance. Clearly, the distance that we feel ourselves to be from a particular event will affect our perceptual point of view of that event. Gilbert (1995) argues that such distancing effects are lessened in theatre because stage drama provides a less passive experience for the audience than film or television: We see [the actors’] performances in a much more sceptical light, and make continuous pragmatic interpretations of what they say and do. As an audience, we are kept active in our attention by such means. We are not passive, mindless observers of a picture, like those who watch television shows. We are required to remember, apply our understanding, and make assessments as we follow the development of the dramatic narrative. (Gilbert 1995: 221–2)

However, I would take issue with Gilbert’s dismissal of television audiences as ‘passive’ and ‘mindless’, and would argue that film and television audiences do more or less everything that Gilbert claims theatre audiences do. Therefore, the distancing effects that we feel between theatre and film are unlikely to be connected to our pragmatic processing of these media. In actual fact, although it seems true to say that cinema and television are more mediated forms of drama than theatre, this has more to do with specific technical effects than the passivity or non-passivity of the audience. This can be seen if we consider the difference between film and video. Drama on film has a tendency to look somehow less ‘real’ than drama filmed on videotape. This is to do with a process known as temporal sampling. Film runs at 25 frames per second, which means that a shot of a man running for two seconds will be captured on 50 frames of film, each frame showing his body in a slightly different position. Videotape, on the other hand, works differently. Although, like film, it runs at 25 frames per second, these frames are further divided into fields, with each frame containing two fields (a field consists of every other line of video information; there are 625 lines of video, thus one field consists of 312 lines). The two fields are joined together to create one complete frame. Thus, video runs at 50 fields per second, which equates to 25 frames per second, like film. However,

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each field samples a different moment of time. So, on videotape, our man running for two seconds would be captured on 100 fields, with each field capturing a different part of the motion. The upshot of this is that videotape provides our brain with more information about the amount of movement and motion in a scene, and because we see a lot of motion information in the real world, the more that is provided to us by a viewing system, the more natural the motion will look to us. Conversely, the less motion information provided to us (i.e. what we get with film) the less realistic and more artificial it will seem. If we now consider that in theatre performances the motion information that we pick up is live, then it is clear why we tend to feel ‘closer’ to the action than when we watch film or television. Foregrounding effects can also be achieved in the theatre, thereby manipulating a theatre audience’s perceptual point of view of a particular scene. Charles William Smith’s advice to Victorian actors raises some of the issues involved in this: It is a very common fault with novices to keep too far up the stage, by which the expression of the face is, in a great degree, lost, and the power of the voice wasted by its ascending more among the ‘flies’ than penetrating into the front of the theatre. This arises, generally, from nervousness. Besides, the other actors speaking to him are thus obliged to act with their backs more or less turned towards the audience, by which their faces are concealed from the spectators, and their voices being directed towards the back, or farther sides of the stage, are but indistinctly heard in front. Old actors frequently keep up the stage, though not so far up as novices, purposely to display themselves to the exclusion of the other actors. This, which is allowable to a certain extent in a great actor, should be moderated by good judgement and fairness to the other actors. You should give and take, displaying yourself to the greatest advantage whenever you have a fair opportunity, and allow others to do the same. Whenever you can act under the proscenium without interfering with the general grouping and effect, do so, especially when you have to delineate character by fine touches, as delicate modulations of the voice, and minute and transient shades of expression will be better heard and seen there than far up the stage. (Smith [undated c.1897] quoted in Jackson 1989: 105–106)

Smith’s recommendations now seem somewhat prescriptive and naïve and belong to an older and more stylised tradition of acting than that common today. Nevertheless, the implications of his advice remain the same, these being that an audience’s perceptual point of view of a particular scene can be manipulated by the positioning of characters on stage. Figure 3.1 shows how this might work. If character A is facing character B (standing at the back of the stage), all those members of the audience sat within a similar sightline to character A will have a similar perceptual point of view of the scene as character A. And if character A is foregrounded in some way (i.e. by being centre stage, as in Figure 3.1, or, for

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Figure 3.1 Character positioning and its relationship to the manipulation of an audience’s perceptual point of view

example, by taking a turn) then an audience’s attention is likely to be focused on this character. In this way actors and directors are able to manipulate an audience’s perceptual point of view and focus their attention on particular aspects of the scene in question. Figure 3.1 also illustrates how the entrance of characters might serve to direct audience attention. A character positioned centrally will be foregrounded (e.g. character A in Figure 3.1), since he or she is closer to the audience than characters positioned upstage, whereas a character positioned towards the side of the stage (e.g. character C in Figure 3.1) is likely to be backgrounded. It follows, then, that a character entering from the centre-back of the stage (for example, through a door in this position) is likely to be more noticeable to the audience than one entering from the side. In Figure 3.1, characters A and B are standing centre-stage and are thus in the immediate sightline of a greater proportion of the audience than character C, who is standing at the side of the stage. Because of this, the audience’s attention is most likely to be focused on characters A and B simply because they

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are foregrounded by being positioned more prominently than any other (in particular, most of the audience’s attention is likely to be focused on character A who is foregrounded further by being physically closer to them). Smith’s advice to novice actors to ‘act under the proscenium’ whenever it is possible is clearly motivated by the fact that in doing this, an actor is foregrounded on the stage. As Smith says, this means that the audience is able to see and hear the actor better than if he or she were positioned further up stage. The effect of this is similar to that achieved by the close-up shot in film, and an example of this in stage drama can be seen in the following extract from John Herbert’s play Fortune and Men’s Eyes: [Context: Queenie, a juvenile prisoner in a Canadian penitentiary, is rehearsing for a Christmas revue. Smitty, a fellow inmate, has just asked Queenie to demonstrate his act.] Queenie Oh mercy my me! The others move into the background, sitting on beds, the Guard returns to his stool. They watch, as though at some amusing spectacle, where one should not laugh, but cannot resist. (John Herbert, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, p. 61)

In the above example the stage directions suggest that in a dramatic performance the character of Queenie would be made more prominent on stage as a result of the other characters moving into the background. Hence, it is likely that an audience would concentrate their attention on the character of Queenie. There are, then, various ways in which the effect of an ‘objective’ shot can be realised in performances derived from dramatic texts written for the theatre. Achieving the effect of a ‘subjective’ shot, however, is more difficult. In film, subjective shots ‘render the visual field of one or another character’ (Wilson 1986: 85), or even the visual field of non-humans, as in the following example: [Context: Withnail has finally said goodbye to his best friend Marwood, who has at last been offered a part in a play and left London. After leaving Marwood to walk to the railway station alone, Withnail addresses one of Hamlet’s soliloquies to the wolves in Regent’s Park. Having finished, he turns and walks sadly away.] P.O.V. wolves. Withnail walks across the park until he is a tiny figure in the distance. (Bruce Robinson, Withnail and I, p. 128)

In dramatic texts written for the theatre it is harder to render the visual field of one particular character, though this might be suggested in performance through the rearrangement of specific props. For example, in performances of The Lady in the Van (and here I refer specifically to the performance I saw on Saturday 19 February 2000 at The Queen’s Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, directed by

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Nicholas Hytner), up until Act Two the van is parked centre stage, side on to the audience so that its sliding door is visible to them. Part way into the second act, however, the van revolves so that its back doors face the audience. This indicates a change in perceptual point of view and indicates the viewpoint that AB1 would have of the van when leaving his house. What is more common in stage drama than attempts to render specific visual fields are efforts to depict the internal states of particular characters. Here we return to Groff ’s (1959) suggestion that a limited point of view might be achieved by dramatising ‘the inner life’ or through the portrayal of dream sequences. Thomas Murphy’s play A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant is an example of a play that depicts the dreams of one of its main characters, and in the introductory stage directions to the play it is explained that: Unusual lighting suggests the unreality of the dream scenes: movement and speech become stylised and the characters become caricatures. (Thomas Murphy, A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, p. 10)

In Chapter five we will look in more detail at dream sequences, using a possible worlds theory approach to explain how audiences are made aware of these. In Chapter six I investigate further how the inner state of a particular character might be foregrounded by the playwright’s emphasis of their individual mind-style (Fowler 1996). Stage drama can also make use of special effects to render the thought of particular characters, as in this example from The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer: [Context: Vic and Bob are both reading TV guides. They are seemingly unaware that the camera is on them.] NB The following dialogue is a pre-recorded mind-thought section where the audience and viewers are encouraged to believe that they can hear Vic and Bob’s thoughts. Vic Oh great, 3.30 Learning to Swim – that’s my favourite. Bob Brilliant, 3.30 Fraggle Rock – I bloody love that show. Vic Oh no, it clashes with Fraggle bloody Rock. . . He’s not going to let me watch it. Bob (singing) Down at Fraggle Rock toot toot. . . I can’t wait. . . Oh, it clashes with Learn to Swim. . .well, he’s not watching it. Vic Him and his bloody Fraggle Rock toot toot. I’m never going to learn to swim at this rate. . . I only saw the first one and that just showed me how to get my trunks on. . . It’s all right for him, he never goes near water. End of mind-thought. Bob What do you mean I never go near water. Are you suggesting something? (Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, p. 98)

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By pre-recording and then playing back the ‘mind-thought’ sections, the effect is created of Vic and Bob thinking to themselves as they read. The absurdity comes about when it transpires, at the end of the extract, that Bob has seemingly been able to hear what Vic has been thinking.

. Conclusion In this chapter I have summarised the relatively small volume of work that has been produced to date on point of view in dramatic texts. In addition, I have considered briefly how the kinds of point of view effects achieved in film drama might be realised in dramatic texts written for the theatre. Many of the problems I have identified with existing taxonomies of point of view in drama are similar to those I discussed in the previous chapter with regard to point of view in prose fiction. For example, Richardson’s (1988) typology of narrators in drama is too restrictive and fails to fully account for the variety of narration that might exist in dramatic texts. Weingarten’s (1984) work attempts to apply Chatman’s (1978) notions of perceptual and conceptual point of view to drama, but this is applied inaccurately and without enough rigorous linguistic analysis to support his claims. Of all the taxonomies I have discussed in this chapter, the early work of Groff (1959) comes closest to identifying the way in which point of view might be rendered in dramatic texts. However, barely any of the work produced so far on viewpoint in drama takes enough account of stage directions, how these work as narrative devices and how they contribute to the creation of point of view effects. Similarly, none of the existing taxonomies adequately account for how readers/audiences are made aware of different viewpoints and how particular points of view might be foregrounded within dramatic texts. In the next chapter I introduce a cognitive theory of deictic shifts as a means of better explaining how this occurs. I also use this as a basis for explaining how the kinds of subjective viewpoints discussed in Section 3.4.2 might be achieved in dramatic texts written for the theatre.

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Chapter 4

Deictic shifts in dramatic texts

. Introduction So far I have shown how existing taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction and drama fail to fully account for the workings of point of view in dramatic texts. One of the most common problems with such taxonomies is their focus on establishing typologies of narration to explain the creation of particular point of view effects. In Chapters two and three I showed how this approach to explaining viewpoint is necessarily limited and cannot take account of unforeseen types of narration. Such frameworks are also limited by not being able to account for instances where a narrator may be an amalgamation of more than one narrator-type, as I showed in 3.3.2. It is also the case that none of the taxonomies of viewpoint that I have discussed so far explain how particular viewpoints are created, or how readers are exposed to these in order to experience different points of view within a text. Nor are they able to account for the non-narrative forms of viewpoint that occur at the character level of Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram (see Chapter one, Figures 1.1 and 1.2). In an effort to confront these issues, in this chapter I discuss the notion of deixis and its relation to point of view. I introduced the concept of deixis briefly in 2.5.5.4, in my summary of Short’s (1996) list of viewpoint indicators in prose fiction. Here I extend the basic notion of deixis by introducing deictic shift theory, a cognitive model of deixis outlined in Duchan et al. (1995) that has had some application within cognitive stylistics (notably Stockwell 2002a, b), but has not previously been applied to dramatic texts. I show how this model is useful in explaining what happens when readers are exposed to a variety of different viewpoints within literary texts. I begin with an overview of deictic shift theory and a summary of commonly held assumptions about the various forms of deictic reference available to us. I then discuss some of the weaknesses of the deictic shift model, and attempt to circumvent these by introducing concepts from Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory in order to make it a fully workable and applicable framework for analysis. Following this, I demonstrate how my revised version of deictic shift theory can be used as a means of uncovering point of view in drama, by applying the model in an analysis of various extracts from dramatic texts.

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. Deictic shift theory – a brief overview Deictic shift theory was developed by a group of researchers working in various disciplines (including artificial intelligence, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, communicative disorder, education, English and geography) at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and is outlined in a collection of papers edited by Duchan, Bruder and Hewitt (1995). The theory is in part an attempt to explain how it is that readers often come to feel deeply involved in narratives, to the extent that they interpret events in a narrative as if they were experiencing them from a position within the story world. As Segal (1995a: 15) puts it, the ‘reader often takes a cognitive stance within the world of a narrative and interprets the text from that perspective’. According to proponents of the theory, this happens as a result of deictic shifts within the narrative that change the deictic centre from which the sentences of the text are interpreted. It follows that such changes in the deictic centre across the course of a text will result in changes in the point of view that we as readers are exposed to. Deictic shift theory, then, is a potentially useful model for investigating how particular viewpoints are realised in texts.

. The concept of the deictic centre Before explaining deictic shift theory in more detail it will be useful to outline some of the concepts commonly referred to in traditional explanations of deixis. The term deixis comes originally from Greek and means ‘pointing’ or ‘indicating’. Lyons (1977) defines deixis as follows: By deixis is meant the location and identification of persons, objects, events, processes and activities being talked about, or referred to, in relation to the spatiotemporal context created and sustained by the act of utterance and the participation in it, typically, of a single speaker and at least one addressee. (Lyons 1977: 637)

In Lyons’s definition, deixis is concerned with the issue of distance and proximity in space and time, and how speakers encode this in language. This definition has been extended by linguists such as Levinson (1983), to incorporate notions of social deixis, that is, the expression of how close to someone we feel in terms of our social relationship with them. The various types of deixis are all discussed fully in 4.4, but central to the concept of deixis is the notion of the deictic centre. This refers not just to a speaker or hearer’s location in space and time, but also to their position in a social hierarchy, and this complex deictic centre is the position from which they interpret deictic terms. The egocentric nature of language means that by default we assume our-

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Chapter 4. Deictic shifts in dramatic texts

selves to be at the deictic centre of our world. Hence, I would refer to the chair that I am sitting on as I type as ‘this chair’ because it is close to me. However, I would refer to the chair at the other end of my room as ‘that chair’ because it is further away from my deictic centre. This encoding of distance can also be metaphorical, as is the case with temporal and social deixis. I would refer to the time at which I am writing this sentence as ‘now’, whereas I refer to time further away from my deictic centre (i.e. the past or the future) with a distal deictic, such as ‘that moment’ or ‘then’. Similarly we express closeness in social terms by using first names, nicknames, terms of endearment, etc. For example, it would be unusual if I were to address the Dean of my school as ‘Professor Taylor’, since using a title and surname to refer to someone usually expresses distance in social terms. Instead, our friendly working relationship is made apparent by the fact that we choose to call each other by our first names, typically an indicator of social closeness. It is for this reason that university tutors in the UK often prefer students to call them by their first names, rather than by their academic title plus surname, since this generates the effect of a reduced social distance between the tutor and the students, generally thought to be conducive to a more relaxed teaching and learning environment and thus a better working relationship between students and tutors. Notice, though, that the situation we are in might affect the way I address the Dean. So, for example, if we are both in a formal meeting with other members of the university I might address (or at least refer to) him as ‘Professor Taylor’ in order to take other people’s viewpoint of their relationship with him into account, or as a means of indicating the formality of the situation. The deictic centre, then, controls how we interpret deictic terms, and how we do this is indicative of our point of view, both literal and figurative. However, we are not just confined to interpreting the world from our own point of view. One of the ways in which we can appreciate other people’s points of view is by our capacity for what Stockwell (2002a: 43) terms deictic projection (see also Stockwell 2000: 26). Imagine, for example, that I am invigilating an examination. I am standing at the front of the examination hall, facing the rows of students who are about to begin. When it is time for them to start, I might instruct them to ‘turn over the paper on the left hand side of your desk’. Notice that, in this case, even though the papers I am referring to would be on the right hand side of the desk from my perspective, I tell the students that the papers are on the left. This is because I am interpreting the spatial location of the papers from the perspective of the students, in order for my command to make sense to them. I am projecting my awareness of the deictic centre from which they are interpreting the world. Deictic projection can vary from being relatively simple, as in the example above, to being much more sophisticated. If I am at home, for instance, I can telephone my colleague at work and ask him to locate a particular book in my office by describing its whereabouts. It doesn’t matter that I am unable to physically point to the book or that I can’t see

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my colleague, because I can project my awareness of his deictic centre in order to direct him to the book in question. Projecting a deictic centre, then, means that we can take into account points of view other than our own. According to deictic shift theory, shifting deictic centres across the course of a text (and thereby projecting a series of different deictic centres) is what draws readers into the narrative in question by allowing them to experience (albeit vicariously) events from various viewpoints (Segal 1995a: 15). In the analysis in Section 4.7 I demonstrate how this works by means of a variety of linguistic and non-linguistic cues.

. Traditional categories of deixis It should be apparent from the discussion in 4.3 that there are various different types of deictic expression. Levinson (1983), for example, distinguishes between five different categories of deixis. These are summarised below, where I also take account of Lyons’s (1977) suggestions for categorisation. Following this, we will move on to consider how exactly deictic shift theory explains how readers are drawn into the story world of a text. .. Place deixis Place deictics encode the position in space of specific locations in a speech event. The position of an object in space can be expressed by either a locational deictic expression or by what Levinson (1983: 79) refers to as ‘pure’ deictic words. To begin with pure deictics, perhaps the most immediately obvious of these are here and there, which refer in context to a particular place in space and are clearly governed by where the speaker is situated. This can be seen in the example below from Peter Cook’s sketch ‘T.V. P.M.’: [Context: Peter is a politician of some sort, apparently addressing a meeting.] Peter Good evening. I have recently been travelling round the world – on your behalf, and at your expense – visiting some of the chaps with whom I hope to be shaping your future. I went first to Germany, and there I spoke with the German Foreign Minister, Herr. . . Herr and there, and we exchanged many frank words in our respective languages; so precious little came of that in the way of understanding. (Peter Cook, ‘T.V. P.M.’ in Beyond the Fringe, p. 54; my italics)

In this extract, Peter’s use of ‘there’ when referring to Germany indicates that this is distant from his own deictic centre, and that he is not in Germany at the time of speaking. This is further reinforced by the past simple ‘went’, which indicates

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movement away from the speaker’s deictic centre (cf. came). Notice too that once he realises that he has forgotten the German Foreign Minister’s name, Peter takes advantage of the phonetic similarities between the German title ‘Herr’ and the proximal spatial deictic ‘here’ in order to give the impression that he had intended all along to use the phrase ‘here and there’, rather than refer specifically to the foreign minister. Further indicators of distance and proximity are the deictic terms this and that and their plurals. Interestingly, in addition to being used as pure spatial deictics, they can also be used as what Lyons (1977: 677) calls empathetic deictics. Since empathetic deixis is treated as a separate category by Lyons (1977), I discuss this in Section 4.4.5. The example below, from Dennis Potter’s play Brimstone and Treacle, demonstrates the use of that as a pure spatial deictic: [Context: Martin has arrived at the Bates’ house for the first time. Mrs Bates asks her husband if he has met Martin before.] Martin Call me Martin, madam. Bates (embarrassed) I – yes – we sort of – bumped into – What are you doing with that? (Dennis Potter, Brimstone and Treacle, p. 6)

Bates’s use of ‘that’ indicates that he is referring to an object that is nearer to Martin than him, since ‘that’ is distally deictic. It transpires that the object being referred to is a wallet that Bates had lost. Martin has found it and is now returning it. The deictic term here also gives a clue as to Bates’s gaze direction at this point, and hence his perceptual point of view, since we can assume that he is focusing on the wallet. Locational deictic expressions are different from pure place deictics in that they do not, in and of themselves, encode a particular location in space. Neither do they come in pairs or triples that indicate a proximal/distal relationship. Instead they are to be interpreted with regard to other objects and entities in the situational context. Consider the following example, from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows: [Context: The Mole has come up out of his hole and found his way to the river bank.] As he sat on the grass and looked across at the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water’s edge, caught his eye. (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, p. 180)

In the above example, the location of the ‘dark hole’ (the home of the Water Rat) is specified contextually relative to the position of the Mole at that particular instant. Therefore we can infer what the Mole’s position in space must be for him to have the perceptual point of view of the Rat’s hole being opposite him.

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Alternatively, an object’s location may be specified relative to another object, as in the following two examples, the first from an Agatha Christie novel and the second from The Lady in the Van: [. . .] when Joanna saw Little Furze she decided at once that it was just the house we wanted. It lay about half a mile out of Lymstock on the road leading up to the moors. (Agatha Christie, The Moving Finger, p. 9) [14] AB2 Cut to five years earlier. I am standing by the convent in Camden Town looking up at the crucifix on the wall, trying to decide what’s odd about it. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 7)

In the above three examples, the position of the objects mentioned are expressed by describing their location, and rely for their interpretation on the reader having knowledge of (or being able to infer) where the other places or things referred to (i.e. the mole, Lymstock and Camden Town, respectively) are situated. .. Temporal deixis Obvious indicators of temporal deixis are the pure temporal deictics then and now, which clearly derive their meaning from the time at which they are uttered. The same is true of, amongst others, yesterday (cf. ‘the day before’) and tomorrow (cf. ‘the day after’). With regard to The Lady in the Van, part of the confusion at the beginning of the play comes about because we are unable to process satisfactorily the temporal deictic references that AB2 (the narrator) makes. For example, when AB2 says ‘Cut to five years earlier’ (p. 7), the temporal deictic centre has not yet been established and so we cannot identify the specific time-frame to which he is referring. This obviously affects the audience’s ability to understand fully the situational context of the fictional world of the play, thereby affecting their understanding of events within it. A similar confusion arises at the beginning of Bryan Singer’s film The Usual Suspects. The opening scene shows a dimly lit harbour, following which a caption appears reading ‘Last night’. The lack of reference point for this temporally deictic term has the effect of making ambiguous the temporal context for the events which occur within the fictional world, thus creating an in medias res effect. .. Person deixis Person deixis encodes the speakers and addressees within a speech event. First person pronouns are used by speakers to refer to themselves, second person pronouns refer to one or more of the speaker’s addressees, and third person references

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are used by speakers for those people or entities who are prototypically neither sanctioned speakers nor addressees at the time of the speaker’s utterance. This is demonstrated in the example below, from Monty Python’s Flying Circus (first person references are emboldened, second person references are italicised, and third person references are underlined): Announcer Ladies and gentlemen, I am not simply going to say ‘and now for something completely different’ this week, as I do not think it fit. This is a particularly auspicious occasion for us this evening, as we have been told that Her Majesty the Queen will be watching part of this show tonight. We don’t know exactly when Her Majesty will be tuning in. We understand that at the moment she is watching ‘The Virginian’, but we have been promised that we will be informed the moment that she changes channel. Her Majesty would like everyone to behave quite normally but her equerry has asked me to request all of you at home to stand when the great moment arrives, although we here in the studio will be carrying on with our humorous vignettes and spoofs in the ordinary way. (Chapman et al., Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Just The Words, p. 30)

Here, first person pronouns refer to the announcer, second person pronouns refer to his addressees (i.e. the viewing audience), and third person references are used for the Queen and her equerry, neither of whom are speakers or addressees at the time that the announcer is speaking. Notice, then, that only the first and second person pronouns explicitly encode participant roles in the speech event. The announcer uses the indefinite pronoun ‘everyone’ when reporting the Queen’s appeal for people to behave normally, since this request is not addressed to any one person specifically. The pronouns used by the announcer relate to the situational context in which the announcer’s speech occurs. We understand, for example, that when the announcer uses the first person plural pronoun we, we the audience are not included within this reference. The announcer is instead referring to his fellow actors in the show. Of course, the announcer could have included the audience within this reference had he wanted to, but he specifically excludes it by saying ‘we here in the studio’. .. Social deixis In the Monty Python extract in 4.4.3 above, what we can also note, in addition to the simple use of pronouns, is the way in which the announcer refers to the Queen. Only once does he use the third person singular, she. In each of his other references to the Queen he uses the deferential title, ‘Her Majesty the Queen’ or the shorter form, ‘Her Majesty’, and this tells us something about how the announcer

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perceives himself in relation to the Queen. The announcer’s use of a title to refer to her indicates his perception of the social distance between the Queen and himself. This is what Levinson (1983: 89) refers to as social deixis (other equivalent terms include Stockwell’s 2002a relational deixis), saying that the term refers to: those aspects of the language structure that encode the social identities of participants (properly, incumbents of participant roles), or the social relationship between them, or between one of them and persons and entities referred to. (Levinson 1983: 89)

The way in which characters refer to one another can thus be important in establishing a particular character’s point of view. The following example from As You Like It demonstrates this further: [Context: Corin (a shepherd) and Touchstone (a clown) are debating the relative merits of life at the Royal Court and life as a shepherd.] Corin And how like you this shepherd’s life, Master Touchstone? Touchstone Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd’s life, it is naught. (William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2, lines 11–15)

Corin’s view of Touchstone as being socially superior to him is made apparent by his use of the title Master as a term of address when talking to Touchstone. Likewise, Touchstone’s view of Corin is shown up by his lack of either honorifics or the shepherd’s name to refer to the shepherd. Instead he is referred to merely in terms of his role. Touchstone’s low opinion of the shepherd is confirmed as his speech continues and he increases the number of insults aimed at Corin. .. Empathetic deixis In Section 4.4.1 above I mentioned that place deictics can also be used empathetically. Lyons (1977) considers empathetic deixis to be a separate category, covering how speakers express psychological closeness. As an example, the empathetic usage of that can be seen in the following passage from Umberto Eco’s novel, The Island of the Day Before: ‘My son,’ Pozzo said to Roberto as they were riding over the hills, their little army following them on foot, ‘that Nevers isn’t worth one of my balls, and old Vincenzo, when he passed on the dukedom, not only had a limp prick but a limp brain as well.’ (Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, pp. 27–8; my italics)

In this example, Pozzo’s use of that signals his lack of respect for the character of Nevers, as it indicates distance between him and Pozzo. If Pozzo’s attitude towards

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Nevers was friendly, or at least neutral, we might expect him to simply use Nevers’s name, without the deictic that. Notice too how empathetic deixis can be used in reference to inanimate objects. Compare ‘I hate those curtains’ with ‘I like these curtains’.

. Deictic shift theory and reader involvement Deictic shift theory attempts to extend traditional deictic theory by suggesting exactly how speakers and readers are able to understand projected deictic centres. Galbraith (1995) develops deictic shift theory to explain how it is that readers become involved in the world of a text when they read. Her work provides a useful framework for studying viewpoint shifts in drama, as I will demonstrate in 4.7 and Chapter seven. However, the theory she proposes is not without its problems. Below, I briefly outline Galbraith’s theory, before going on to consider some of its shortcomings and suggesting some modifications to it in order to make it a workable and applicable model for analysis. .. Deictic fields, PUSHes and POPs Galbraith (1995: 46) explains that deictic shift theory assumes fictional narration to have numerous deictic fields. A deictic field is a set of deictic expressions all relating to the same deictic centre (Stockwell 2002a: 47), and, as Stockwell points out (2002a: 47), in the novel these are generally related to a character, narrator or narratee (I discuss the definition of a deictic field in more detail in 4.5.3). According to deictic shift theory, readers assume the spatial, temporal and social co-ordinates of such deictic fields not to be egocentric and related to themselves, as is the case in everyday communication, but to be anchored within the narrative itself, i.e. related to the deictic centre of some particular figure in the fictional world of the story. Reading narrative fiction, then, involves suspending our normal egocentric assumptions about deictic terms of reference, and assuming that the deictic centre is somewhere within the story world of the text. This is the first deictic shift, as they term it, that we make when reading a fictional text, in order to take up a cognitive stance within the story world that we then begin to construct mentally as we read. Once we have taken up a position within the story world, we move among the various deictic fields of the characters in the text, as and when we are directed by the textual cues that we encounter. According to Galbraith (1995), we can move in two ways, either via a PUSH or a POP (the terms are borrowed from computer science). Galbraith (1995: 47) defines the term PUSH as the phenomenon by which ‘one may submerge from a basic level to a less available deictic plane, such as episodic

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 Point of View in Plays

memory (known as “flashback” in fiction), fictional story world (this may be a fiction within the fiction), or fantasy.’ As an example, when we pick up a novel and begin reading, we immediately PUSH into another deictic field – that of the fictional world. What this suggests is that readers can shift not just between deictic fields, but also between the real world and the fictional world, both of which have the potential to contain numerous deictic fields. Segal (1995b) discusses the notion of moving between what he terms ‘storyworlds’, and in Chapter five I discuss his suggestions in more detail by mapping concepts from deictic shift theory on to possible worlds theory. A POP, on the other hand, is the action of emerging from a deictic field. In explaining POPs, Galbraith says, ‘One may emerge from one deictic plane to a higher or more basic-ontological-level deictic plane, as in awakening from a dream or looking up from reading’ (1995: 47). Galbraith goes on to say that our assumptions about the prototypical mechanics of a story cause us to expect to return from the POPs and PUSHes that we experience within a narrative, i.e. if a character dreams, we expect him or her to awaken, or if a narrator makes a remark that reveals that he or she knows how a story will turn out, we expect him or her to go back to story time rather than just revealing what he or she knows and spoiling the story. (Galbraith 1995: 47)

Stockwell (2002a: 47) explains a typical POP, saying: You can pop out of a deictic field by putting a book down and shifting your deictic centre back to your real life level as a real reader. (Stockwell 2002a: 47)

Closing a book, then, constitutes a POP back to what we might term our default deictic field – that is, the deictic field in which we ourselves are at the deictic centre. Of course, the example that Stockwell gives is not the only means of POPping out of a narrative. Indeed, in drama, the ways in which we can POP back to our default deictic field are perhaps even more numerous than in prose fiction. The following example, from the final scene of Dennis Potter’s six-part television serial Pennies From Heaven, demonstrates some of the ways in which POPping out of a fictional deictic field can be achieved in drama: [Context: Pennies From Heaven is set in the 1930s. Arthur, a travelling sheetmusic salesman, has been mistakenly charged with the murder of a blind girl, and has consequently been sentenced to hang. Eileen, with whom Arthur has been having an affair, has decided that she will commit suicide rather than live without him. Arthur is to be executed at eight o’clock, at which time Eileen plans to throw herself off Hammersmith Bridge.]

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EXT. HAMMERSMITH BRIDGE. DAY. Close in on Eileen. St Paul’s in distance strikes eight o’clock – execution time. She puts her hands on the rail, ready to jump. [1] Eileen (Counting strike of clock) One – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight. Goodbye Arthur. (She tenses to leap.) [2] Arthur Hang on! (She turns, mouth open.) [3] Eileen Ar-thur! What – what are you doing here? [4] Arthur I’m like a bad penny, enn I? [5] Eileen (Confused) What? [6] Arthur I keep turning up, don’t I? A Penny from Heaven. (She gurgles in her throat) [7] Eileen Oh my darling! My love! [8] Arthur (Smirk) Couldn’t go all through that wivaht a bleen’n ’appy ’endin’ now, could we? (They both turn, smiling, and face the camera.) [9] Arthur/Eileen The song is ended, but the melody lingers on. (Music: ‘Pennies from Heaven’, with words. Pull back and back, Arthur and Eileen waving at us from the bridge. Back and back until they are tiny figures. Freeze picture, music continuing. Set it in a mock song sheet cover. Fade out.) (Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven, p. 247)

Following the principles of deictic shift theory, throughout the drama the reader/audience will have suspended their normal egocentric assumptions about deictic references and will instead be interpreting deictic terms as referring to particular characters’ deictic centres within the world of the play. Hence, Eileen’s use of the proximal spatial deictic ‘here’ in turn 3 will be interpreted as referring to the fictional world, and specifically Hammersmith Bridge. At this stage in the drama, however, the reader (or the audience at home, if the play is being viewed on television) will be aware that he or she has arrived at a crucial point in the story. This is the final episode in a six part drama serial and the main protagonist is about to die. We would therefore expect the end of the story to be imminent, and are likely to be prepared to POP out of the fictional world and back to our default deictic field in the real world. Context, then, can play a large part in preparing the reader for a POP. Note too that for a reader, the number of pages remaining in the novel or play they are reading will have a similar effect. Our expectations are then flouted by Arthur, who we assume has just been executed, suddenly reappearing. There are at least four possibilities here: 1. Arthur received a last minute reprieve. 2. Arthur is actually dead and has reappeared as a ghost.

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 Point of View in Plays

3. Arthur and Eileen have moved into a different fictional world from the one that the events in the story have previously occurred in. 4. The fictional world in which the character of Arthur exists is in some way different to the real world, which therefore allows Arthur to continue to exist in the fictional world even after he has been executed. It is useful to note at this point that the difference between the fictional world and the real world has already been marked in the serial by characters regularly appearing to ‘sing’ popular songs of the era, an effect achieved by having the actors mime to old recordings. The fact that none of the other characters seems to find this odd suggests that the fictional world is different to the real world. However, disregarding the temporal setting of the drama which is firmly established at the outset, until the final scene of Pennies From Heaven, this is the only difference between the real world of the reader and the fictional world of the characters. I would therefore argue that we expect the fictional world to resemble the real world in all other respects (cf. Ryan’s ‘Principle of Minimal Departure’ (1991), discussed in 5.3.3). If we now consider in more detail the four possible explanations for Arthur’s reappearance, it should first of all be apparent that option 1 is unlikely, even if he is still alive. Arthur has no idea where in London Eileen is. Therefore the chance of him discovering her whereabouts is improbable, and finding her at exactly eight o’clock is extremely implausible. Even if the reprieve came before eight o’clock, it is still doubtful whether Arthur would be able to find Eileen, and, again, to find her at the exact time at which the execution was supposed to have taken place is even more unlikely. Option 2, that Arthur has reappeared as a ghost, is possible. This would explain how Arthur is able to locate Eileen at exactly eight o’clock. Arthur also refers to himself as a ‘Penny from Heaven’, and this oblique reference to the afterlife might implicate that he is indeed dead and has returned as a ghost. However, it is likely that our background knowledge of Arthur would discourage us from this interpretation. Throughout the series, Arthur is presented as a fairly coarse man, ill-educated and often unable to express his feelings, particularly his love for Eileen. This would make the likelihood of him using such a metaphor to refer to himself in this way fairly slim. And since we know that Arthur is a sheet-music salesman, it is also possible to interpret his reference to himself as a ‘Penny from Heaven’ as deriving from his knowledge of the popular song, Pennies From Heaven. Indeed, this is the title of the series and the song itself has been heard several times before this point. Finally, a further discouragement from interpreting Arthur’s reappearance as being ghostly is the fact that this would require many in a modern readership/audience suspending their ontological beliefs about both what happens after death and what is considered normal in the real world. Since the fictional world re-

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Chapter 4. Deictic shifts in dramatic texts 

sembles the real world in all aspects except for the characters occasionally bursting into song, the sudden introduction of a supernatural element is unlikely. Option 3, that Arthur and Eileen have, in effect, moved into a different fictional world, might explain the logical impossibility of Arthur finding Eileen at exactly eight o’clock, and also how he was able to survive his execution. However, there is no suggestion in the text that a change of this kind has occurred and so it seems a rather improbable explanation. Option 4, then, seems the most probable. The final scene flouts our expectations that the fictional world should resemble the real world, thereby creating a foregrounding effect. But since there is no way to resolve the logical incompatibility that is created by Arthur’s appearance without introducing this as a feature of the fictional world (unlikely at this late stage in the drama), I would argue that this sets up the reader/audience for a POP out of the fictional world and back into the real world. Following Arthur’s reappearance, he then says, ‘Couldn’t go all through that wivaht a bleen’n ’appy ’endin’ now, could we?’ Following Levinson (1983: 184), who says that the presuppositions inherent in ‘yes/no’ interrogatives are ‘the disjunction of their possible answers’, Arthur’s question presupposes that the answer to his tag question should be ‘no’ – thereby implying that a happy ending is obligatory. This itself suggests that Arthur’s reappearance constitutes the happy ending that he believes is necessary for the story. Our schematic knowledge of stories (i.e. that any complicating actions should be resolved by the end of the story) further confirms that this is likely to constitute the end of the drama. Added to this is Arthur’s direct reference to the fictionality of the story. We are therefore set up for a POP out of the fictional world. The expected POP is then instantiated in the screen directions by an instruction for the camera to pull back. The effect in performance of this non-linguistic perceptual cue would be to make it seem as if we are moving away from Arthur and Eileen, an effect which is confirmed by the later screen direction indicating that Arthur and Eileen turn to face the camera and wave. This action on their part further suggests a POP out of the fictional world for the audience, since it adds to the sense of the audience leaving. It also further breaks the illusion of the fictional world since it now seems that both Arthur and Eileen are aware of the real world in which we the readers/audience reside. The screen directions then indicate that the scene is frozen so that what we are watching in the screen production turns into a still photograph. A special visual effect is then used to make it seem as if this photograph is part of a song-sheet cover. The effect of all this, I would argue, is rather like closing a book and looking again at the front cover. The POP back out to our deictic centre in the real world is finally completed by the visual fade out.

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 Point of View in Plays

The Pennies From Heaven example demonstrates how readers and audiences are likely to have expectations about when some POPs are due to occur in a dramatic text, often as a result of contextual information available, and this is something that is not mentioned by Galbraith (1995). However, these expectations are not always met. Writers are able to manipulate readers’ schematic assumptions to create particular dramatic effects. One such example occurs in William Goldman’s screenplay The Princess Bride, directed by Rob Reiner. The film tells the story of a grandfather who volunteers to read his sick grandson a story that he himself enjoyed as a boy. This story is The Princess Bride. The grandson, however, is sceptical about his grandfather’s claims that the book is truly exciting, and worries that it will contain an excess of ‘kissing bits’. Reluctantly, he agrees to have the story read to him. As the grandfather begins to read, the scene changes so that the audience sees the story he is narrating being played out on screen. In deictic shift theory terms, the grandfather’s narration PUSHes us into the world of the story within the story, and as the story progresses, the grandfather occasionally cuts in with some voice-over narration. Then, at what appears schematically to be the end of the film (the villains have been defeated, thereby resulting in resolution in Labov and Waletsky’s terms (1967)), the hero moves to kiss the princess, and the grandfather cuts in again with past tense narration that indicates the re-instantiation of his ‘real world’ deictic field. As a result of this we become aware once more that what we are watching is a story within a story, and our schematic knowledge of stories leads us to expect a POP out of the fictional world of the hero (Westley) and the princess (Buttercup). The scene is as follows: Grandfather They rode to freedom and as dawn arose Westley and Buttercup knew they were safe. A wave of love swept over them, and as they reached for each other – Sharp cut back to the Grandson’s bedroom. The Grandfather snaps the book shut. Grandson What? What?! Grandfather Nah, it’s kissing again. You don’t want to hear that. Grandson (embarrassed) I don’t mind so much. Grandfather OK. (Cut back to Westley and Buttercup) Since the invention of the kiss there have been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. (Westley and Buttercup kiss) This one left them all behind. The end. Camera lingers a moment on Westley and Buttercup and then cuts back to Grandson’s bedroom. (William Goldman, The Princess Bride, 1987)

What is surprising for the audience, though (and, indeed, for the character of the Grandson), is that the POP that we are being set up to expect occurs too early, and apparently with no linguistic trigger. The cut back to the Grandson’s bedroom

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Chapter 4. Deictic shifts in dramatic texts 

occurs at the moment that the Grandfather stops the narration in mid-sentence. The Grandfather’s explanation for this early POP is that the final scene would not interest the Grandson. The effect of this is dissatisfaction for the Grandson and amusement for the audience. Following the Grandson’s reluctant admission that he would actually like to hear the end of the story, the camera then cuts back to the world of the story within the story. This time, the Grandfather completes his turn, as we would expect. The words ‘the end’ comply with our schematic assumptions about how stories finish and thereby trigger the POP back to the fictional world of the Grandfather, where we can now interpret the deictic terms that he uses as referring to his deictic centre rather than the deictic centres of the characters in the story he has just told. .. Edgework Of course, PUSHing and POPping between different deictic fields involves being able to identify the boundaries between them, as Stockwell (2002a: 49) points out. Stockwell goes on to say that the ‘process of identification is called edgework’ (2002a: 49). Segal (1995b) explains this term as follows: For the reader, edgework includes identifying the cognitive domain in which the story world is to be experienced, and instantiating it with its initial content and the values for its spacetime dimensions. A default constraint system consisting of the expected story world logic based on verisimilitude and previous experience with the genre of the story must also be attached. (Segal 1995b: 74)

The term edgework was introduced originally by Young (1987) in a study examining the boundaries between the real world and the fictional world in oral narratives. However, Young’s original use of the term was to describe the collection of textual indicators of the boundaries between fictional worlds and the real world of the reader. For example, Young (1987: 28) suggests that the beginnings and ends of stories mark the distinction between the real and the fictional world. There are, then, two problems here. Firstly, Stockwell (2002a) is using the term edgework in relation to deictic fields, whereas Young’s original use of the term was in relation to the boundaries between the real and the fictional world. Secondly, there is an anomaly in Segal’s, Stockwell’s and Young’s definitions. Young’s explanation of edgework suggests that this is an element of textual structure. Segal and Stockwell, on the other hand, appear to be defining edgework as a process, i.e. something that readers actively do. In order to avoid the potential for confusion surrounding the use of the term edgework, it may be useful to separate out some of the notions that appear to have been run together.

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 Point of View in Plays

Firstly, in general, we need to be clear about whether we are referring to movement between the real and the fictional world or movement between deictic fields. In the next chapter I will discuss in more detail the notion of shifting between worlds, using Ryan’s (1991) taxonomy of possible worlds to explain this more clearly. Secondly, with regard to the term edgework, it may be useful to keep separate the notion of edgework as part of textual structure and edgework as a process that readers engage in. I will not go so far as to propose a terminological solution to this problem. Rather I would suggest that these are issues worthy of further investigation in future research, and that it is at least necessary to be aware of the problems with the term edgework as it stands. To avoid the potential pitfalls, I prefer in my own analyses not to use the term. Instead I will simply make it clear when I am talking about textual structure and when the focus is on the readerly process. Nevertheless, the above discussion does raise several issues with regard to the boundaries of deictic fields. In order to be clear about these, it is necessary to consider in more detail the definition of a deictic field. .. Deictic fields revisited Defining a deictic field precisely is difficult and would merit a book of its own to explore the full range of issues involved. I will concentrate here on outlining some of the difficulties involved in defining a deictic field, in order to highlight some of the potential problems involved in using the term in analysis. Stockwell’s definition of a deictic field as a set of deictic expressions all relating to the same deictic centre (Stockwell 2002a: 47) is a useful starting point. This is very much how Bühler (1982, see also Bühler 1990 [1934]), who first introduced the term, defines it. Galbraith (1995), in a summary of Bühler’s (1982) work, explains that there are three different aspects to a deictic field. The first is what she refers to as ‘the here and now of the speaker’s sensible environment’ (Galbraith 1995: 23). Galbraith says that ‘when the speaker points at an object and says ‘this’, those who share his or her sensible environment perceive what he or she is indicating’ (Galbraith 1995: 23). This, of course, raises the issue of what constitutes a ‘sensible environment’. Two people sitting in close proximity in the same room will be able to comprehend each other’s spatial deictic references to objects within the room fairly easily, but not necessarily each other’s distal deictic references to objects outside the room. Understanding references to objects beyond the immediate physical environment relies on contextual knowledge of the position in space and time of the objects in question. Galbraith (1995) attempts to counter this by describing the second aspect of a deictic field. She explains that when ‘a speaker or writer uses the word “this” to refer to something in his or her own discourse, those who are following the speaker’s words can easily understand what is being referred to’ (Galbraith 1995: 24). Again, this seems too much of a simplification and is not

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Chapter 4. Deictic shifts in dramatic texts 

necessarily the case. Even in a conversation which the addressee is following perfectly, it may still be occasionally necessary for him or her to seek clarification of certain deictic references. Lastly, Galbraith explains that a speaker’s deictic field does not have to correspond to their physical location in space and time, but can be a part of their imagination or memory. Recognising the boundaries of a deictic field, then, is understandably difficult, though Galbraith’s (1995) summary of Bühler’s (1982) work at least broaches some of the aspects involved. Recognising a speaker’s deictic field clearly involves understanding that person’s location in space and time. However, what is not mentioned by the deictic shift theorists is that it also necessitates understanding that person’s relationship to other people (in order to comprehend their use of social and empathetic deixis) as well as appreciating their sensory and imaginative capacity. In my conceptualisation of deictic fields, I see the speaker as being at the deictic centre of his or her own deictic field. Therefore, in real life although it is possible for a person to take up a roughly similar deictic position (either physically or vicariously) to that of someone else, it is never possible to inhabit exactly the same deictic position as someone else. However, this is not necessarily the case in fiction, as I will demonstrate in my discussion of an extract from Death of a Salesman in 4.6.2. .. Deictic decay The final aspect of Galbraith’s notion of deictic shift theory involves what she terms the ‘decay’ (Galbraith 1995: 47) of those deictic fields which are not regularly re-activated after being instantiated. Stockwell (2002a) uses the example of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew to demonstrate this phenomenon. In his own summary of Galbraith’s work, Stockwell uses the term ‘deictic decomposition’ rather than Galbraith‘s 1995 term ‘deictic decay’, though he appears to be referring to the same phenomenon. At the beginning of The Taming of the Shrew, Sly, a drunkard, is tricked by a Lord and his entourage into believing that he has been asleep for fifteen years. A play is organised in honour of his awakening and this play is The Taming of the Shrew. Since the deictic field of which Sly is a part is hereafter no longer referred to, the reader/audience gradually forgets that they are reading/watching a play within a play. In effect, Sly’s deictic field ‘decays’ and others are instantiated – this time within the world of the play within the play. However, what is unusual about The Taming of the Shrew is that at the end of the play within the play, there is no POP back out to the fictional world in which we first encountered Sly. It is therefore easy to forget that the play we have just experienced is supposedly embedded inside the play that Shakespeare actually wrote. Stock-

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 Point of View in Plays

well (2002a: 48) argues that this factor has contributed to disputes as to whether Katherina’s final submissive speech should be read literally or ironically. .. Problems with PUSHes and POPs Galbraith’s (1995) deictic shift model is a theoretical exposition of how readers navigate their way through a narrative text and make sense of the variety of different viewpoints they are exposed to. What Galbraith does not provide is any clear indication of the types of cues that might instantiate a PUSH or a POP into a different deictic field. This makes it difficult to apply the model analytically. Stockwell (2002a) tackles this problem through an analysis of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and devises a checklist of prototypical indicators of deictic shifts. These include indicators of what he terms perceptual shifts (e.g. pronominalisation, mental predicates), spatial shifts (e.g. movement predicates, locative adverbials, spatial adverbs), temporal shifts (e.g. tense and aspect), relational shifts (e.g. terms of address, evaluative adjectives and adverbials), textual shifts (e.g. chapter titles, epigrams, graphology) and compositional shifts (e.g. presentational factors such as the cover of the book, and the context in which a text is read – for pleasure, as part of a reading syllabus, etc.). Such a checklist is very useful, but there is still an underlying problem concerning the way in which readers move between deictic fields via PUSHes and POPs. Consider Galbraith’s description of prototypical PUSHes and POPs: The most common PUSHes are probably flashbacks and dream sequences, and the most common POPs (other than coming back from flashbacks and dreams) are irony and narrator commentary. (Galbraith 1995: 47)

What is implicit in this statement, and what Galbraith does not make clear, is that it is possible to PUSH and POP in two different ways. Let us first of all consider narrator commentary and irony. This clearly comes about as a result of PUSHing into or POPping out of a particular level of the story’s discourse architecture (Leech & Short 1981). That is, the reader moves between the levels on Short’s (1996) diagram of the discourse structure of a text (see Figure 1.2 in Chapter one). However, these are very different kinds of PUSHes and POPs to those that bring us back from a flashback or out of a dream. These latter types are PUSHes and POPs along the temporal continuum of the story itself. For example, a flashback is what happens when we get a PUSH to a different temporal location, specifically, an earlier point in the story – or, to be more exact, an earlier point in the fabula. It becomes clear from this that the process of PUSHing and POPping along the fabula is in part what creates the sjuzhet. Although this distinction resolves some of the problems with applying deictic shift theory in cognitive stylistic analysis, there still remains something of an issue

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Chapter 4. Deictic shifts in dramatic texts 

with the actual terms PUSH and POP. The unfortunate parallelism of the terms gives rise to POP being seen as the opposite of PUSH, which is not the case. The fact that, prototypically, push is a transitive verb whilst pop is intransitive also has the effect of making it appear that PUSHing is something that is done to the reader whereas POPping is something that the reader does without authorial prompting. It is in any case questionable whether in the final analysis POPs and PUSHes can be seen as discrete, separate categories. Consider the following example from Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa. This extract comes from the end of the play. Michael is the adult narrator who frames the action: Maggie I’ve a riddle for you. Why is a gramophone like a parrot? Kate Maggie! Maggie Because it. . .because it always. . .because a parrot. . .God, I’ve forgotten! (Maggie moves into the kitchen. Michael enters. The characters are now in positions similar to their positions at the beginning of the play – with some changes: Agnes and Gerry are on the garden seat. Jack stands stiffly to attention at Agnes’s elbow. One kite, facing boldly out front, stands between Gerry and Agnes; the other between Agnes and Jack. Rose is upstage left. Maggie is at the kitchen window. Kate is downstage right. Chris is at the front door. During Michael’s speech Kate cries quietly. As Michael begins to speak the stage is lit in a very soft, golden light so that the tableau we see is almost, but not quite, in a haze.) Michael As I said, Father Jack was dead within twelve months. And with him and Agnes and Rose all gone, the heart seemed to go out of the house. (Brian Friel, Dancing at Lughnasa, p. 70)

What happens in this extract is that we emerge from the character level of the play back up to the narrator level. In effect, there is a discoursal POP from a deictic field within the embedded fictional world that Michael describes in his narration, back into a deictic field within the fictional world in which the narrator is present. The deictic position that the reader/audience takes in both these fictional worlds is external (i.e. not from within the consciousness of one particular character). Nevertheless, the POP does not happen automatically. There are various non-linguistic cues (made clear by the stage directions in the text) that appear to act as a trigger, these being the returning of the characters to roughly the same positions as they were in at the beginning of the play, and the hazy lighting effect prototypically associated in drama with the suggestion of past time. An alternative way of understanding what happens here is that as a result of the non-linguistic cues, the reader/audience PUSHes back into Michael’s deictic field. Therefore, although we do POP out of the deictic field of Maggie, we do this as a result of PUSHing into the deictic field of Michael. There seems, then, to be an inextricable link between POPs and PUSHes; effectively they seem to be two sides of the same coin. If this is

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the case, then it may be more helpful simply to refer to shifts between deictic fields and then describe what motivates the shift in each case. What is also apparent in the above extract is that the non-linguistic cues are not the only means by which we shift back into Michael’s deictic field. The very fact that Michael begins speaking projects a different deictic centre and alerts us to the fact that we must have moved deictic positions. In effect, Michael’s speech causes the reader/audience to shift back into a deictic field within the fictional world that he inhabits. It seems, then, that the terms PUSH and POP suggest there are two processes involved in moving between deictic fields when actually there is only one. The problems with the terms can be seen in the earlier Pennies From Heaven extract in 4.5.1. In my discussion of this example I described how, for the reader/audience, the move out of the fictional deictic fields of Arthur and Eileen is cued by contextual features (such as our knowledge that this is the last episode of a six-part serial) and by instructions in the screen directions for the camera to keep pulling back. The POP that occurs is therefore not instantaneous, as the connotations of the term might suggest. Rather it seems that, for the reader/audience, there is a gradual increase in awareness of their own default deictic field as they move out of the deictic field of the fictional world. I consider the consequences of this in 4.6.2. I am therefore not convinced that the terms adequately capture what real readers actually do when they read a text. Segal (1995a) maintains that: When reading fictional text, most readers feel they are in the middle of the story, and they eagerly or hesitantly wait to see what will happen next. Readers get inside of stories and vicariously experience them. They feel happy when good things occur, worry when characters are in danger, feel sad, and may even cry, when misfortune strikes. (Segal 1995a: 14–15)

Deictic shift theory purports to explain how it is that readers come to feel involved in a narrative in the manner that Segal describes, and argues that ‘the metaphor of the reader getting inside of a story is cognitively valid’ (Segal 1995a: 15). However, his description of the feelings that readers experience as they read relates to a very specific reading situation, notably one where the reader is undisturbed by external factors (e.g. noise, uncomfortable surroundings) and, in effect, is able to forget completely about the real world. In such instances, Galbraith (1995: 47) would claim that the reader PUSHes into the story world and that their own personal deictic field decays as a result of not being re-instantiated. This, though, is an idealised situation. Often readers will be constantly disturbed as they read. Imagine, for example, attempting to read a novel on a hot, crowded and noisy train. In such circumstances concentrating on reading will be made more difficult, and whilst it might be possible to follow the unfolding of the novel’s plot, the reader will constantly be reminded of the real world and their own personal deictic field within it. Presumably it cannot be the case that the reader fully PUSHes into the deictic

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field of the story world. Rather it would seem that in such a situation, readers are aware of both their own deictic field and those in the fictional narrative. What this suggests is that Galbraith’s (1995) notion of PUSHing and POPping is perhaps too simplistic a metaphor to describe how we experience different deictic fields. What is also suggested by the example above is that it is necessary to consider in more detail shifts between worlds, in addition to shifts between deictic fields. This is the focus of Chapter five. Furthermore, describing the process in these terms may actually be unhelpful, since this suggests that a reader’s presence within one deictic field prohibits his or her being simultaneously aware of another deictic field. I would like to suggest that a more useful way of understanding how we interpret events from deictic centres other than our own comes about by modifying some aspects of deictic shift theory and integrating elements from Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory. This was devised originally to explain the processes of narrative comprehension by readers. In Section 4.6 I concentrate on modifying deictic shift theory to take account of the problems that I have outlined above. It is perhaps useful at this point to summarise the problems that I have identified with deictic shift theory as it stands: 1. The notion of PUSHes and POPs is an inaccurate metaphor to describe how readers are moved between deictic fields, suggesting two processes when there may only be one, seen from the opposite ends of the process, as it were. 2. Current deictic shift theory does not explain adequately how readers can be aware of more than one deictic field at any one time. 3. More explanation is needed to distinguish shifting between the real and the fictional world and shifting between deictic fields. In Section 4.6 I address points 1 and 2 above by integrating Emmott’s (1997) notions of binding and priming into deictic shift theory. Point 3 is addressed in Chapter five.

. Modifying deictic shift theory Galbraith’s (1995) explanation as to how readers become involved in a narrative works on the principle that, as we read, we constantly PUSH into different deictic fields which we then POP out of. The central feature of Galbraith’s model is the metaphor of getting inside the story. However, I would suggest that, as it stands, this metaphor is rather too simplistic and does not accurately capture the extent to which we may be aware of a particular deictic field. For example, in drama it is often the case that the reader/audience will be aware of more than one deictic field at any one time – especially when we take the complexities of performance

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into account. Some years ago I saw a production of The Canterbury Tales at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, where the characters would often leave the stage and wander amongst the audience, sometimes addressing individual audience members directly. The physical invasion by characters of the space usually reserved for the audience had the effect of stopping the individual audience members’ deictic fields in the real world decaying. As a result, throughout the play, the audience was aware of both the fictional deictic fields of the play and their own real world deictic fields. Similar effects have been used in experimental drama, such as John Burgess and Charles Marowitz’s The Chicago Conspiracy (1974), where audience members were treated as prisoners in a maximum-security prison as they filed into the auditorium. Roger McGough’s The Puny Little Life Show (1974) is another example. This play actually begins outside the theatre, as one of the characters wanders amongst the queuing audience attempting to sell them an assortment of jokes and novelties. Pantomime is another genre that often makes use of such practices. The issue is, how do we explain our ability to be aware of more than one deictic field at any given time? There appear to be two possible explanations for such phenomena. Either readers/audiences shift very quickly back and forth between deictic fields, as suggested by the deictic shift theorists (see, for example, Galbraith 1995), or they are able to continue to monitor one deictic field whilst also moving into another. In the following sections I suggest that both of these aspects may be involved. In considering the possibility of readers/audiences being able to monitor numerous deictic fields, I find it necessary to extend deictic shift theory beyond the simple notion of moving either into or out of a particular deictic field. To this end I find it useful to apply some of the concepts from Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory, which I outline briefly in the next section. .. Contextual frame theory In her book Narrative Comprehension, Emmott (1997) draws on research in linguistics, psychology and artificial intelligence to explain how it is that readers ‘manage to create a richly represented fictional world from mere strings of words’ (Emmott 1997: v). Emmott’s work is an interdisciplinary attempt to explain the means by which readers are able to keep track of characters and events in the fictional worlds of narrative texts, and is much influenced by Werth’s work on text worlds (see, for example, Werth 1995, 1999). The significance of Emmott’s work for my proposed modification of deictic shift theory lies in her notion of priming, but before I introduce this concept fully it is necessary to explain Emmott’s notion of contextual frames. Emmott (1997: 121) describes a contextual frame as ‘a mental store of information about the current context, built up from the text itself and from inferences made from the text’. We might note, then, that contextual frames will also include

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the deictic co-ordinates for each of the deictic fields that might exist within it. Frames contain narrative information that is either episodic or non-episodic in nature. Episodic information is that which refers specifically to a particular occasion in the story, whilst non-episodic information refers to that which is true beyond a specific point in the narrative. So, for example, in Pennies From Heaven, the reader is introduced to the fact that the main character, Arthur, is a travelling sheet-music salesman. This is non-episodic information that is true generally throughout the whole of the drama. In episode three of the series, though, Arthur stops on the road from London to Gloucester and meets the blind girl whom he will later be accused of murdering. This is episodic information for the reader/audience (i.e. it is a one-off occurrence in the story) and turns out to be pivotal to the whole drama. Note, though, that while in this example the episodic information turns out to have major significance for the rest of the story, Emmott (1997: 121) points out that episodic information does not have to have relevance beyond the particular occasion in question within the story. Emmott suggests that as we read, we retain (at least temporarily) the information within these contextual frames and use it to create an overall context for the story. She explains that readers are able to hold information about more than one context at any one time, but that we usually tend to concentrate on one context in particular. To fully explain the means by which this is made possible, Emmott introduces the terms binding and priming. Binding occurs when characters and locations are linked to a specific context. So in the Pennies From Heaven example discussed above, Arthur and the blind girl are together on the road to Gloucester, and are therefore bound into the same context, information about which the reader will hold in one particular contextual frame. Priming, on the other hand, is described by Emmott (1997: 123) as referring to ‘the process by which one particular contextual frame becomes the main focus of attention for the reader’. So as we read the sequence from Pennies From Heaven where Arthur meets the blind girl, the contextual frame into which Arthur and the girl are bound is at the forefront of the reader’s mind and is therefore primed. At the same time as Arthur is talking to the girl, Eileen (the schoolteacher with whom Arthur is having an affair) is telling a story to her class of children. However, this contextual frame is not being monitored by the reader as he or she reads the sequence with Arthur and the blind girl, and so, although the characters of Eileen and the children remain bound into the context of the schoolroom, this particular contextual frame is said by Emmott (1997) to be unprimed. Stockwell (2002a: 155) points out that binding occurs as a result of textual cues. The same may be said of priming, though it is likely that priming and binding can also be contextually triggered. Emmott’s (1997) model of how readers comprehend fiction texts provides a useful framework for rethinking some of the concepts from deictic shift theory.

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In the next section we will consider how elements of Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory might be integrated into Galbraith’s (1995) and Segal’s (1995a, 1995b) work. .. Binding and priming in deictic shift theory In 4.5.5 above, I showed how the terms PUSH and POP were problematic for describing how readers move between the various deictic fields of a text. In this section I consider how applying some of Emmott’s (1997) work might better describe the processes by which readers become aware of, and shift between, such deictic fields, as well as accounting for how readers can be aware of more than one deictic field simultaneously. The way in which readers become aware of different deictic fields can be explained using Emmott’s notion of binding. I said in 4.5.1 that our default deictic field is that in which we ourselves are at the deictic centre. In day-to-day conversation, then, our default deictic field is bound into our real world context. The egocentric nature of language means that, in real-life, for most of the time our default deictic field is at the forefront of our minds and is therefore primed. However, as we read fiction, our immediate context is not being monitored (i.e. it is unprimed), and our deictic field becomes unbound from that context and is instead bound into a new context – that of the fictional world. Emmott’s (1997) terms can also be used to describe how readers can be aware of more than one deictic field at once. It seems possible for more than one deictic field to be bound at any one time. For example, in conversation, our interlocutor’s deictic field will also be bound into the context, just as they themselves are. However, the deictic field that the reader is most aware of will be the deictic field that is primed. When we are speaking, this will be ours; when our interlocutor is speaking, this will be theirs (and we will project their deictic centre). This would resolve a number of the problems that I have so far identified with deictic shift theory. For example, I mentioned in 4.5.5 that deictic shift theory can only explain reader involvement in a text if the reading takes place in an ideal situation where the reader is undisturbed by external factors such as noise, discomfort, etc. My proposed revision of deictic shift theory using terms from contextual frame theory accounts for those instances where the situation is not ideal for reading (e.g. the noisy and uncomfortable train journey described in 4.5.5). I would suggest that, in an ideal reading situation, when we pick up a book and begin to read, our default deictic field becomes unprimed but remains bound into our real world context; i.e. the default deictic field is disregarded for the purposes of interpreting the fictional world but the boundaries of the deictic field remain in place. Then, as our attention becomes focussed on the fictional world, our default deictic field gradually decays until it becomes unbound, as we set up a new deictic field within

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the fictional world. Conversely, if we are disturbed whilst reading, our default deictic field becomes bound into the real world context once more and also primed. And whatever fictional deictic field has been primed will become unprimed, as it starts to decay until it becomes unbound. When the disturbance is over and we start reading again, the unbound and unprimed fictional deictic field will become bound and primed once more. In addition to being simultaneously aware of our own deictic field and a fictional one, it is also the case that readers can be aware of more than one fictional deictic field at a time. This explains the ‘double perspective’ effect that can arise in theatrical performance. In 3.3.1 of the previous chapter I discussed how, in an extract from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the audience is presented with a scene that occurs only in the character Willy’s mind. In a performance of the play, what the audience would see on stage, then, would be what Willy himself believes he can see. However, despite having this internal point of view, the audience would also be able to see the actor playing the part of Willy. In such an instance it seems that the audience is afforded both an internal and an external perspective on the action. In my revised deictic shift theory terms, this is explained by the fact that Willy’s personal deictic field is bound, and that particular deictic field is primed and made available to the audience, whilst the external deictic field that the audience has within the fictional world is also bound but is unprimed. If this is the case, we need now to consider the mechanism by which we become aware of deictic fields other than our own default field, and how we shift between them. There would seem to be at least two potential explanations. First of all, it may be that deictic fields that are primed vary in the extent to which they are primed. We might refer to the extent to which a deictic field is primed as its degree of prominence. So, if we think again of the example of trying to read a novel on a noisy train, the fictional deictic field would be primed and the reader’s default deictic field would be unprimed. However, the reader’s default field would be unlikely to have decayed and therefore would remain bound in the real world. And because the situation would make it difficult to concentrate on the fictional world of the story, the fictional deictic field, although primed, would have a lower degree of prominence than in a situation more ideal for reading. Conversely, in an ideal reading situation the fictional deictic field will have a high degree of prominence and the prominence of the default deictic field will decrease steadily as it gradually decays. The extent to which a deictic field may be primed is perhaps made easier to understand with an analogy. Imagine the kind of electric light that has a dimmer switch. It is possible for such a light to be switched on and yet to remain fairly dim. Nevertheless the light is irrefutably on. By turning the dimmer switch and increasing the voltage, it is possible to make the light much brighter and therefore much more prominent. In the same way, it is possible for a deictic field to be primed yet

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for its degree of prominence to be fairly low. In a situation where we are aware of, say, two deictic fields simultaneously, one of the fields would be primed and the other unprimed, but both would be bound. The reader would flit rapidly between the two deictic fields, and the longer he or she stayed within one particular field, the more prominent that field would become, and the greater the chance that the other deictic field would become unbound, as it gradually decayed. The possibility of being aware of more than one deictic field is not just confined to drama. In the extract below from Irvine Welsh’s short story ‘Across the Hall’, graphological deviation is used to represent the two first-person narratorial voices of the characters Collingwood and Gillespie. The graphological deviation also relates to the fact that Collingwood and Gillespie live in different apartments. As we read the story we flit between the two columns, and it is necessary for the reader to take into account the deictic fields of both characters in order to interpret the deictic terms that they use. Both characters’ deictic fields are therefore bound simultaneously within the same fictional context, but as we shift back and forth between them, the deictic fields take it in turns to be primed and unprimed. ACROSS THE HALL 15/2 COLLINGWOOD it’s not being kept in the picture that I resent the most. he sees me as a glorified typist; never tells me anything. not that I want to be a secretary forever, but I saw this as a stepping stone to something a little more interesting. I’m

15/8 GILLESPIE that’s important to me. it’s him getting it, after all the experience in the firm I’ve gained over the years. and let’s be upfront about it, it’s not only me that’s saying it, most of my colleagues feel the same; he simply isn’t up to the

(Irvine Welsh, ‘Across the Hall’ in The Acid House, p. 103)

For the reasons described in 4.5.5 above, I prefer not to use the terms PUSH and POP to describe the movements between deictic fields. Rather than make this distinction, I prefer simply to use the term shift, but to be specific as to the type of shift this is (as Stockwell 2002a is when he refers, for example, to temporal shifts, perceptual shifts, spatial shifts, etc.). Nevertheless, it seems likely to assume that the mechanism by which such shifts are effected works on the basis of the reader flicking rapidly between one field and another. The likelihood of this being the case seems probable, given what we know from cognitive linguistics about how readers monitor figure and ground (see Ungerer & Schmid 1996). At this point it is perhaps useful to recap and spell out my re-conceptualisation of deictic fields and how we move between them.

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1. In everyday life our default deictic field (that is, the deictic field where we are at the deictic centre) is bound into our immediate context in the real world, and as a consequence of it being at the forefront of our mind for most of the time, is primed. 2. When we begin to read a fictional text, our default deictic field becomes unprimed as we focus our attention on the fictional deictic fields we encounter as we read. 3. If we are undisturbed whilst reading, our default deictic field will gradually decay as we set up a new deictic field within the boundaries of the fictional world. At this stage, the fictional deictic fields we encounter as we read are far more prominent in our minds than our own default field in the real world. 4. As we encounter other fictional deictic fields within the text we shift between them as a result of linguistic and contextual triggers that bind and prime particular fields. 5. If we are disturbed whilst reading, or if the characters in the fiction make reference to the real world of the reader, our default deictic field becomes bound once more into the real world context and may rise in prominence. 6. When we finish reading, the fictional deictic fields of the text become unbound and unprimed, and our default deictic field becomes bound into the real world context once more, and is primed and highly prominent. Allowing for the possibility of readers being able to monitor more than one deictic field at any one time acknowledges the complexity of our interpretative capacity. In order to demonstrate how this might work in practice, in the next section I present an analysis of some brief extracts from Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town.

. Deictic fields and point of view in Our Town In many respects Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town has much in common with Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van. Both eschew a realistic depiction of the fictional world in favour of a stylised theatrical presentation, and both make use of a narrator figure amongst the dramatis personae. The major ‘structural’ difference between the two plays is that in Bennett’s, the narrator figure is arguably more complex than in Our Town, since in The Lady in the Van there are two versions of Alan Bennett – the character (AB1) and the narrator (AB2). It could be argued that this constitutes a clear delineation of the two facets of a first person narrator in prose fiction – someone who is a part of the fictional world yet simultaneously able to stand back from it and describe it. This adds a further complication when analysing The Lady in the Van, and so I reserve detailed analysis of this play until Chapter seven, after I have introduced the concepts of possible worlds and reality

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paradigms in Chapters five and six respectively, in order to cope with this added complication. Our Town is a useful play on which to demonstrate the effectiveness of a combination of the contextual frame and deictic shift theory approach, since it shares some of the characteristics of Bennett’s play, whilst not having some of the complications. Our Town is set at the beginning of the twentieth century in a town called Grover’s Corner in New Hampshire, Massachusetts. The initial stage directions make it clear that in a dramatic performance, there should be no scenery on stage, and no front curtain. The actors mime the existence of necessary properties, with the only concession to realism being the use of sound effects (for example, the clinking of milk bottles as the character of Howie Newsome mimes carrying a crate of milk). The reader/audience’s knowledge of the town comes about in part through the description of it by the character of the Stage Manager, who acts as a narrator figure. The effect of using this narrative device is to prevent the real world deictic fields of the reader/audience from decaying entirely and becoming unbound. To an audience watching the drama it would appear that the stage manager is not a part of the fictional world, when in fact he is as much a fictional character and creation of the author as the characters that he himself describes. This confusion between fiction and reality can be seen in the Stage Manager’s first turn: Stage Manager This play is called ‘Our Town’. It was written by Thornton Wilder; produced and directed by A. . . .(or: produced by A. . . .; directed by B. . . .). In it you will see Miss C. . . .; Miss D. . . .; Miss E. . . .; and Mr. F. . . .; Mr. G. . . .; Mr. H. . . .; and many others. The name of the town is Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire – just across the Massachusetts line: latitude 42 degrees 40 minutes; longitude 70 degrees 37 minutes. The First Act shows a day in our town. The day is May 7, 1901. The time is just before dawn. (Thornton Wilder, Our Town, pp. 3–4)

It appears that the Stage Manager is a part of the fictional world but aware of the real world of the theatre-going public. He is clearly aware that what is being presented on stage is purely fictional (‘This play is called “Our Town”. It was written by Thornton Wilder’), yet he refers to himself as a part of the fictional world through his use of the first person plural deictic ‘our’ (‘The First Act shows a day in our town’). As the Stage Manager begins his turn I would argue that, although the reader/audience takes into account the Stage Manager’s deictic field, their own deictic fields within the real world remain fairly prominent. We have not yet learned anything about the make-up of the fictional world and as yet we do not know all the co-ordinates of the Stage Manager’s deictic centre. However, by the end of the Stage Manager’s turn, the reader/audience has learned much more. For example, we have been given some very explicit deictic coordinates. We know the exact spa-

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tial location of the town that the Stage Manager is describing, even down to its latitude and longitude. In addition we know the temporal location of events in the fictional world. And a viewing audience might now have inferred that the Stage Manager himself is not really a Stage Manager at all, but is a first person narrator who is himself a part of the fictional world he is describing. This information makes it much easier for us to project our awareness of the Stage Manager’s deictic centre and hence interpret the fictional world from his perspective. As the Stage Manager continues with his turn it becomes easier for the reader/audience to interpret his deictic field, since the Stage Manager’s location in space becomes clearer: [Stage Manager] [. . .] Well, I’d better show you how our town lies. Up here – That is: parallel with the back wall. is Main Street. Way back there is the railway station; tracks go that way. Polish Town’s across the tracks, and some Canuck families. Toward the left. Over there is Congregational Church; across the street’s the Presbyterian. Methodist and Unitarian are over there. Baptist is down in the holla’ by the river. Catholic Church is over beyond the tracks. Here’s the town Hall and Post Office combined; jail’s in the basement. Bryan once made a speech from these very steps here. (Thornton Wilder, Our Town, p. 4)

The information in the stage directions (the italicised lines in the above example) allows the reader of the play to interpret the pure spatial deictics and locational deictic expressions that the Stage Manager uses in his dialogue (e.g. ‘here’, ‘there’, ‘by the river’, ‘beyond the tracks’). In performance, of course, the stage directions would not be accessible to the audience and would instead most likely be realised through the Stage Manager pointing or moving in the relevant direction. The Stage Manager’s use of spatial deictics also allows us to work out the position in the fictional world of the objects and places he mentions. For example, we know that the steps must be fairly close to the Stage Manager, since he uses the proximal spatial deictic ‘these’ to refer to them (as opposed to the distal those), indicating that they are close to his deictic centre. We are, then, interpreting the make-up of the fictional world from the deictic perspective of the Stage Manager. And as we come to know more about the fictional world, I would argue that the Stage Manager’s deictic field becomes primed and increasingly more prominent while our default deictic field decreases in prominence until it becomes unprimed. As the play progresses, the Stage Manager introduces a variety of other characters that people the fictional world. For example:

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 Point of View in Plays

Stage Manager Here comes Howie Newsome, deliverin’ the milk. (Thornton Wilder, Our Town, p. 10)

Following this particular introduction, the character of Howie then strikes up a conversation with another character, Dr Gibbs, eventually drawing in another three characters. This particular conversation goes on for 40 turns with no interruption from the Stage Manager, who takes no part in the discussion. Because of this, I would argue that the Stage Manager’s deictic field decreases in prominence (or ‘decays’ in Galbraith’s 1995 terms) until it becomes unprimed. In effect the reader/audience forgets that this conversation is framed by the Stage Manager, and the deictic fields of the characters having the conversation become primed, leading the reader/audience to interpret the fictional world from their perspective. For example, Howie Newsome tells Mrs Gibbs that ‘Doc’s just comin’ down the street’. The use of the spatially deictic verb come indicates movement towards Howie’s deictic centre, and the reader/audience is thus able to infer the position of Howie in relation to Dr Gibbs. When Howie is speaking, his deictic field will be most prominent in the reader’s mind. And when another character speaks, their deictic field will increase in prominence for the reader, whilst Howie’s will decrease. After 40 turns of Howie and Dr Gibb’s conversation, the Stage Manager cuts in: A factory whistle sounds. [. . .] Stage Manager We’ve got a factory in our town too – hear it? Makes blankets. Cartwrights own it and it brung ’em a fortune. (Thornton Wilder, Our Town, p. 14)

The effect of this turn is to once more prime the Stage Manager’s deictic field and increase its prominence. The Stage Manager comments on events in the fictional world, thereby reinforcing the impression that what the reader/audience is being presented with is one particular perspective. The play continues in this vein and at the end of the final act the Stage Manager says: Hm. . .. Eleven o’clock in Grover’s Corners. You get a good rest, too. Good night. THE END

(Thornton Wilder, Our Town, p. 14)

The effect of this final turn is to trigger the increase in prominence of the reader/audience’s default deictic field. The Stage Manager reminds the audience of their own deictic field by addressing them directly using the second person pronoun, and also by reminding them of their own temporal location. When the Stage Manager says ‘You get a good rest too’, Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Relation al-

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lows us to infer that he means it is late in the evening in the real world too. The reader/audience is thus reminded of their default deictic field in the real world. Finally, in the dramatic text the words ‘The End’ provide the textual cue that unbinds and unprimes the fictional deictic fields, whilst in performance this would likely be done non-linguistically by, for example, the lowering of a curtain and/or dimming of the lights.

. Conclusion In this chapter I have extended the notion of deixis, introduced initially in Chapter two, to take account of recent developments in cognitive deictic theory. I have shown how Duchan et al.’s (1995) model of deictic shift theory provides a means of uncovering viewpoint effects in dramatic texts that goes beyond attempts to categorise narration in drama. Nevertheless, this theory is not without its problems, as I have shown. To deal with these I have used concepts from Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory to modify the framework proposed by the deictic shift theorists. I have proposed that movement between deictic fields might be best described using the term shift (and specifying the exact type(s) of shift), whilst also suggesting that deictic fields can increase or decrease in prominence. I then showed how this revised model of deictic shift theory can be used analytically by applying it in an analysis of part of Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. However, Our Town never explicitly depicts the internal point of view of characters, as happens in The Lady in the Van and numerous other dramatic texts. To accurately analyse The Lady in the Van a means is needed of explaining how internal point of view can be realised in dramatic texts. What also becomes clear when attempting to apply deictic shift theory analytically is that the major initial shift that readers make when they pick up a fictional text is to move from the real world to the fictional world. And within the fictional world each character will have his or her own default deictic field too. A means is also needed, therefore, of describing how deictic fields relate to the real or fictional worlds of which they are a part. To this end, in the next chapter I consider how the philosophical notion of possible worlds can assist with this, and how concepts from deictic shift theory can be mapped on to it.

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Chapter 5

Possible worlds, possible viewpoints

. Introduction In the previous chapter we began to see how the notion of shifting between different deictic fields explains, in part, how readers are exposed to different points of view within a text. What we also noticed was that the initial shift that a reader makes when reading fiction is from the real world into the fictional world of the text. Segal (1995b) discusses this briefly, noting that ‘there are boundaries between discourse that refers to “real” events in the storyworld, and discourse that refers to “subjective” events – thoughts and perceptions of characters in the world’ (Segal 1995b: 76). In order to account for how readers are exposed to such ‘subjective’ viewpoints, in this chapter I will suggest that, in addition to shifting between particular deictic fields, it is also the case that as a result of linguistic and contextual triggers, we can move in a similar way between what logicians and narratologists often refer to as possible worlds. Indeed, the passage from Death of a Salesman that I analysed in the previous chapter is an example of this, and in this chapter we will explore this extract in more detail. I will discuss how it is necessary to account not just for movement between different deictic fields, but also movement between the deictic fields of whichever possible worlds the reader is exposed to within the text. Thus, this chapter focuses on possible worlds theory, and how concepts from deictic shift theory might be mapped on to this theory, as a means of further explicating the way in which readers can be manipulated into experiencing events in the story world from a variety of perspectives. I begin by outlining possible worlds theory (originally postulated by Liebniz 1969; see also Doležel 1979; Loux 1979; Ronen 1994; Ryan 1991; Semino 1997) and its application to literary texts. I then go on to consider how Emmott’s (1997) notions of binding and priming, and the concept of prominence, might be applied to possible worlds theory to explain how it is that readers are made aware of different worlds within a text. I demonstrate this through textual analysis and suggest that being exposed to particular characters’ alternative possible worlds is, in part, what allows the reader to experience aspects of the story from a particular point of view.

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 Point of View in Plays

. The development of possible worlds theory The notion of possible worlds was adopted by logicians in the 1950s and 60s as a means of resolving some of the limitations of truth conditional semantics. Semino (1997: 58) sums up the value of possible worlds theory when she says that ‘it provides a framework within which it is possible to determine the truth-values of propositions [i.e. whether a proposition is true or false] beyond the constraints of the actual world’. In early work on the logical status of fictional discourse this was not possible, since fiction was treated as being outside the domain of the actual world. In order to understand the purpose behind the development of possible worlds theory, it is worth considering for a moment the limitations of a traditional truth conditional semantic approach to meaning. .. Limitations of truth conditional semantics Jaszczolt (2002: 53) explains that in semantics truth ‘means correspondence with facts, correct descriptions of states and events in the world’. This definition of truth is what is known commonly within semantics as the correspondence theory of truth (Jaszczolt 2002: 53). This notion of truth assumes that there is a direct correspondence between statements and the world, and that in order to understand the meaning of a particular sentence we have to know what the world would need to be like for that sentence to be true. Truth and falsity are therefore central concepts in correspondence theory and the truth or falsity of a proposition is known as its truth value. In addition, the facts that would have to be the case in order for a statement to be true are known as truth conditions. Consider the following example: 1. The President of the United States lives in The White House. For example 1 to be true, the following truth conditions must be in place: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

There must be a place called the United States. There must be a person who is President of the United States. There must be a place called The White House. The person who is President of the United States must live in The White House.

In the correspondence theory of truth, unless these truth conditions are in place (i.e. unless these statements correspond with facts in the actual world) the sentence cannot be said to be true. At the time of writing this book, these truth conditions are in place in the world that I inhabit and therefore, according to truth conditional semantics, the sentence is true and thus meaningful. Consider now a different example:

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Chapter 5. Possible worlds, possible viewpoints

2. The President of the United States lives at 10 Downing Street. For example 2 to be true, the following truth conditions must be in place: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

There must be a place called the United States. There must be a person who is President of the United States. There must be a place called 10 Downing Street. The person who is President of the United States must live at 10 Downing Street.

With example 2, the first, second and third truth conditions are in place, but the fourth one (that the person who is President of the United States must live at 10 Downing Street) is not. Therefore, according to truth conditional semantics, this sentence must be false and therefore meaningless. It will be obvious that in calculating the truth values for examples 1 and 2, I have been referring to the truth conditions that would have to pertain in the actual world in which we live. However, there is an obvious problem with this approach when we come to deal with fictional texts. Consider this example: 3. Oberon is the King of the Fairies. According to traditional truth conditional semantics, for example 3 to be true the following truth conditions must be in place. (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

There must be a person called Oberon. Fairies must exist. There must be a King of the Fairies. The King of the Fairies must be the person called Oberon.

It is pretty obvious that none of these truth conditions are in place in the real world. However, anyone who has read A Midsummer Night’s Dream will understand what example 3 refers to and therefore the sentence clearly has some meaning within the fictional world, despite none of the truth conditions being in place in the real world. The key to resolving this problem can be found in Lyons’s (1977) definition of truth. Lyons (1977: 168) explains that according to correspondence theory, ‘a proposition is true if (and only if) it denotes or refers to a state of affairs which actually exists in the world that the proposition purports to describe’. In example 3, the state of affairs referred to (i.e. that Oberon is the King of the Fairies) does not pertain in the real world, but it does pertain in the story world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Therefore, the truth conditions for example 3 are in place in the world of the text, and the sentence can be said to be true in that particular context. In order to understand fictional texts, it seems that we have to extend our notions of truth and falsity beyond the limits of the actual world. This is illustrated in the following examples:

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4. The Allied Forces won the Second World War. 5. The Axis Forces won the Second World War. It is likely that most people would agree that the sentence in (4) is true and the sentence in (5) is false. Note, though, that this is only the case if we are talking about the real world in which we live. In fiction these notions of truth and falsity may not necessarily be the case. For example, in Robert Harris’s novel Fatherland (a fictional alternative history of the aftermath of the Second World War) sentence (4) is false and sentence (5) is true. A more precise definition of the truth-values of sentences (4) and (5) would be to say that they are true and false respectively in the actual world, but not necessarily true and false respectively in some other possible world. Possible worlds theory allows us to account for the truth or falsity of propositions such as (4) and (5) by providing a variety of alternative contexts in which particular states of affairs can be said to be true. One particularly comprehensive and descriptively specific account of possible worlds is that proposed by Ryan (1991), to which I turn next.

. Ryan’s typology of possible worlds Ryan’s (1991) typology of possible worlds suggests that in fiction there is an equivalent of the ‘actual world’ of everyday discourse, referred to as the textual reference world (TRW), around which there are various alternative possible worlds (APWs), which are mental constructs of the fictional characters. Ryan uses the term textual universe to refer to the ‘image of a system of reality projected by a text’ (Ryan 1991: vii), and explains that the textual reference world is at the centre of this textual universe. Ryan (1991: vii) explains that the TRW is ‘the world in which propositions asserted in the text are to be valued’, and the textual realisation of the TRW is known as the textual actual world (TAW). Ryan’s typology of possible worlds can be represented diagrammatically, as in Figure 5.1. To return to example 5, in Robert Harris’s novel Fatherland, the fact that the Axis Forces were victorious in the Second World War would be true in the TAW of the novel, but not in the Actual World (AW) in which we live. In contrast, the notion of the Allied Forces winning the war could only pertain in an APW of one of the characters in the textual universe of the novel. If we now consider how the notion of deictic fields relates to Ryan’s typology of possible worlds, it is clear that within the TAW there will be a variety of deictic fields, corresponding with the number of characters within the TAW. Shifting deictic fields within the TAW would result in a change of viewpoint (as, indeed, shifting between deictic fields in the AW does). Similarly, each APW will also have a number of deictic fields and, therefore, the potential to represent a variety of dif-

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Chapter 5. Possible worlds, possible viewpoints 

Figure 5.1 Primary Narrative System in Ryan’s (1991) typology of possible worlds

ferent viewpoints. The variety of alternative possible worlds is explored in more detail in the next section. .. Alternative possible worlds Ryan (1991: 109ff.) proposes that the following APWs may be part of a fictional universe:

Knowledge worlds A knowledge world is comprised of what characters know or believe to be true in the TAW. For example, in the film Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the eponymous Brian is instructed by his revolutionary friends to prove his commitment to insurgence by painting the words ‘Romans go home’ on the side of a Roman palace. As he is doing this, Brian is caught in the act by two rather unintelligent

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 Point of View in Plays

Roman soldiers. Instead of arresting him, the soldiers sneer at his poor command of Latin and decide to teach him a lesson by insisting that he paint the corrected version of the phrase one hundred times on the palace walls. Brian is threatened with mutilation if he fails to complete the task by sunrise, and so, not surprisingly, he manages to finish the job in the allotted time. As a result, Brian becomes a hero to his friends. The humour here comes about as a result of the mismatch between the revolutionaries’ knowledge worlds and the TAW. The revolutionaries believe that Brian completed his assigned task out of a desire to express his hatred of the Romans, not, as is actually the case, because of the threat of physical violence if he didn’t. Brian, of course, has much to gain from this misunderstanding and so does nothing to bring the revolutionaries’ knowledge worlds back into accordance with the TAW. There is a problem, though, with the category of knowledge world that the Life of Brian example illustrates. It is clear that what the revolutionaries believe (i.e. that Brian completed the task as a result of his daring) is actually false. Therefore, it is difficult to see how their conceptualisation of the event can be said to be true in their knowledge world. Because of this, we will discard the term knowledge world and use instead the term belief world, favoured by Semino et al. (1999). Henceforth I shall use this term instead of Ryan’s. In the Life of Brian example, dramatic irony arises as a result of the audience being aware that the belief worlds of some of the characters are not in accordance with what actually occurred in the TAW. The following example from Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap relies for suspense on the audience being led to believe that the characters’ belief worlds do correspond with the TAW. This extract comes right at the end of the play: [Context: Detective Sergeant Trotter has just accused Mollie Ralston, a schoolteacher, of failing to respond to a letter sent to her by one of her pupils, Jimmy. Trotter maintains that Mollie’s failure to act resulted ultimately in Jimmy’s murder.] Mollie That’s not true. I was ill. I went down with pneumonia that very day. The letter was put aside with others. It was weeks afterwards that I found it with a lot of other letters. And by then the poor child was dead. . . (Her eyes close.) Dead – dead. . . Waiting for me to do something – hoping – gradually losing hope. . . Oh, it’s haunted me ever since. . . If only I’d known. . . Oh it’s monstrous that such things should happen. Trotter (His voice suddenly thick.) Yes, it’s monstrous. (He takes a revolver out of his pocket.) Mollie I thought the police didn’t carry revolvers. . . (She suddenly sees Trotter’s face, and gasps in horror.) Trotter The police don’t. . . I’m not a policeman, Mrs Ralston. You thought I

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Chapter 5. Possible worlds, possible viewpoints 

was a policeman because I rang up from a call box and said I was speaking from police headquarters and that Sergeant Trotter was on his way. I cut the telephone wires before I came to the front door. You know who I am, Mrs Ralston? I’m Georgie – I’m Jimmy’s brother, Georgie. (Agatha Christie, The Mousetrap, p. 362)

Following this extract we realise that Mollie’s belief world has not corresponded with the state of affairs in the TAW, and that Trotter, who Mollie and the other characters believed to be a police detective, is in fact the murderer who has been trying to avenge the death of his brother.

Prospective extensions of knowledge worlds Ryan’s typology of APWs also allows for the possibility of characters hypothesising about future events in the TAW. She refers to such hypotheses as prospective extensions of knowledge worlds, though, for reasons described above, I prefer to replace knowledge world with belief world. An example of a belief world can be seen in the extract below from ‘The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on-Sea)’, an episode from the absurd radio comedy The Goon Show: [Context: Minnie Bannister, an ageing spinster, has been struck by a batter pudding. Neddie Seagoon is speculating on the likelihood of the pudding hurler attacking again.] Seagoon [. . .] That night I lay awake in my air-conditioned dustbin thinking who on earth would want to strike another with a Batter Pudding? Obviously it wouldn’t happen again, so I fell asleep. Nothing much happened that night – except that I was struck by a batter pudding. (Spike Milligan, ‘The Dreaded Batter Pudding Hurler (of Bexhill-on-Sea)’, in Farnes 1997: 25)

In the above extract, Seagoon’s initial belief that no more batter puddings would be hurled is indicated by the stretch of free indirect thought – ‘Obviously it wouldn’t happen again’ – which can be understood as a prospective extension of Seagoon’s belief world (see Leech & Short 1981; Short 1996; Semino & Short 2004 for taxonomies of thought presentation). The humour comes about as a result of Seagoon’s hypothesis about future events in the TAW being completely wrong.

Obligation worlds A character’s obligation world is composed of his or her commitments and prohibitions, issued either by an external authority or imposed by the character him or herself. For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia is obliged by her Father, Egeus, to marry Demetrius. However, Hermia refuses to do so, preferring instead to elope with Lysander. This action conflicts with the constraints of Her-

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mia’s obligation world, creating the disequilibrium that leads to the four lovers (Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena) becoming lost in the forest – which in turn leads to the magical happenings that are at the centre of the play.

Wish worlds A character’s wish world is composed of his or her desired alternative states that he or she wishes to be realised in the TAW. These desired alternative states may be good or bad depending on the moral principles of the character in question. The following extract comes from Dennis Potter’s television drama Pennies From Heaven, set in the 1930s, and reveals one of the wish worlds of the character of Arthur: [Context: Arthur and Joan’s marriage is suffering as a result of their differing attitudes to sex. Arthur feels that Joan starves him of love and affection while Joan believes that sex for purposes other than procreation is disgusting. Arthur has just told Joan a story about a man and a woman who, while staying in a hotel, entered the lift and gave the liftman five pounds to stop the lift between floors and turn his back so they could have sex.] Joan That’s one of the most dis-gust-ing things I’ve ever heard. Arthur (Voice thickening) I wish – I wish – Joan (Freezing) You wish what? (He makes a peculiar, distressed, hissing noise between his teeth, half way between a whimper and an accusation. Then he shakes his head.) Arthur Nothing. (Shakes his head again, and again.) Nothing. (She is looking at him with horrified fascination.) Joan You wish you were that man, don’t you! Arthur Joan, you don’t – Joan (Rising tone) You do! You do – yes, you do! (His face goes blank. Pause.) Arthur (Solemnly) I wish I could play the piano. (Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven, p. 90)

In Arthur’s first turn in the above extract he begins to voice a particular desire, but after Joan’s prompt he gives up. However, the fact that the conversation so far has centred around sex means that Joan is able to make a strong inference as to what Arthur’s desired state of affairs would be; in effect, she is aware of what she believes to be Arthur’s wish world. Arthur begins to respond to Joan’s accusation but again gives up and instead states his desire to be able to play the piano. The black humour that arises here comes about as a result of the unlikelihood, given the preceding conversation, of this really being what Arthur originally intended to say. As the play progresses, it transpires that Arthur’s dissatisfaction is not caused

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entirely by his sexual frustration. In fact, he yearns for the romance that he finds in the popular songs that he sells, and so it turns out that the wish world he presents in the final turn of the above extract is not necessarily untrue.

Intention worlds A character’s intention world is composed of his or her plans to change the TAW in some way. An example of this can be seen in Richard, Duke of Gloucester’s opening monologue of Richard III: Gloucester [. . .] Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, I am determinèd to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the king In deadly hate the one against the other: (William Shakespeare, Richard III, 1.1.24)

Gloucester’s intention to affect the TAW is seen most obviously in the line, ‘I am determinèd to prove a villain’, following which he then outlines how he is going to effect his desired changes. The presentation of Gloucester’s intention world is crucial to our understanding of the conflict that follows in the rest of the play. .. Fantasy universes Fantasy universes, in Ryan’s typology, are more than just satellites of the TAW, as alternative possible worlds are. They are complete alternative universes which incorporate characters’ fantasies, dreams, hallucinations and fiction-making. The reason that fantasy universes are considered more than just alternative possible worlds is because for the period of the fantasy, dream or hallucination, characters believe in the reality of the events they experience. The characters are completely recentered within their fantasy universe, which mirrors the primary narrative system shown in Figure 5.1 by being composed of an actual fantasy world surrounded by the private alternative possible worlds of the inhabitants of that actual fantasy world. This can be seen if we revisit the example from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, already discussed in 3.3.1 and 4.6.2:

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[Context: Willy Loman is talking to his wife Linda and begins to fantasise about a woman with whom he has had a brief affair whilst away from home on business.] Music is heard as behind a scrim, to the left of the house, The Woman, dimly seen, is dressing. Willy (with great feeling) You’re the best there is, Linda, you’re a pal, you know that? On the road – on the road I want to grab you sometimes and just kiss the life outa you. The laughter is loud now, and he moves into a brightening area at the left, where the woman has come from behind the scrim and is standing, putting on her hat, looking into a ‘mirror’ and laughing. Willy ’Cause I get so lonely – especially when business is bad and there’s nobody to talk to. I get the feeling that I’ll never sell anything again, that I won’t make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys. (He talks through The Woman’s subsiding laughter! The Woman primps at the ‘mirror’.) There’s so much I want to make for – The Woman Me? You didn’t make me, Willy. I picked you. Willy (pleased) You picked me? [14 turns omitted] The Woman bursts out laughing and Linda’s laughter blends in. The Woman disappears into the dark. Now the area at the kitchen table brightens. Linda is sitting where she was at the kitchen table, but now is mending a pair of her silk stockings. Linda You are, Willy. The handsomest man. You’ve got no reason to feel that – Willy (coming out of The Woman’s dimming area and going over to Linda) I’ll make it all up to you, Linda, I’ll – (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman, pp. 149–50)

The Woman exists only in Willy’s fantasy universe. Willy’s wife, Linda, is unaware of her presence and there is no indication in Linda’s speech that she hears anything that Willy says to The Woman. The fact that the area on stage where The Woman is positioned is lit differently to the space around Linda (indicated in the stage directions) also contributes to the sensation that what the reader/audience is exposed to is Willy’s fantasy universe. According to Ryan, any fiction produced by characters also generates a fantasy universe. For example, Pyramus and Thisbe, the fictional play performed by the mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, constitutes a fantasy universe within the textual actual world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And as with the TAW and its satellite worlds, each of the worlds within a fantasy universe will contain nu-

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merous deictic fields, thereby making it possible to interpret the world in question from a variety of viewpoints. .. The principle of minimal departure Included within Ryan’s (1991) typology of possible worlds in fiction is an attempt to explain the relationship between the textual actual world and the actual world. This is termed the principle of minimal departure, and works on the basis that we expect the TAW to resemble the AW in all respects, unless we are explicitly informed otherwise. Ryan explains that in order for the AW and TAW to resemble each other completely, certain ‘accessibility relations’ must pertain between them. To see how the principle of minimal departure informs our knowledge about fictional worlds, consider this short extract from ‘The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (Solved)’, another episode of Spike Milligan’s The Goon Show: [Context: Seagoon is describing a character called Captain Grytpype-Thynne.] Seagoon So this was the author of a thousand sea sagas. He was a tall vile man dressed in the naval uniform of a sea-going sailor. Under his left arm he held a neatly rolled anchor, while with his right he scanned the horizon with a pair of powerful kippers. (Spike Milligan, ‘The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (Solved)’ in Farnes 1997: 66)

Obviously enough, in the actual world anchors cannot be rolled up, nor can kippers be used as binoculars. Accepting the absurdity of the TAW of The Goon Show means accepting that it does not necessarily have the same properties as the AW. In the case of much absurdist drama we might expect there to be almost no accessibility relations between the AW and the TAW. The principle of minimal departure does not, in and of itself, have immediate consequences for point of view. However, the sudden absence of accessibility relations between the TAW and the actual world can indicate a shift into an APW, as I will demonstrate. Before that, however, we can now begin to consider how deictic shift theory might relate to possible worlds theory and account for some of the viewpoint effects we notice when we read and watch drama.

. Mapping deictic shifts and possible worlds The value of considering possible worlds in the analysis of point of view in drama is that exposure to a character’s APW might indicate their viewpoint. In this section I discuss in more detail how readers might become aware of possible worlds during the course of a text by considering how some of the concepts from possi-

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 Point of View in Plays

ble worlds theory relate to deictic shift theory. I also consider how such concepts might be modified to fit within the reworkings of deictic shift theory proposed in the previous chapter. I then show how exposure to a character’s APW can result in exposure to their viewpoint. .. Recentering The relationship between possible worlds theory and deictic shift theory can be seen initially by mapping Ryan’s (1991) notion of ‘recentering’ onto the concept, from deictic shift theory, of the first shift into a fictional world as we begin to read. Ryan (1991) explains the concept of ‘recentering’ as follows: For the duration of our immersion in a work of fiction, the realm of possibilities [. . .] is recentered around the sphere which the narrator presents as the actual world. This recentering pushes the reader into a new system of actuality and possibility. As a traveller to this system, the reader of fiction discovers not only a new actual world, but a variety of APWs revolving around it. Just as we manipulate possible worlds through mental operations, so do the inhabitants of fictional universes: their actual world is reflected in their knowledge and beliefs, corrected in their wishes, replaced by a new reality in their dreams and hallucinations. Through counterfactual thinking they reflect on how things might have been, through plans and projections they contemplate things that still have a chance to be, and through the act of making up fictional stories they recenter their universe into what is for them a second-order, and for us a third-order, system of reality. (Ryan 1991: 22)

The act of recentering is the possible worlds theory equivalent of shifting from the real world to the fictional world of the text for the first time. The term ‘recentering’ seems to refer to the same action as the deictic shift theory term ‘PUSH’. Indeed, Ryan even uses the word push, describing how recentering ‘pushes the reader into a new system of actuality and possibility’. If we continue this mapping between deictic shift theory and possible worlds theory, once within this ‘new system of actuality and possibility’ (Ryan 1991: 22) the reader is forced to abandon his or her egocentric interpretation of deictic terms in order to make possible the shifts between deictic fields instantiated in the text. The use of the term push is, of course, purely metaphorical, and it is possible to think of the notion of recentering as being a cognitive activity that equates to the gradual decrease in prominence of our default deictic field as we become more involved in a fictional narrative. Thus the notion of recentering fits within the modified version of deictic shift theory introduced in the previous chapter. What I am arguing in this chapter is that as well as becoming aware of various different deictic fields over the course of a text, readers also become aware of the various APWs of fictional characters. These can

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be bound or unbound and primed or unprimed and made more or less prominent in the same way that deictic fields can be. And when a reader becomes aware of a primed and prominent APW, in effect, they are being exposed to a particular character’s point of view within the fictional world. As I mentioned in 5.3 above, each APW will also have a deictic centre, and therefore it should also be possible to shift between the deictic fields of an alternative possible world (this is demonstrated in the analysis of The Lady in the Van in 7.3 of Chapter seven). .. Increasing and decreasing the prominence of possible worlds Once readers are recentered in a work of fiction, as the story progresses they will be exposed to a variety of alternative possible worlds. Sometimes we are made aware of these through what the characters themselves say. Consider the following example, from Pennies From Heaven: [Context: By chance, Arthur, a travelling salesman, has bumped into Eileen with whom he had a brief affair a short time ago. Eileen is down on her luck and has succumbed to prostitution in an effort to earn some money. Arthur and Eileen are bemoaning their fate.] Arthur I want to – (He stops.) I know it sounds daft Eileen – but I want to live in a world where the songs is – (Again he stops, and looks at her, as though for help.) Eileen Where the songs come true. Arthur Yes. (Dennis Potter, Pennies From Heaven, p. 163)

In Arthur’s first turn, the first person pronoun and the verb ‘want’ indicate that the non-finite clause that follows constitutes the expression of his wish world. From this we can infer something of Arthur’s conceptual point of view, part of this being that he dislikes what Eileen is doing to earn a living. When characters express their APWs, as in the above example, this can give the reader/audience some insight into their thoughts and feelings. What we are seeing here is characters expressing their own APWs at the character to character level of Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram, and this is very much an external view of their thoughts, feelings and perception. This is much like what happens in ordinary conversation. Of more interest stylistically are those instances where the APW of a particular character is cued by narrative devices (for example, by narrative elements in the stage directions), and in such cases we often get a much more explicit presentation of a character’s viewpoint. We can see how this might work if we consider again the extract from ‘Death of a Salesman’, originally discussed in 3.3.1 and 4.6.2, and analysed further in 5.3.2. In that extract Willy’s fantasy universe was evoked in a number of ways. It is possible to identify the nu-

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 Point of View in Plays

merous triggers that inform the reader/audience that this particular scenario takes place not in the TAW but in Willy’s fantasy universe. First of all the initial stage direction of the extract tells us that the character of ‘The Woman’ can be seen dressing, to the left of the house. This implies that The Woman is not in the house, and indeed there has been no indication of this in the immediately preceding text, or of the fact that Willy’s wife Linda is aware of her. It also raises the possibility that we are being presented with two different scenes occurring simultaneously within the TAW. The second stage direction then informs the reader/audience that Willy moves into a ‘brightening area’ at the left of the stage. This movement foregrounds the character of Willy, since he is the only character to move into the illuminated area (notice too how this foregrounding would also be made literal in a performance of the play, with the lighting effect making Willy stand out on the stage). The fact that Willy is now inhabiting the same area of the stage as The Woman implies that the two characters are (metaphorically) in the same physical space within the TAW, and this is arguably the first indication that our viewing position is being shifted from the TAW and into an APW or fantasy universe. This is because the principle of minimal departure states that, unless we are informed otherwise, we expect the TAW to resemble the actual world in all respects. However, Willy’s inhabiting the same physical space as The Woman is incompatible with the laws of the TAW (as we know them to be) if he is also in the same physical space as Linda, which is the case at the beginning of the scene. It would seem that the stated lighting effect and the obvious breaking of accessibility relations between the AW and the TAW act as triggers to decrease the prominence of the TAW and prime some other domain. Willy then continues to speak to Linda. We know that his speech is addressed to her for two reasons. Firstly, the stage direction telling us that ‘He talks through The Woman’s subsiding laughter’ (my italics) would suggest that Willy is unaware of this sound (it may not necessarily exist in the TAW and might simply be part of Willy’s memories), and hence unaware at this point of The Woman. Secondly, since Willy’s previous speech was addressed to Linda, and because no other character is present in the non-illuminated part of the stage, pragmatically we do not expect a change of addressee. However, Willy’s speech is then interrupted (indicated graphologically by the hyphen at the end of his turn) and the interruption comes from The Woman. The fact that The Woman addresses Willy (indicated by her use of the vocative) confirms the notion that this action must be happening in some other domain to the TAW. That this is Willy’s fantasy universe rather than one of his APWs seems likely given that he is able to talk to both Linda and The Woman, thus breaking the compatibility laws of the textual universe. It seems, then, that the scene with The Woman is simply a fantasy occurrence of Willy’s. The decrease in prominence of Willy’s fantasy universe is triggered for the reader/audience by the stage direction telling us that the sound of Linda’s

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Chapter 5. Possible worlds, possible viewpoints 

laughter ‘blends in’ to the sound of The Woman laughing. The fact that the reader/audience’s attention is being drawn again to the TAW is further signalled by the stage direction indicating a change in lighting – the area of the stage where The Woman is located is darkened while the area around the kitchen table is made brighter, thus foregrounding the part of the stage that we know to represent the TAW. This has the effect of increasing the prominence of the TAW and decreasing the prominence of Willy’s fantasy universe until finally it is no longer represented on stage and is, in effect, unprimed. Effectively, the presentation of Willy’s fantasy universe to the reader/audience gives us a direct insight into his conceptual point of view of events. In this particular scenario, for instance, Willy’s wife Linda is backgrounded and The Woman is foregrounded. The fact that this takes place within Willy’s fantasy universe suggests that at this point in the play, The Woman is more prominent than Linda in Willy’s mind. The increase in prominence of Willy’s fantasy universe changes the viewpoint from a third person perspective to a more restricted point of view. The narration inherent in the stage directions changes from being an omniscient narration (albeit with a focus on Willy) to generating an overt presentation of Willy’s cognitive state (in Simpson’s 1993 terms, Willy might be said to be the reflector of the fiction). It is clear, then, that decreasing the prominence of the TAW whilst increasing the prominence of Willy’s fantasy universe is one of the means by which Willy’s point of view is realised and made evident. It would also seem to be the case that the changing prominence of possible worlds are what literary critics are reacting to when they assert that Willy’s viewpoint is predominant throughout the play. Hadomi (1988: 157), for example, maintains that ‘Not only is Willy Loman the chief character of the play but it is primarily from his psychological perspective that the play’s dramatic action derives its meaning.’ The triggers that I have identified in the extract from Death of a Salesman discussed above work to both increase and decrease the prominence of the TAW and Willy Loman’s fantasy universe for the reader/audience. In a performance of the play, the theatrical effects such as the lighting and the music would prime the fantasy universe, and the first turn from The Woman would act as a trigger to increase the prominence of this. The laughter that comes from Linda then works to once more increase the prominence of the TAW, diverting the attention of both Willy and the reader/audience from the fantasy universe and back to the TAW. The stage directions thus influence the extent to which the reader/audience is exposed to particular viewpoints within the play. Since we are given no access to the APWs of the other characters in the play (except through the speech of the characters themselves at the character to character discourse level), it would seem that in Death of a Salesman the prominent point of view is that of Willy Loman. Exposure to fantasy universes such as that described above is becoming increasingly common in modern drama, particularly in film and television. Ex-

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 Point of View in Plays

amples can be found in Bill Lawrence’s sit-com Scrubs, produced by NBC and Touchstone Television, the BBC’s Cold Feet and Fox Television’s Ally McBeal. A particularly good example of this technique occurs in Nancy Meyer’s screenplay for the 1991 film Father of the Bride: [Context: George Banks is an average American father. His daughter Annie, 22, has recently returned from studying in Italy and has just announced that she is getting married to an American whom she met there.] George I’m sorry. What did you say? Little Annie Dad, I met a man in Rome. And he’s wonderful and brilliant, and we’re getting married. Annie Mom, what’s he doing? Nina George? George? George? What is it? George Well. . .this is. . .this is ridiculous! You’re too young to get married! (Nancy Meyer, Father of the Bride, 1991)

In the above extract the turn belonging to ‘Little Annie’ constitutes George’s point of view of what Annie has just told him. That Little Annie’s turn actually occurs within George’s fantasy universe is suggested in the script by the grammatical structure of her dialogue, since multiple co-ordination using the conjunction ‘and’ is prototypical of children’s speech, thus suggesting that this line is spoken by Annie as a child. This, combined with the fact that the adult Annie has already told her family in her previous turn that she is getting married, suggests that Little Annie’s turn is simply George’s perception of what Annie has just told him. This is indicated in the film by the camera taking up George’s perceptual point of view and a child taking the part of Annie, rather than the actress playing the adult character. In the film, the priming of George’s fantasy universe is triggered by the change of camera position to reflect his point of view. However, in the text, the trigger for the priming would seem to be the grammatical structure of Little Annie’s speech, coupled with the change in character name from ‘Annie’ to ‘Little Annie’. Ryan (1991) explains that fantasy universes also incorporate characters’ dreams which, as we have seen, Groff (1959) claims represent ‘a limited point of view, for what we see on the stage exists only in the consciousness of the dreamer’ (Groff 1959: 277). Although, Groff ’s assertions about dreams relate mainly to performance, it is true that presenting a character’s dreams in a dramatic text does in some way reflect their cognitive state. This can be seen in the following dream sequence from Thomas Murphy’s play A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant: A spot of unreal (but beautiful) light on John Joe, who is sitting up in bed, arms akimbo, delighted in this dream of his new address. He sits, not daring to move anything but his eyes, in case a movement should dispel the new sur-

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Chapter 5. Possible worlds, possible viewpoints 

roundings. The speech is whispered, urgent, swift, rhythmic, without pause, as if unpunctuated; a delighted racing mind. John Joe And how are you now, John Joe? Very well thank you. And how do you like England? Very well thank you. But it’s America. Very well thank you. Your address? – What? Your address – Oh! Your address – Yes. Two-twotwo A, Tottenham Court Road, Madison Square Gardens, Lower Edgebaston, Upper Fifth Avenue, Camden Town, U.S.A., S.W.6. (Thomas Murphy, A Crucial Week in the Life of a Grocer’s Assistant, p. 36)

The stage directions indicate that the lighting effect in this scene should be ‘unreal’, which, for a viewing audience, would prime the fantasy universe of the character of John Joe, especially since this lighting technique has been used to indicate all the dream sequences in the play prior to this one. The prominence of the fantasy universe is increased by the propositional content of John Joe’s speech. By referring to himself in the questions he asks it appears that John Joe is imitating an interviewer asking him a series of questions. However, John Joe’s answers do not always conform to our expectations. For instance, his reply to the assertion ‘But it’s America’ is exactly the same as to the previous two questions (‘Very well thank you’) and thus does not make sense. Also, in giving his address he mixes up English and American elements resulting in an address that is nonsensical. For example he uses both American and English street names (‘Tottenham Court Road’ and ‘Upper Fifth Avenue’) and despite including ‘USA’ in the address, ends it with an English postcode (‘SW6’). Such confusion is typical of the state of dreaming and hence the playwright is able to convey the cognitive state of John Joe in the midst of his dream. This is much like the internal point of view discussed above in the extract from Death of a Salesman. Point of view effects similar to those described in this chapter can also be found in The Lady in the Van, where the APWs of Alan Bennett 1, Alan Bennett 2 and Miss Shepherd are revealed, thus exposing their point of view at various points in the play. The incidences are discussed in detail in the analysis in Chapter seven.

. Conclusion In this chapter I have attempted to show how exposure to the alternative possible worlds of fictional characters can reveal their points of view. I have suggested that the way in which readers and audiences become aware of these alternative possible worlds is similar to the means by which fictional deictic fields are introduced – notably by priming and the subsequent increasing of prominence. Within each possible world can be any number of deictic fields, allowing for the possibility of interpreting that world from a particular viewpoint. However, before I bring

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 Point of View in Plays

together the frameworks from this and the previous chapter in a full analysis of point of view in The Lady in the Van, I want to introduce one further concept that I believe is important in the analysis of viewpoint, and which has special relevance to Bennett’s play. This is the issue of mind style (introduced briefly in Chapter two, Section 2.5.3). The relevance of this to point of view lies with the fact that the way in which characters construct reality will clearly have an effect on their view of the world. This will be the focus of the next chapter.

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Chapter 6

Logic, reality and mind style

. Introduction The previous two chapters have concentrated on developing theoretical models to explain the way in which readers are exposed to the viewpoints of particular characters in dramatic texts as they read. In doing this I have focused on explaining how readers are made more or less aware of particular points of view, both perceptual and conceptual, using insights from deictic shift theory, contextual frame theory and possible worlds theory. In this chapter I want to look in more detail at the linguistic construction of individual viewpoints, focusing particularly on the idiosyncrasies of the viewpoint of one character from The Lady in the Van, Miss Shepherd. Doing this allows us to move from a general account of how viewpoints are manifested in dramatic texts to a specific account of how one particular point of view is constructed. In particular, I discuss the relationship between point of view and the concept of mind style (Fowler 1977, 1996), introduced briefly in 2.5.3, and I suggest that one of the ways in which a deviant mind style can be indicated is via the consistent use of flawed inductive logic. I demonstrate how this works with reference to the mind style that Miss Shepherd exhibits throughout The Lady in the Van. Miss Shepherd has some odd assumptions about how the world works and throughout the play she puts forward some very strange arguments. As a result of this we gradually build up a picture of what appears to be a deviant mind style. In order to explain this I draw on concepts from philosophical logic, and introduce the notion of paradigms of reality (Harris 1984; see also Archer 2002, 2003). However, despite the oddities of some of Miss Shepherd’s assumptions and arguments, there are occasions where it is difficult to know whether her deviant use of inductive logic is a genuine cognitive impairment or simply a result of her trying to deflect criticism. Although I argue that the former seems most likely, my analysis highlights this ambiguity as a possible weakness of the notion of mind style.

. Defining mind style As I briefly explained in Section 2.5.3, the term mind style was introduced by Fowler (1977) to describe the way in which particular linguistic features of a text

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 Point of View in Plays

can project the cognitive traits of specific characters and/or narrators, and reflect the way that they conceptualise and make sense of the world around them. Fowler developed the notion of mind style from Halliday’s (1971) work on transitivity patterns in texts. Halliday famously examined William Golding’s novel The Inheritors, suggesting that the syntactic patterns in parts of the text were indicative of the way in which the primitive characters in the novel conceptualised the world around them. For example, Halliday argued that Golding’s use of intransitive structures where a transitive construction would be the norm in standard English reflected the characters’ lack of awareness of the concept of cause and effect (see Black 1993; Hoover 1999 for further analyses of mind style in The Inheritors). Similarly, in her analysis of the character Benjy in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Bockting (1994a) suggests that Benjy’s use of transitive verbs as if they were intransitive reflects his lack of awareness of the purpose of the particular actions he describes. More recently, Semino and Swindlehurst (1996) and Semino (2002) have looked at how a particular mind style can be created through the use of certain conceptual metaphors. Semino and Swindlehurst (1996) discuss the mind style of Bromden in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, suggesting that Bromden’s mechanistic world view comes about in part as a result of his adoption of the conceptual metaphor people are machines (see Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987; Lakoff & Turner 1989 for an overview of cognitive metaphor theory, and Crisp 2002; Steen 2002; Semino et al. forthcoming, for applications and critiques of the theory). Semino (2002) applies cognitive metaphor theory in analyses of extracts from Louis De Bernières’s novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and John Fowles’s novel The Collector, again using it to uncover the deviant mind styles of particular characters. As I said in 6.1, what I want to suggest in this chapter is that a further indicator of a particular mind style might be a character’s idiosyncratic use of inductive logic. I demonstrate this through an analysis of the speech of Miss Shepherd in The Lady in the Van. However, before doing this it is necessary to first of all make clear the distinction between the concept of mind style and Fowler’s notion of ideological point of view. .. World view, ideological point of view and mind style When Fowler employed the term mind style in his book Linguistic Criticism (1996 [1986]) he used it as a synonym for the terms world view and ideological point of view: [Mind style is] the world-view of an author, or a narrator, or a character, constituted by the ideational structure of the text. From now on I shall prefer

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Chapter 6. Logic, reality and mind style 

this term to the cumbersome ‘point of view on the ideological plane’ [. . .]: the notions are equivalent. (Fowler 1996: 21)

However, Semino (2002: 96) has pointed out that having three different terms to refer to the same phenomenon seems somewhat unwieldy. Moreover, as Semino (2002: 96) points out, Fowler’s usage of the terms mind style, world view and ideological point of view does appear to endow each with a slightly different meaning to the others. It would seem, then, that Fowler’s use of mind style as a synonym for world view and ideological point of view misses some of the nuances of meaning that arise from the different terms. For this reason, Semino (2002) suggests that it is more useful to consider each of the three terms that Fowler uses to have its own independent meaning. Semino (2002) uses world view as a general term to refer to ‘the overall view of “reality” of the “text actual world” (Ryan 1991) conveyed by the language of a text (or part of a text)’. She then suggests that ideological point of view and mind style be used to capture different aspects of world view. She uses ideological point of view ‘to capture those aspects of world views that are social, cultural, religious or political in origin, and which an individual is likely to share with others belonging to similar social, cultural, religious or political groups’ (Semino 2002: 97). The term mind style, on the other hand, is used by Semino ‘to capture those aspects of world views that are primarily personal and cognitive in origin, and which are peculiar to a particular individual, or common to people who have the same cognitive characteristics (for example as a result of a similar mental illness or of a shared stage of cognitive development, as in the case of young children)’ (Semino 2002: 97). For the most part I agree with Semino’s distinctions, though I would like to make some minor qualifications. As I said in 2.5.7, I prefer to use Chatman’s (1978) term conceptual point of view to ideological point of view. I believe that conceptual point of view also works well as fairly neutral term for metaphorical viewpoint. This, though, is merely a terminological quibble. The more significant qualification that I wish to add to Semino’s proposal is to emphasise that both the terms conceptual point of view (or Semino’s preferred ideological point of view) and mind style should be understood as heuristic notions only. In practice it is impossible to separate these concepts clearly from one another (just as it is impossible to separate perceptual point of view completely from conceptual point of view). However, these are helpful terms to have in order to talk sensibly about the particular aspects of viewpoint to which they refer. The heuristic quality of the term mind style can be seen most clearly if we consider Leech and Short’s (1981) discussion of the concept. Leech and Short (1981: 188) point out that ‘there is no kind of writing that can be regarded as perfectly neutral and objective’ and use this as the basis for their suggestion that the notion of mind style might be seen as a cline, moving ‘from mind styles which easily strike a reader as natural and uncontrived [. . .] to those which clearly impose

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 Point of View in Plays

an unorthodox conception of the fictional world’ (Leech and Short 1981: 188– 9). It follows from this that the mind styles likely to be most noticeable and interesting interpretatively are those which in some way deviate from normal assumptions. Leech and Short (1981) use an extract from Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury to illustrate a particularly unusual mind style. The following brief extract from Faulkner’s novel shows well how particular linguistic choices can indicate an abnormal mind style: Through the fence between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the fence. Luster was hunting in the grass by the flower tree. They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit. (William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury, p. 3)

Benjy, the narrator in the above extract, is mentally retarded, and his odd perception of the game of golf that he is watching is reflected in a series of unusual linguistic choices. For example, at no point does Benjy use specific golfing terminology to describe what he sees (for instance, he uses table rather than tee). In addition, he uses the transitive verb hit as though it is intransitive, and as a result of this it seems that Benjy does not understand what the golfers are hitting or why. This is only a cursory analysis of the passage (see Leech & Short 1981: 204–7; Fowler 1986 for an in-depth commentary, and Bockting 1990, 1994a, b for analyses of mind style in The Sound and the Fury and the work of Faulkner in general) but it does highlight how particular linguistic choices can combine to create the impression of a naïve, childlike mind, which the reader is then able to associate with Benjy’s mental affliction. What becomes apparent as the passage progresses is that it is the cumulative effect of these linguistic choices that leads to the creation of a deviant mind style. Indeed, consistency is crucial to the creation of mind style effects, as Fowler (1977) points out in his original definition of mind style: Cumulatively, consistent structural options, agreeing in cutting the presented world to one pattern or another, give rise to an impression of a world view, what I shall call a ‘mind style’. (Fowler 1977: 76)

I propose in the following section that the consistency of Miss Shepherd’s flawed use of logic suggests a deviant mind style rather than simple online processing errors on her part.

. Logic and mind style Miss Shepherd’s first meeting with AB1 gives us an indication of the kind of logical leaps that she frequently makes:

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Chapter 6. Logic, reality and mind style 

[Context: Miss Shepherd is looking for someone to help her push her van when she sees AB1 for the first time.] [15] Miss Shepherd You’re looking up at the cross. You’re not St John, are you? (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 7)

Miss Shepherd seems to think that simply by virtue of AB1 looking up at the cross, the possibility exists that he may be St John. Of course, there is nothing inherent in the action of looking up at a cross that would suggest this, but Miss Shepherd appears to assume that there is. The possibility that Miss Shepherd may be making a joke to break the ice seems unlikely given that, in turn 17, she specifies more precisely who she means by St John (‘The disciple whom Jesus loved’), and then accuses AB1 of being silly when he jokingly asks whether she has put holy oil in the van. She also assumes it would be possible to bump into St John in the street, regardless of the fact that he is a saint and has been dead for over two thousand years. The oddity in Miss Shepherd’s speech seems to arise out of an imperfect grasp of the workings of logic. However, this is not to say that Miss Shepherd is entirely illogical. Indeed, she attempts to support many of her ‘arguments’ by engaging in what she perceives to be logical reasoning. In fact, what appears to be the case is that Miss Shepherd does not fully understand how logical arguments are constructed. This can be seen if we examine some fundamental concepts in logic. .. Deductive and inductive logic Consider the following two arguments: 1. All lecturers are lazy. Dan is a lecturer. Therefore Dan is lazy. 2. All lecturers are lazy. Dan is not a lecturer. Therefore Dan is not lazy. Argument 1 consists of two premises (‘All lecturers are lazy’ and ‘Dan is a lecturer’) and a conclusion (‘Therefore Dan is lazy’). In the case of argument 1, the conclusion follows from, or is logically implied by, the premises – that is, if the premises are true then we can be sure that the conclusion will also be true. This is what logicians refer to as a logically valid inference. In logical terms, then, argument 1 is a valid argument. Argument 2, on the other hand, is an invalid argument. Again it consists of two premises (‘All lecturers are lazy’ and ‘Dan is not a lecturer’) and a conclusion (‘Therefore Dan is not lazy’), but this time the conclusion does not follow logically from the premises. Even if the premises were true we could still not be certain that the conclusion would also be true. Just because Dan is not a lecturer does not mean that he is not lazy. It may be the case that the conclusion is true but we cannot infer this simply by knowing that the premises are true. Argument 2

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 Point of View in Plays

is therefore not a valid argument but is instead valid ‘only with a greater or lesser degree of probability’ (Allwood et al. 1977: 15). These two arguments represent two different types of logic, referred to by logicians as deductive and inductive logic. Priest (2000: 111) explains that an inference is deductively valid ‘when the premisses [sic] cannot be true without the conclusion also being true’. He describes an inductively valid inference, on the other hand, as one where the premises provide only ‘some reasonable ground for the conclusion’ (Priest 2000: 112; my emphasis). Argument 1 above is an example of deductive logic while argument 2 is an instance of inductive logic. These basic concepts are important when it comes to analysing Miss Shepherd’s mind style. As Priest (2000: 4) points out, we use inductive logic all the time. For example, trying to work out why your car won’t start involves inductive reasoning, as does trying to understand why your computer has crashed. And it is through an analysis of Miss Shepherd’s inductive reasoning abilities that we are better able to understand how her particular mind style operates. .. Logic, mind style and Miss Shepherd Here is another example of Miss Shepherd’s flawed use of inductive logic: [Context: Miss Shepherd is attempting to sell AB1 one of the political pamphlets that she has written.] [68] AB1 It says in the pamphlet St Francis hurled money from him. [69] Miss Shepherd Yes, but he was a saint. He could afford to. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, pp. 10–11)

In logical terms, turn 69 consists of a premise and a conclusion: Premise – St Francis was a saint. Conclusion – Therefore he could afford to hurl money from him. It is unclear in the above argument whether Miss Shepherd is assuming that St Francis had an excess amount of money to begin with (enough to be able to hurl it from him) or that he was spiritually fulfilled enough not to feel the need for money. For the majority of people the latter explanation probably makes the most sense, but even so, this does not make the argument deductively valid. This kind of argument relies on inductive logic. If Miss Shepherd means that St Francis was likely not to feel the need for money on account of being fulfilled spiritually, then the argument has a fairly high probability of being inductively valid. However, if she is assuming that St Francis was financially rich enough to be able to hurl money from him then the likelihood of the argument being inductively valid is very low. I would argue that this latter interpretation is the one that Miss Shepherd makes.

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Chapter 6. Logic, reality and mind style 

This is supported by the error that she makes in her reference to St Francis. She is seemingly unaware that canonisation can only occur after the person in question’s death, making the mistake of assuming that St Francis was a saint during his lifetime. The oddity of Miss Shepherd’s argument is made greater by the fact that she presents it as if it were deductively valid; she does not hedge her statement. This creates the effect of Miss Shepherd appearing to be entirely confident in her assertions. As can be seen in the above example, Miss Shepherd appears not to be able to judge the inductive validity of the conclusions that she comes to. This also appears to be the case in the first example that we looked at in 6.3: [15] Miss Shepherd You’re looking up at the cross. You’re not St John, are you? (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 7)

Here again the conclusion that Miss Shepherd arrives at is not an inductively valid inference. Although the premise (‘You’re looking up at the cross’) is true, the conclusion (i.e. ‘therefore you may be St John’) does not follow from this. Admittedly, Miss Shepherd expresses some degree of doubt, indicated by the negative proposition, but the fact remains that any normal person would not even need to ask this question (unless, of course, the question was asked as a joke, and the possibility that Miss Shepherd might be doing this has already been discounted). Again, Miss Shepherd appears to jump unreasonably to conclusions on the basis of little evidence and odd assumptions; St John is dead and could only come back to earth via an (improbable) intervention by God. This hypothesis, of course, assumes a belief in God. For anyone who does not believe in God, the likelihood of St John returning to earth is nil. In effect, Miss Shepherd seems unable to judge the probability of the conclusions that she comes to, and this would seem to be indicative of an unusual mind style. Since Fowler (1977: 76) makes the point that for mind styles to be classed as such they must be exhibited consistently across the course of a text, it is worth looking at a longer extract from The Lady in the Van. The following extract comes from Act One of the play and is part of a particularly lengthy conversation between AB1 and Miss Shepherd: [Context: Miss Shepherd has been talking about the time she spent studying in France during the Second World War.] [248] AB1 But what? What were you studying? [249] Miss Shepherd Music. The pianoforte, possibly. Have you got an old pan scrub? I’m thinking of painting the van. One of those little mop things they use to wash dishes with would do. [250] AB1 How about a brush? [251] Miss Shepherd I’ve got a brush. This is for the first coat.

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 Point of View in Plays

[252] AB2 She moves slowly round her mobile home thoughtfully touching up the rust patches, looking in her long dress and sun hat much as Vanessa Bell would have looked had she gone in for painting Bedford vans. [253] AB1 What kind of paint are you using? [254] Miss Shepherd The shade is crushed mimosa. [255] AB1 But it’s gloss paint. You want car enamel. [256] Miss Shepherd Don’t tell me about paint. I was in the infants’ school. I won a prize for painting. [257] AB1 But it’s all lumps. You’ve got to mix it. [258] Miss Shepherd I have mixed it, only I went and got some Madeira cake in it. [259] AB2 Cake or no cake, all Miss Shepherd’s vehicles ended up looking as if they’d been given a coat of badly made custard or plastered with scrambled egg. Still, there were few occasions on which one saw her genuinely happy and one of these was when she was putting paint on, which she applied as Monet might have done . . . and in much the same tones . . . standing back to judge the effect of each brush stroke. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 24)

The first unusual aspect of Miss Shepherd’s speech comes just before the abrupt topic change that occurs in sentence 3 of turn 249. Miss Shepherd has been talking about the time she spent in France during the war, and how she had studied there. In turn 248 AB1 asks her what she studied. Miss Shepherd replies, saying ‘Music’, but what follows is odd. She says, ‘The pianoforte possibly.’ It is the adverb ‘possibly’ that is unusual here, since this indicates uncertainty on the part of Miss Shepherd as to whether she did actually study the piano. There are several possibilities here, as to why she chooses to use the word ‘possibly’: 1. It is an idiosyncratic use. Miss Shepherd uses the word regularly throughout the play, often to odd effect, as in turn 249. 2. Miss Shepherd remembers studying music but cannot remember if it was the piano or some other instrument that she was learning to play. 3. Miss Shepherd does not want to either remember or talk about the time she spent studying the piano, and thus uses the word ‘possibly’ as a means of being vague about this period of her life. Effectively she is breaking the Maxim of Manner (Grice 1975) though it is difficult to know whether her intention is to produce a flout or a violation. Explanation 2 is unlikely since Miss Shepherd talks lucidly about her time in Paris to AB1, and it is thus improbable that she should forget such an important detail as what instrument she studied whilst living there. Evidence from the text would instead suggest that a combination of points 1 and 3 explains Miss Shepherd’s unusual choice of word. It is certainly true that the word ‘possibly’ is an idiosyncrasy of her speech, though this idiosyncrasy must have developed from somewhere and

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Chapter 6. Logic, reality and mind style 

is likely to reflect particular facets of her character. I carried out a keyword analysis of Miss Shepherd’s speech using the Wordsmith Tools concordancing package (Scott 1999). I compared Miss Shepherd’s speech against a reference corpus consisting of the rest of the dialogue in the play, and found that the adverb possibly appears second (after Mr) in the list of Miss Shepherd’s positive keywords (i.e. words that are used more frequently than is to be expected statistically), with a ‘keyness’ score of 41.1. Interestingly, Miss Shepherd’s third keyword is the modal verb may, which supports the analysis of her as a character unwilling to commit to any proposition. If the explanation for her usage of ‘possibly’ is to maintain an air of vagueness around everything she says, and in the case above to avoid talking specifically about this period of her life, then this is substantiated by the abrupt topic change that follows this statement. Seemingly out of the blue, Miss Shepherd asks AB1, ‘Have you got an old pan scrub? I’m thinking of painting the van.’ The implicature generated by this flout of the Maxim of Relation is that Miss Shepherd does not want to talk further about France or music. We might infer then that this is a sensitive topic for her, and indeed, it turns out later on that this is the case. In turn 891 Miss Shepherd explains that a priest instructed her to give up playing the piano, on the basis that her love of performing was just ‘another vent the devil could creep through’. It is, then, possible to explain the abrupt topic change in the first three sentences of turn 249. It may be that Miss Shepherd simply uses odd assumptions and arguments as a tactical means of avoiding particular topics of conversation. However, it is rather more difficult to provide a reason for Miss Shepherd’s exposition following the topic change to painting, and because of this it seems more likely that Miss Shepherd displays an abnormal mind style. Miss Shepherd asks AB1 for ‘an old pan scrub’, and adds that she is thinking of painting the van. AB1 infers, most likely via the Maxim of Relation, that Miss Shepherd wants to use the pan scrub to do this, and says, ‘How about a brush?’. To this, Miss Shepherd replies, ‘I’ve got a brush. This is for the first coat.’ The assumption inherent in this statement is that whilst a brush might be perfectly adequate for painting a second coat, it is not suitable for the application of a first one. And presumably, by asking for a pan scrub Miss Shepherd believes that this item is. A pan scrub might be a potential alternative if a paintbrush was not available, but AB1 does offer Miss Shepherd a brush, and the fact that she implicitly rejects the offer is indicative of her strange assumptions concerning what is appropriate. There is also an issue concerning Miss Shepherd’s equation of a ‘pan scrub’ with ‘one of those little mop things they use to wash dishes with’. Her understanding of what a pan scrub is is clearly flawed (a pan scrub is an abrasive cloth, not a soft dish mop), and part of the absurdity of Miss Shepherd asking for a pan scrub to paint the van with might be attributed to this fact.

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 Point of View in Plays

Following this, in turn 252 AB2 describes Miss Shepherd painting the van. The inference we make here is that Alan Bennett has given her the type of dish mop she wanted. The narration here, then, effectively moves the play on to avoid having to portray the actual handing over of a dish mop, which presumably is not a significant factor in the development of the story. This piece of narration also reveals something of AB2’s conceptual point of view of Miss Shepherd. We can note several instances of evaluative lexis in AB2’s narration in turn 252. He notes that Miss Shepherd ‘thoughtfully’ paints over the rust patches, and compares her to the artist Vanessa Bell (the sister of the novelist Virginia Woolf). However, the insincerity of this opinion, and the belief that this is slightly odd behaviour, is apparent from the clash between the seriousness of a discussion of an artist at work and the humorous lexical choices that AB2 makes. AB2 explains that Miss Shepherd looks as Vanessa Bell might have, had she ‘gone in for painting Bedford vans.’ The phrase ‘gone in for’ is so informal as to trivialise the preceding description of Miss Shepherd as an artist. Added to this, AB2 extends the description of the van to make it more generic (‘Bedford vans’ rather than just ‘the van’), the plural implying that Miss Shepherd makes a habit of this practice of vanpainting. This implication makes Miss Shepherd seem more odd than she actually is. There is also a joke that develops from the two possible readings of ‘painting Bedford vans’, which works to further undermine the seriousness with which Miss Shepherd approaches her task. It is difficult to know whether AB2 means actually painting the vans themselves, or painting pictures of them. I would argue that we assume the former, since this is what Miss Shepherd is doing, and a comparison is being made between her and Vanessa Bell. And if a comparison is being made then, logically, both must be engaged in a similar activity. However, the fact that we can also sensibly apply the term ‘painting vans’ to an artist, to mean ‘painting pictures of vans’, creates humour. This results from the incongruous schema clash that we get of an artist engaged in the very practical process of painting a van, yet approaching the task in the same manner as they might approach the creation of a great painting. Nevertheless, the genuine oddities in Miss Shepherd’s character cannot be denied. In turn 253 AB1 asks her what kind of paint she is using. Miss Shepherd replies, ‘The shade is crushed mimosa.’ This response is peculiar for two reasons: i) AB1 was most likely asking about the type of paint (for example, whether it was gloss, emulsion, car enamel, etc., as AB1 does indeed state in turn 255) not the shade; and ii) our world knowledge would suggest that ‘crushed mimosa’ sounds rather like a shade of paint that would be applied in a living room or kitchen, not to a motor vehicle (a quick, albeit uninspiring, search of automotive websites reveals that specialist car paints are usually distinguished by a number rather than a prose description). Miss Shepherd, then, fails to interpret AB1’s question correctly (or ignores his intended question and instead replaces it with another), and

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Chapter 6. Logic, reality and mind style

also appears to see nothing odd about the shade of paint (usually used in interior decorating) that she is using. AB1 pursues this in turn 255, saying, ‘But it’s gloss paint. You want car enamel’, to which Miss Shepherd replies, ‘Don’t tell me about paint. I was in the infants’ school. I won a prize for painting.’ The oddity here is again to do with Miss Shepherd’s misunderstanding of inductive reasoning. The Maxim of Relation allows us to make a link between the fact that Miss Shepherd attended infants’ school and the fact that she won a prize for painting. As a result of this, we can understand that the base form of Miss Shepherd’s argument consists of the following premise and conclusion: Premise – I was in the infants’ school. Conclusion – Therefore I know about paint. Here again the conclusion does not follow from the premise so we know that Miss Shepherd’s argument is not necessarily valid. Indeed, the lack of relation between the two statements is huge, and the inductive validity of the argument is also called into question because it cannot even be said that the premise provides reasonable grounds for the conclusion. The flaws in Miss Shepherd’s reasoning can be explained in Gricean terms. Because Miss Shepherd says that she was in the infants’ school, we look for a relevant link between this information and painting. The problem is that it is not immediately obvious that there is one. It therefore seems that Miss Shepherd is making no sense. However, she then says that she won a prize for painting (presumably whilst she was attending infant school). Once we have this information it is possible to understand what Miss Shepherd means in turn 256. The implicature she makes, as a result of flouting the Maxim of Relation, is that because she won a prize for painting there should be no reason to question her judgement with regard to her choice of paint. Miss Shepherd appears to see no distinction between painting pictures in primary school and painting vehicles, and consequently sees no difference in the types of paint needed for these two different activities. AB1 then gives up trying to change Miss Shepherd’s mind about the paint, and instead turns his attention to its consistency, saying in turn 257, ‘But it’s all lumps. You’ve got to mix it.’ Miss Shepherd’s response in turn 258 again indicates the abnormality of her character. She explains, ‘I have mixed it, only I went and got some Madeira cake in it.’ As a result of this statement, we understand that the lumps in the paint are actually pieces of cake which Miss Shepherd has inadvertently dropped into it. What is odd about this is a) that Miss Shepherd seems to have no understanding of the purpose of mixing paint (this being, in part, to ensure that it is smooth when applied), and b) that she did not remove the cake crumbs. Despite having dropped Madeira cake in the paint and failed to remove it,

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Miss Shepherd does not mix the paint again. It appears that, to her mind, the paint is adequate because it has undergone the process of mixing, regardless of whether or not it contains cake. The oddity of Miss Shepherd’s reasoning can also be seen in her reaction to AB1’s indirect accusation that she is the cause of a particularly bad smell. [4] AB1 Miss Shepherd. There is a strong smell of urine. [5] Miss Shepherd Well, what do you expect when they’re raining bricks down on me all day? And then I think I’ve got a mouse, so that would make for a cheesy smell, possibly. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 6)

AB1’s speech in turn 4 is a flout of Grice’s Maxim of Manner. What AB1 is trying to do is tell Miss Shepherd that she smells revolting, and since this is, in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) terms, a face-threatening act which will potentially damage Miss Shepherd’s positive face, he attempts to mitigate this by framing it in an indirect way and utilising a number of politeness strategies. So, he does not make reference to the fact that Miss Shepherd is creating the smell, only that there is an unpleasant aroma. His choice of words is considered; he uses the formal term urine rather than a more colloquial form such as wee or piss, and the descriptive rather than evaluative adjective strong. AB1 obviously hopes that making this reference will lead Miss Shepherd to infer that it is she who is responsible for the smell, and that AB1 wishes her to take steps to remedy the situation. As AB1 hopes, Miss Shepherd does indeed make the inference. However, whereas most people would be embarrassed to learn that they are considered smelly, Miss Shepherd appears to presuppose the fact but not that she is responsible for it. She confronts the matter head on by saying that it is to be expected as a result of the builders ‘raining’ bricks down on her. However, the builders are clearly not throwing bricks specifically at her, and the bricks are certainly not ‘raining’ down. Moreover, even if this were the case it would still not explain the constant smell of urine that emanates from her. There is no connection between the smell that AB1 is complaining about and the fact that builders are working on his house. The issue here is whether Miss Shepherd is simply trying to deflect the criticism or whether she is genuinely cognitively impaired to the extent that she does use flawed inductive reasoning. This problem makes interpreting Miss Shepherd’s second excuse difficult. Miss Shepherd explains that she thinks she might have a mouse and claims that this would cause a ‘cheesy smell’. There are two potential interpretations for this statement. Miss Shepherd may be using the adjective cheesy as a synonym for unpleasant, in which case it is possible to see a connection between the presence of the mouse and an objectionable smell. Miss Shepherd might be trying, rather ludicrously, to lay the blame elsewhere for her lack of personal hygiene by suggesting that the smell is coming from the mouse. Alternatively, Miss Shepherd may simply be making the connection between mice and cheese (namely that, stereotypically, mice like to eat

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it) and therefore supposing that the mere presence of a mouse would create a smell of cheese. This interpretation would suggest that Miss Shepherd’s mind does not work in the same way as most other people’s. The notion of mind style, as it stands, cannot necessarily distinguish between genuine cognitive impairment and the tactical use of an odd conceptualisation of the world. In order to be clearer about which interpretation is most likely to apply to Miss Shepherd, in the next section I introduce Harris’s (1984) notion of paradigms of reality and consider the extent to which mind style might be integrated with this concept. I argue that, in the case of Miss Shepherd, the apparent oddities of reasoning that she displays are genuine, but derive from her need to create a defence mechanism against the guilt that she feels over causing the death of a motorcyclist many years ago. In this respect, her flawed inductive reasoning is tactical, but I argue that the consistent use of this strategy becomes a defining aspect of her character and gives rise to a unique mind style that reflects the way she sees the world and her place in it.

. Mind style and paradigms of reality In a study examining the use of questions as controlling devices in magistrates’ courts, Harris (1984) explains that participants in speech events can often begin a conversation from ‘radically differing perspectives of reality’ (Harris 1984: 18). She explains this with reference to the situation of a defendant being unable to pay a court-imposed fine. Harris points out that in such a situation ‘magistrates and clerks nearly always begin with the assumption that defendants are unwilling rather than unable to pay and defendants that they are unable rather than unwilling to pay’ (Harris 1984: 19). According to Harris, these two differing perspectives can be referred to as an ‘unwilling’ paradigm and an ‘unable’ paradigm. The unfortunate consequence of this is that by adopting the ‘unwilling’ paradigm in such situations, the magistrate’s questions will then often be understood by the defendant as accusations, even if they are non-conducive in form. Archer (2002, 2003) adopts the notion of reality paradigms and applies this in her analyses of the transcripts of the Salem Witchcraft trials of 1692. Like Harris (1984) she suggests that the adoption of a particular paradigm by a speaker can affect the function of his or her questions. But what Archer (2002: 14) also suggests is that the adoption of a particular reality paradigm can affect the inferencing processes of interlocutors. In the case of the Salem Witchcraft Trials, she gives the example of the prosecuting counsel, John Hathorne, being constrained in his inferencing by his assumption that defendants were guilty but simply unwilling to confess:

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 Point of View in Plays

[this] appeared to impede his inferencing processes, to the extent that he did not infer or chose to ignore occasions when defendants flouted a maxim so as to generate an implicature that contradicted his perspective (e.g. that they were innocent’). (Archer 2002: 14)

If it is the case that inferencing processes can be affected by the adoption of particular reality paradigms, then one explanation for Miss Shepherd’s deviant mind style might be that the reality paradigm within which she is operating is affecting her reasoning abilities. In the following section I consider this proposal in more detail. .. Miss Shepherd’s reality paradigm and its effect on her mind style The root of Miss Shepherd’s torment, which is revealed to us gradually over the course of the play and finally stated explicitly by the character of Underwood in turn 921, is the road accident she was involved in many years before the action in the play takes place. She had hit and killed a motor-cyclist through failing to stop at a crossroads. Knowing that she had neither insurance nor a licence, Miss Shepherd panicked and drove off. In the play, Miss Shepherd is haunted by this incident and the fear that the police will eventually discover what she did and take action against her. It is this fact which perhaps explains her reluctance to reveal too much of her personal life, and her unwillingness to commit herself to anything, or to answer any questions directly. Towards the end of Act One Miss Shepherd makes her first detailed mention of the accident: [Context: It is night. Miss Shepherd is in the van, praying.] [333] Miss Shepherd The soul in question did not witness the incident, though there was hearing of it and seeing of the bodywork. The word accident was mentioned in a local newspaper, allegedly fatal, and a felony committed possibly, but towards the end of Holy Year 1950 I went to Rome on pilgrimage where I was told by an elderly priest of my acquaintance who has since died that a plenary indulgence does cover traffic matters, possibly, though a policeman may not always think it applies, through ignorance, possibly. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 31)

In this turn Miss Shepherd speaks about her involvement in the accident, and the linguistic choices she makes allow us to uncover the reality paradigm within which she is operating. Throughout the turn, Miss Shepherd attempts to remove any responsibility she might have had for the accident. She refers to herself in the third person as ‘the soul in question’, thus distancing herself from the events, and she stresses (suggested by the italic type) that she did not actually witness the accident. She admits that she did hear the accident and see some of the damage (‘there was hearing of it

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and seeing of the bodywork’), but she removes herself as the perceiver. Instead she uses the dummy subject ‘there’, and the noun phrases ‘hearing of it’ and ‘seeing of the bodywork’. It would seem that these noun phrases are nominalizations derived from some underlying passive construction such as ‘The accident was heard (by X)’. Miss Shepherd’s choice of grammatical construction thus has the effect of distancing her from the events she is describing even further than a passive construction with agent deletion would. She explains that the accident was reported in a local newspaper, but indicates the official lack of certainty as to the motor-cyclist’s death through the adverb ‘allegedly’. The fact that a felony was committed is also hedged by the sentence adverb ‘possibly’, one of Miss Shepherd’s keywords in the play (see 6.3.2), and which contributes to the sense we get of her being unwilling to commit to any of the propositions she expresses. She then implicates, via the Maxim of Relation, that she obtained a plenary indulgence and that this covered ‘traffic matters’. This suggests guilt on Miss Shepherd’s part, since if she truly believed herself to be innocent of causing the motor-cyclist’s death, she would not have felt it necessary to absolve herself of sin in this way. I would suggest, then, that Miss Shepherd is operating within a reality paradigm in which she considers herself guilty of causing the death of the motor-cyclist. This is further suggested by Miss Shepherd’s prayer in Act Two: [652] Miss Shepherd [. . .] If sin there was it was by omission only, as on the day in question the lady-seller was stationary in her vehicle and scrupulous as thy servant has always been in the employment of hand signals and the correct use of the mirror, nevertheless the young man in question, through having had too much to drink, on an empty stomach, possibly, contrives to collide with the van. As was claimed, fatally. The lady-seller was blameless, though she did make her confession later. . .in France, it was, and even if the priest was well stricken in years and deaf, he did understand English, possibly. And even if he didn’t, being a consecrated priest the words of his mouth alone would suffice to absolve me, the lady-seller, of this offence of which in any case she is innocent not only by the laws of God but also by the Highway Code. So, O Blessed Mother, untaint me of all sin so that I may stand before thee undefiled. . .Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy – (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, pp. 58–9)

Here again Miss Shepherd refers to herself in the third person, this time as ‘the lady-seller’ and ‘thy servant’, which again has the effect of distancing her from the event she is describing. And again we can note the presence of non-factive verbs (‘claimed’) and the sentence adverb ‘possibly’, indicating her lack of firm belief and commitment to what she is expressing. Her lexical choices in describing the accident are also indicative of her conceptual point of view. She notes

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 Point of View in Plays

that the motor-cyclist ‘contrives to collide with the van’. The meaning of the verb contrive when followed by an infinitive is to purposefully succeed in doing something difficult (COBUILD English Dictionary 1995). What this suggests is that the motor-cyclist had actually planned to crash into Miss Shepherd’s van. By formulating the sentence in this way Miss Shepherd thereby downplays her own responsibility. However, the absurdity of the proposition that the cyclist could actually want to crash into another vehicle would suggest that this is not a reasonable representation of events. Miss Shepherd’s odd mind style is foregrounded even further in turn 652 as a result of the reader/audience having been shifted into Miss Shepherd’s deictic field within AB2’s fantasy universe (see the analysis in 7.3 for a explanation of how this deictic shift is effected). Another abnormality in Miss Shepherd’s speech concerns her odd notion of confession. She says, ‘The lady-seller was blameless, though she did make her confession later’. Why should Miss Shepherd make a confession if she truly believed herself to be innocent? There are several elements to consider here. First, Miss Shepherd’s assertion that she was ‘blameless’ presupposes an assumption that there must be grounds for the apportioning of blame. The term ‘blameless’ counters the assumption that Miss Shepherd was to blame; as Watson (1997: 109) explains, ‘in order to comprehend a negative statement we usually compare it to its positive opposite’ (see Leech 1983: 165 for a detailed exposition of the comprehension of negative and positive propositions). Then the conjunction ‘though’ suggests a contrastive relationship between the two propositions being expressed (that Miss Shepherd was blameless and that she made a confession). Finally, there is Miss Shepherd’s assertion that despite being blameless she made a confession. The apparent paradox here can be explained if we consider what Miss Shepherd says in terms of Searle’s (1969) notion of speech acts (see also Searle 1979). When Miss Shepherd says that she made a confession, she states implicitly that she performed the speech act of confessing. Searle points out that in order to perform a speech act successfully, the felicity conditions for that speech act must be adhered to. And the sincerity condition of the speech act of confessing will always be that the speaker must believe him or herself to be guilty of some past act. Searle also says the following: Wherever there is a psychological state specified in the sincerity condition, the performance of the act counts as an expression of that psychological state. This law holds whether the act is sincere or insincere, that is whether the speaker actually has the specified psychological state or not. (Searle 1969: 65)

What this means is that by performing the speech act of confessing, the speaker is expressing the psychological state inherent within the sincerity condition. And, of course, the expression of a psychological state is inextricably linked with a partic-

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ular mental perspective on the world. By stating that she had made a confession, then, Miss Shepherd reveals implicitly the reality paradigm that she has – i.e. that she believes herself to be guilty of killing the motor-cyclist. This contradicts her statement of innocence when she says ‘the lady-seller was blameless’. Miss Shepherd’s paranoia, then, might explain in part the deviant mind style that she exhibits. Concealing her perceived guilt with regard to the accident in which she was involved requires her to engage in flawed inductive reasoning, to remove her responsibility for particular events and occurrences. And it does not seem beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that prolonged practice of this might have an overall detrimental effect on her general reasoning abilities. Miss Shepherd’s fear of anyone finding out her true identity makes her unwilling to commit herself to any proposition or to answer questions, even if they do not relate directly to the accident, as in the following example: [104] AB1 How long have you been living in the van? [105] Miss Shepherd Who says I live there? I may spend the night there on occasion but it’s only a pied-a-terre. [106] AB1 Where do you live? [107] Miss Shepherd I got it to put my things in, though don’t spread it around. (Alan Bennett, The Lady in the Van, p. 13)

In turns 105 and 107 Miss Shepherd flouts the Maxim of Relation to implicate that she does not live in the van. What is odd about this, though, is that Alan knows that Miss Shepherd lives in the van. This is obvious within the context of the play and is presupposed by the WH-question he uses in turn 104. Levinson (1983: 184) explains that ‘WH-questions introduce the presuppositions obtained by replacing the WH-word by the appropriate existentially quantified variable’. In turn 104, then, the presupposition is that Miss Shepherd has been living in the van for some amount of time. What makes Miss Shepherd’s speech humorous is that her attempts to be secretive are ludicrous given that much of the time she reveals so much in her speech and actions.

. Conclusion In this chapter I have suggested that one of the problems with the notion of mind style is that it cannot necessarily account for those instances where it is ambiguous whether a character is genuinely cognitively impaired or simply using an odd conceptualisation of the world for tactical reasons. In the case of interpreting Miss Shepherd’s character I have argued that both these factors are involved, and I introduced Harris’s (1984) notion of reality paradigms to further explain this. In the analysis above, I have described Miss Shepherd’s deviant mind style as being a

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direct result of the reality paradigm she adopts in which she is guilty of causing the death of the motorcyclist. What I am suggesting, then, is that the term reality paradigm (a particular ‘perspective of reality’, in Harris’s 1984 definition) equates to the metaphorical point of view of the world that every person has. This is the point of view that is exhibited at the character-to-character level of Short’s (1996) discourse structure diagram. And the reality paradigm within which a person operates when communicating with others will have a bearing on the mind style that they exhibit. In Miss Shepherd’s case, the reality paradigm that she has affects her inductive reasoning abilities which in turn gives rise to a deviant mind style. In the final chapter I draw together the analytical methods proposed in Chapters four, five and six in an analysis of four extracts from The Lady in the Van, in order to show how deictic shifts, world shifts and mind style might be integrated together in the study of viewpoint.

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Chapter 7

Point of view in The Lady in the Van

. Introduction In this final chapter I bring together the theoretical frameworks that I have explained throughout the book to demonstrate the feasibility and value of applying point of view analysis in the interpretation of dramatic texts. I concentrate here on an analysis of point of view in The Lady in the Van (see Chapter one, Section 1.5 for a synopsis of the play), and I will suggest that the innovative nature of this play is due in no small part to the viewpoint shifts that are effected within it at various places in the story. In my analysis, I look at the mechanisms by which a reader of the play might shift between the actual world and the textual actual world of the play, and the shifts that might occur between the deictic fields within these worlds and the various alternative possible worlds of the text. I describe the linguistic and contextual triggers for these shifts, taking into account the kinds of linguistic indicators of point of view discussed in Chapters two and three. In relation to the world shifts and deictic shifts that I describe, I also discuss further the idiosyncratic mind style of Miss Shepherd (see Chapter six for a full discussion of this). Throughout, I concentrate particularly on the likely effects of the viewpoint manipulation on the reader/audience. I argue that the frequent shifts between the discourse levels of the play work, in part, to generate the effect of the story being told from the point of view of Alan Bennett 2 (recall that AB2 is the narrator version of the dramatic figure of Alan Bennett, as opposed to AB1 who is the character version). Nevertheless, I also suggest that there are moments within the play when Miss Shepherd’s viewpoint comes to the fore. I look at how these shifts in perspective are triggered and how Miss Shepherd’s potentially deviant mind style contributes to this effect. Since I am limited in terms of space, my discussion concentrates on four sections of the play that would seem to me to be pivotal in terms of plot development. These are as follows: 1. Act One, turns 1 to 109: This section of the play details AB1’s first meeting with Miss Shepherd, and, since this is the beginning of the play, allows us to examine how the reader is ‘recentered’ (Ryan 1991: 21) within the textual actual world.

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 Point of View in Plays

2. Act Two, turns 651 to 673: Miss Shepherd confesses (albeit indirectly and in the form of a prayer) to her involvement in the accident in which a motorcyclist was killed. 3. Act Two, turns 732 to 798: In this section Miss Shepherd gives an unwitting indication that she is concealing her true identity, and AB1 discusses Miss Shepherd’s failing health with the Social Worker. 4. Act Two, turns 900 to 976: Miss Shepherd dies and the truth about her past life is revealed.

. Alan Bennett 1 meets Miss Shepherd (Act One, turns 1 to 109) According to Galbraith’s (1995) conceptualisation of deictic shift theory, the first PUSH that occurs when we read a fictional text is that which thrusts the reader into the fictional world, or, as Ryan (1991) would refer to it, the textual actual world (TAW). As I explained in 4.6.2, I prefer not to make the distinction between PUSHes and POPs but to use instead the term ‘shift’ to cover both these movements. Hence, as we begin to read The Lady in the Van, our normal egocentric conception of the deictic centre is suspended, and we assume that it is instead situated within the TAW. In effect, we shift deictic centres and are, in Ryan’s (1991) terms, recentered within the fictional world. The triggers for this recentering can be found in the initial stage directions of the play: A front cloth with, inset, the bay window of an early nineteenth-century house. A hymn begins, sung by a chorus of young girls. AB2 looks through the window briefly then disappears. The hymn is cut off abruptly and the front cloth rises to reveal AB2 sitting at his desk. He reads from what he has been writing.

The event-coding (Short 1996: 287) in this stage direction reflects the perceptual point of view of the reader/audience. Initially we are positioned outside the house, but when the front cloth rises this creates the effect of moving closer to the action, and consequently, the impression of being positioned inside the house. This effect of moving closer to the action in the TAW is likely to contribute to the priming of the fictional world. However, this is not to say that we immediately position ourselves within the deictic field of one particular character. The play begins in medias res and for an audience it is likely to be unclear initially whether AB2, who is revealed, alone, sitting at his desk, is speaking directly to them or reading aloud from what he has written. This is not ambiguous for the reader, since the stage directions reveal it to be the latter:

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van

A front cloth with, inset, the bay window of an early nineteenth-century house. A hymn begins, sung by a chorus of young girls. AB2 looks through the window briefly then disappears. The hymn is cut off abruptly and the front cloth rises to reveal AB2 sitting at his desk. He reads from what he has been writing. [1] AB2 The smell is sweet, with urine only a minor component, the prevalent odour suggesting the inside of someone’s ear. Dank clothes are there too, wet wool and onions, which she eats raw, plus what for me has always been the essence of poverty, damp newspaper. Miss Shepherd’s multi-flavoured aroma is masked by a liberal application of various talcum powders, with Yardley’s Lavender always a favourite, and when she is sitting down it is this genteel fragrance that dominates, the second subject, as it were, in her odoriferous concerto. It is only when she rises that the original theme returns, the terrible primary odour now triumphantly restated and left to hang in the room long after she has departed.

Nevertheless, there is still an in medias res effect for the reader due to AB2’s use of definite reference (e.g. ‘The smell’) and deictic terms for which the reader is, as yet, unlikely to be able to assign adequate reference to. We do not know until sentence 3 of turn 1, for example, that ‘she’ refers to Miss Shepherd. Neither is it entirely clear where the spatial deictic ‘there’ refers to (‘Dank clothes are there too’). In effect, we are unable to discern the boundaries of AB2’s deictic field and this is likely to create problems of comprehension for the reader/audience. I would argue that at this point in the play, our default assumptions about dramatis personae mean that we interpret AB2 as being a character in the TAW rather than a narrator who is able to step outside of it (cf. Section 1.4). However, this interpretation is likely to change following Miss Shepherd’s first turn (turn 2), in which she defends herself against AB2’s accusations of uncleanliness. AB2 frames the conversation that follows between AB1 and Miss Shepherd (turns 4 and 5) with a piece of what Richardson (1988; see 3.3.2) would term ‘frame’ narration: [3] AB2 Having builders in the house means that I am more conscious of the situation so I determine to speak out.

Turn 3 is important since it allows the reader/audience to understand the play as having a frame-story structure; i.e. a story embedded within a story. Figure 7.1 represents this diagrammatically, with the arrows indicating the movement of AB2 between worlds. In The Lady in the Van, the story of Alan Bennett’s experiences over the years with Miss Shepherd is embedded within the frame story of AB2 writing about these experiences. However, on occasion AB2 steps out of the framing fictional world in order to address the reader/audience directly, thereby becoming a narrator. In addition, AB2 is also able to move from the framing fictional world into the

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 Point of View in Plays

Figure 7.1 Frame-story structure of The Lady in the Van

embedded fictional world that he describes in his narration, in order to converse with his character counterpart, AB1. The discourse structure of The Lady in the Van can thus be represented in the following way (the brackets indicate potential discoursal ‘collapsings’; see 1.6 for a discussion of this phenomenon): If we return to turn 3, it is clear that it is not addressed to Miss Shepherd. This is apparent because of the references that AB2 makes to his own mental processes, indicated by the complement ‘more conscious of the situation’ and the verb ‘determine’. Since the situation that AB2 is referring to is caused by Miss Shepherd, it is unlikely that he would reveal to her his plan to speak to her directly about this matter. Therefore, either turn 3 is addressed to the reader/audience directly, or it is AB2 continuing to read aloud from what he has been writing. Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Relation then allows us to understand that turn 4 is the character AB1 doing the ‘speaking out’ that AB2 referred to in turn 3. This constitutes a shift into the embedded fictional world that AB2 describes in his writing in turn 1. AB1’s use of the vocative ‘Miss Shepherd’ signals that this is the person to whom his com-

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F: LAL307.tex / p.5 (264-285)

Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

Figure 7.2 Discourse structure of the Lady in the Van

plaint is addressed, and this in turn allows us to understand that AB2’s use of the pronoun ‘she’ in turn 1 was referring to Miss Shepherd. Thus, the boundaries of AB2’s deictic field become more clearly delineated. Turns 4 and 5 consist of dialogue between AB1 and Miss Shepherd, with Miss Shepherd defending herself against the implicit accusation from AB1 that her personal hygiene leaves much to be desired (see 6.3.2 for an analysis of these two turns). Then, without any indication via stage directions, AB1 switches to a conversation with the character Mam (turns 6 to 13): [6] Mam Alan. Can I ask you a question? [7] AB1 The answer is, I’ve no idea. [8] Mam You don’t know the question yet. [9] AB1 I do know the question. The question is, where does she go to the lav? [10] AB2 Lavatories always loom large with my mother. What memory was to Proust the lavatory is to my mam. [11] Mam Well, where? [12] AB1 The answer is, I don’t know.

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 Point of View in Plays

[13] Mam You don’t know, with that smell? Well, I know, and I haven’t been to Oxford. Her knickers. She does it in her britches.

The propositional content of Mam’s speech (i.e. criticism of Miss Shepherd’s toilet habits) is such that it is unlikely that this is part of the same conversation between AB1 and Miss Shepherd (turns 4 and 5). Mam’s discussion of such matters would be a huge threat to Miss Shepherd’s positive face (Brown & Levinson 1987) if she were actually present. What this suggests is that AB1 and Mam’s conversation takes place in a different spatial and temporal location to that of AB1 and Miss Shepherd (turns 4 and 5). The reader/audience thereby shifts spatially and temporally within the embedded fictional world of the play from one incident (and so one time and one place) to another, allowing them to witness (i) AB1 and Miss Shepherd’s conversation and (ii) AB1 and Mam’s conversation. The temporal and spatial shift from AB1 and Miss Shepherd’s conversation to that of AB1 and Mam is indicated contextually rather than being triggered linguistically by AB2 (as he does in turn 3 when he triggers the shift into the embedded fictional world). Because of this, the prominence of the fictional world in which AB2 resides is, at this point, likely to have begun to decrease. However, turn 14 triggers a shift out of the embedded fictional world and back into the framing fictional world of AB2: [14] AB2 Cut to five years earlier. I am standing by the convent in Camden Town looking up at the crucifix on the wall, trying to decide what’s odd about it.

This has the effect of re-priming the framing fictional world and increasing its prominence to the reader/audience. Turn 14 also counts as a discoursal shift up from the previous dialogue between AB1 and Mam, and creates the effect of AB2 controlling the narrative. This in turn creates the impression that what we are reading, or watching if we are part of a theatre audience, is only part of the story; i.e. only those parts that AB2 chooses to show us. AB2’s narrative intervention, then, serves to create the effect of a restricted point of view for the reader/audience, of the sort associated with first person narrators in prose fiction (see, for example, the discussion in 2.4.2 of the subjective first person variety of Fowler’s 1996 type A narration). Despite the fact that the reader/audience is at least now able to interpret the person deictics in AB2’s speech in turn 1, and is aware of the fact that AB2 inhabits a framing fictional world, up to this point there has still been no clear deictic centre established from which to interpret deictic references. This changes in turn 14 which provides the reader/audience with the spatial and temporal co-ordinates for AB1’s deictic centre in the scene that follows (turns 15 to 23). Turn 14 instantiates a change in deictic field by means of a number of linguistic cues. When AB2 says ‘Cut to five years earlier’, this acts very much like a stage direction (indeed, it is for-

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

mulated lexically and grammatically in the same way) and cues a deictic shift away from the present temporal deictic centre in the TAW to an earlier time in the story (five years previous). Following this, there is a further temporal shift generated by the use of the present progressive tense when AB2 says ‘I am standing by the convent’. The verb tense and aspect serve to generate a sense of immediacy about the following scene, making it appear to the reader/audience that we are witnessing the event which happened five years ago as it happened in real time. These two temporal cues trigger a shift for the reader/audience into a new deictic field within the embedded fictional world, from where we interpret the scene that follows. And since the deictic co-ordinates specified in turn 14 are those for AB1’s deictic centre, I would suggest that the reader/audience interprets the deictic references in the scene that follows from his perspective. What is also important here is that AB2 also appears to be present within this new deictic field. This is indicated by the fact that he himself is the subject (‘I’) of the present progressive predicator (‘am standing’), which anchors him temporally within the deictic field. The final cue in turn 14 comes when AB2 states that he is ‘looking up at the crucifix on the wall’. This verb of perception gives us a clue as to AB2’s physical location in space and indicates his gaze direction and consequent perceptual viewpoint. Jeffries (2000: 57), in a paper describing the relationship between point of view and reader involvement, says that ‘readers of poetry (or indeed, prose) are likely to identify with the speaker’s deictic position’. If this is indeed the case then it is probably true also of drama. Because AB2 has set up a new deictic field with AB1 (the character version of himself) at its centre, I would argue that the reader/audience may be led to assume that the scene that follows is from AB2’s point of view. Note though, that as Galbraith (1995) states, unless this deictic field is regularly reinstantiated, it will gradually decay and we will effectively forget that it was instantiated by AB2. A similar effect arises in Rudyard Kipling’s short story, ‘The Man Who Would Be King’; see Short (1996: 282–3) for a discussion of this. At this point, then, AB1’s deictic field has been made clearer, as a result of AB2 having defined the parameters of his deictic field by giving us the temporal and spatial co-ordinates of its deictic centre in turn 14. I would therefore argue that it has, in effect, become bound into the fictional world in which AB1 exists. It is likely too that, at this point in the play, the reader/audience’s default deictic field in the Actual World will have decayed significantly, and that their attention will instead be focused on AB1’s deictic field, making it primed as well as bound. Turns 15–23 consist of a conversation in the embedded TAW between Miss Shepherd and AB1 concerning whether or not Bennett is actually St John, as Miss Shepherd initially believes he might be: [15] Miss Shepherd You’re looking up at the cross. You’re not St John, are you?

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 Point of View in Plays

[16] AB1 St John who? [17] Miss Shepherd St John. The disciple whom Jesus loved. [18] AB1 No. My name’s Bennett. [19] Miss Shepherd Well, if you’re not St John I want a push for the van. It conked out, the battery possibly. I put some water in only it hasn’t done the trick. [20] AB1 Was it distilled water? [21] Miss Shepherd It was holy water so it doesn’t matter if it was distilled or not. The oil is another possibility. [22] AB1 That’s not holy too? [23] Miss Shepherd Holy oil in a van? Don’t be silly. It would be far too expensive. I want pushing to Albany Street.

This stretch of conversation also reveals something of Miss Shepherd’s unusual mind style (described in detail in 6.3.2), one of the effects of which is to foreground her character. For example, in turn 21 she appears not to understand that it is of no consequence whether the water she put in the van was holy or not, but that it would matter if the water was not distilled. In turn 23 she displays similar odd reasoning. Here she dismisses the (most likely facetious) question that AB1 asks in turn 22, but on the grounds that holy oil would be too expensive rather than that it would be inappropriate. On discovering that AB1 is a mere mortal, Miss Shepherd decides that he should assist her by giving the van a push. AB2’s deictic field, triggered in turn 14, is then reinstantiated in turn 24, when there is a discoursal shift back up to the narrator level: [24] AB2 Scarcely have I put my shoulder to the back of the van, an old Bedford, than in textbook fashion Miss Shepherd goes through her repertory of hand signals: ‘I am moving off. . .I am turning left’. . .the movements done with such boneless grace this section of the Highway Code might have been choreographed by Balanchine with Ulanova at the wheel.

The discoursal shift is indicated by the reader/audience’s awareness that AB2 is a narrator figure in a framing TAW. The propositional content of turn 24 is also such that for AB2 to be saying these things to Miss Shepherd would be odd. It is much more likely that he is addressing the reader/audience. This has several effects. First of all it reminds us that what we are being presented with is a story told by AB2, and this again has the effect of reinforcing the impression that what we are being exposed to is AB2’s version of events. Secondly, the discoursal shift allows AB2 to provide some commentary on the events in the TAW. The narratorial intervention therefore also provides a means of allowing the reader/audience access to the thoughts of the dramatic figure of Alan Bennett. Arguably, this adds to the sense we have of AB2 as a first person narrator.

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

Following turn 24, there is then a shift back to the character-to-character level of the embedded TAW. The move down a discourse level is instantiated by Miss Shepherd’s speech in turn 25 which triggers the discoursal shift for the reader: [25] Miss Shepherd What have we stopped for?

At this point in the story we know that Miss Shepherd is part of the embedded TAW rather than the framing TAW and therefore that she is likely to be addressing someone else in the embedded TAW. It is this knowledge that allows us to understand that we have moved back down to the character level of the play. The comment from AB2 in turn 35 again triggers a discoursal shift up to the narrator’s discourse level and back into the framing TAW, in order to provide some commentary on the goings-on in the embedded TAW and to reinstantiate AB2’s deictic field: [33] Miss Shepherd [. . .] I like to keep a low profile. I don’t want to take the eye of the police through being stationary on the carriageway. [34] AB1 You can park anywhere. [35] AB2 Which you could of course in those unpenalized days.

In turn 35 AB2 uses the demonstrative ‘those’ to modify the noun ‘days’ thus generating a distal temporal deictic expression, which refers to the TAW in which AB1 and Miss Shepherd exist. This has the effect of distancing AB2 spatially and temporally from AB1 and Miss Shepherd, thereby reinforcing the effect that what we are reading (or watching if we are part of a theatre audience) is a story told by AB2. The scene then continues, with AB1 agreeing to push Miss Shepherd’s van further along the street. Next there is a discoursal shift back up to the narrator level in the framing TAW in turn 40, as AB2 concludes the scene and then provides another discoursal shift back down to the character level of the embedded TAW, and a temporal shift, triggered by the present progressive tense in the line ‘Meanwhile I seem to be buying a house’: [39] AB1 I’ll help push you down Albany Street. [40] AB2 And out of my life, I thought. Were I a proper writer I would welcome such an encounter as constituting experience, but I have no curiosity. True, I have started noting down the odd things people say, but contact with the actual creatures themselves I keep to a minimum. Meanwhile I seem to be buying a house.

The return to the framing TAW in turn 40 has the effect of once more binding and priming AB2’s deictic field. The reader/audience is reminded that this is a story being told by AB2, since the textual indicators of viewpoint in turn 40 once more reflect AB2’s perspective on events in the embedded TAW. The first sentence of turn 40 consists of the indirect presentation of AB1’s thought, indicating that

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 Point of View in Plays

AB2 has privileged access to the internal states of AB1. This is followed by a direct address to the audience that specifies AB2’s internal states (indicated by the conditional clause at the beginning of the second sentence, and the clause ‘I have no curiosity’ that follows the conjunction ‘but’). In the last sentence of turn 40, the non-factive verb ‘seem’ suggests that AB2 does not have the privileged access that was indicated in the indirect thought presentation of the first sentence. The effect of this in viewpoint terms is to suggest a spatial and temporal shift back into the embedded TAW, in which AB2 does not have the benefit of hindsight in commenting on events. There is then quite a long sequence (21 turns) in which AB1 meets his new neighbours, Rufus and Pauline. I would argue that the length of this sequence means that AB2’s deictic field decays and as a result becomes unprimed. The reader/audience’s attention is then likely to be focused on AB1, since AB2 contextualises the following scene by referring to him at the end of turn 40 (‘Meanwhile I seem to be buying a house’). However, the end of this scene is marked by another turn by AB2, thus re-priming his deictic field for the reader/audience. The turn has the effect of triggering a shift for the reader/audience out of their deictic field within the TAW and back into AB2’s. However, there is also a temporal and spatial shift straight into a new deictic field: [62] AB2 The woman in the van sells pamphlets. I came across her today outside Williams and Glyns Bank on the corner of Camden High Street. She’d chalked a picture of St Francis on the pavement. At least I took it to be St Francis . . . the cowled figure actually looked like Red Riding Hood; only one or two birds winging in for a bit of conversation gave the game away.

AB2’s speech shifts the reader/audience out of the previous deictic field. The framing narration of turn 62 serves to trigger a temporal and spatial shift into a new deictic field, the boundaries of which are defined in part by the proximal time deictic ‘today’ and the locational deictic expression ‘on the corner of Camden High Street’. The past simple verb ‘came’ implies that the scene that follows is the meeting between Miss Shepherd and AB1 that happened prior to AB2’s narration in turn 62. Nevertheless, although the past tense narration indicates some degree of distance between AB2 and the events he is describing, at this point in the play AB2 seems to have moved temporally closer to the characters in the TAW. This effect comes about because of proximal time deictic ‘today’ and the present simple verb in the line ‘The woman in the van sells pamphlets’. AB2’s use of the noun phrase ‘the woman in the van’, rather than ‘Miss Shepherd’, also indicates a viewpoint where he does not yet know her name, presumably because he has only recently seen her for the first time. This contributes to the impression of AB2 having moved temporally closer to the events in the embedded TAW. The effect of AB2 having

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

shifted into the embedded TAW is further realised in turns 78 and 84 as a result of the present simple and present perfect tenses: [78] AB2 My mother is on the phone. [79] Mam I wish I was good. [80] AB1 You are good. [81] Mam No, the way other people are good. [82] AB1 Where are you sitting? [83] Mam On a chair in the passage. [84] AB2 That’s how her depressions always start, sitting on an unaccustomed chair. The doctor’s put her on tablets.

What we can also note from the above extract is that turns 78 to 84 incorporate the different deictic fields of Mam and AB1. Mam is speaking on the telephone to AB1 and must then be in a different spatial location. Mam projects her deictic position to AB1 using a locational deictic expression (‘on the chair in the passage’) which has the added effect of allowing the reader/audience to imagine her position in relation to AB1. The fact that AB2 is now inhabiting the same temporal deictic field as the characters in the embedded TAW is seemingly confirmed in turn 105, when he issues a directive to AB1: [105] AB2 Ask her. Ask her how long she’s been in the van. [106] AB1 How long have you been living in the van?

AB2’s command would suggest that he is able to communicate with AB1 and also that he is possibly unaware of what Miss Shepherd is about to say. What seems to have happened is that AB2 is now inhabiting a deictic field within the embedded TAW rather than his deictic field within the framing TAW. His deictic field within the framing TAW is likely to have become unbound and unprimed, and the effect this has is to temporarily change his discourse role from a narrator in the framing TAW to a character in the embedded TAW. The effect of this is that AB2 no longer has the omniscience displayed in, for example, turn 35, and this results in a more restricted point of view of events. Miss Shepherd’s secretive nature is then revealed in turns 107 and 109: [107] Miss Shepherd Who says I live there? I may spend the night there on occasion but it’s only a pied-a-terre. [108] AB1 Where do you live? [109] Miss Shepherd I got it to put my things in, though don’t spread that around. I came down from St Albans and plan to go back there in due course. I’m just pedalling water at the moment but I’ve always been in the transport line. I drove ambulances in the war. I’ve got good topography. I knew Kensington in the blackout.

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 Point of View in Plays

In turns 107 and 109 Miss Shepherd flouts Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Relation to implicate that she does not live in the van. What is odd about this, though, is that Alan and the reader/audience know that Miss Shepherd lives in the van. This is obvious within the context of the play and is presupposed by the WH-question he uses in turn 106 (Levinson (1983: 184) explains that ‘WH-questions introduce the presuppositions obtained by replacing the WH-word by the appropriate existentially quantified variable’). In turn 106, then, the presupposition is that Miss Shepherd has been living in the van for some amount of time. Miss Shepherd’s attempts to be secretive are ludicrous given that much of the time she reveals so much in her speech and actions anyway. The reader/audience might infer, then, that Miss Shepherd is not simply secretive by nature, but has something significant to hide (as, indeed, turns out to be the case). Turn 109 also contains further examples of Miss Shepherd’s odd use of language, which I have suggested contribute to a deviant mind style (see 6.3.2). For example, she uses the strange expression ‘pedalling water’ rather than the more normal ‘treading water’. Her statement that she has ‘good topography’ is also odd. It would be more usual to say she has ‘good knowledge of topography’. Although such examples do not, in and of themselves, indicate a deviant mind style, I would argue that, combined with other more obvious indicators (such as Miss Shepherd’s odd use of inductive logic; see 6.3.1), they work to further enhance our impression of Miss Shepherd as being a decidedly odd character.

. Miss Shepherd’s confession (Act Two, turns 651 to 673) Turn 651 consists of hypothetical thought presentation from AB2 which describes Miss Shepherd driving ambulances in London during the Second World War: [651] AB2 I think of her at the wheel of her khaki ambulance; dodging the craters and the heaps of rubble; seeing the dusty dead brought out and kneeling sometimes in packed churches; sitting around in the canteen waiting for the siren to go. Love once, even, maybe. The time of her life.

The thought presentation in turn 651 primes AB2’s deictic field within the framing TAW since it gives the reader/audience access to what Groff (1959) would call AB2’s ‘inner life’, i.e. his subjective view of events in the fictional world. In AB2’s narration in turn 651, Miss Shepherd is the implied subject of all the dynamic nonfinite verbs (‘dodging’, ‘seeing’, ‘kneeling’, ‘sitting’ and ‘waiting’), which has the effect of foregrounding her character’s actions. This is followed by the subsequent stage direction and speech from Miss Shepherd:

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Distant sirens and the sound of the blitz, which fade leaving a faint light which grows. The van begins to glow with light, even splits in two perhaps, forming a kind of diptych with Miss Shepherd illuminated by a shaft of light. [652] Miss Shepherd No, there was never love. But the soul in question, frustrated in her vocation through want of seeing by the sisters, has loved thee and striven to serve thee as a nun on her own, as it were, solo, living under a rule, with diet restricted, her cell this van, sustained only by supplementary benefit and the sale of the occasional pencil.

The sound effects mentioned in the stage directions clearly relate to AB2’s imaginings and are likely to have the effect of further foregrounding the actions of Miss Shepherd that AB2 is thinking about, since these take place within the period that the sound effects evoke. The hypothetical thought presentation in turn 651 primes a fantasy universe (Ryan 1991) belonging to AB2, and the actions described in the stage directions increase the prominence of this, since AB2’s thoughts have now moved from being merely presented to being dramatised. Within the fantasy universe there is then a spatial shift from AB2’s deictic centre to the deictic field in which Miss Shepherd is at the centre. This is indicated in the stage directions by the description of the van possibly splitting in two, triggering a spatial shift to the inside of the van, with Miss Shepherd ‘illuminated by a shaft of light’. In a production of the play this lighting effect would foreground the character of Miss Shepherd, further focusing our attention on her and heightening the prominence of the deictic field in which she is at the centre. By the same token, the prominence of AB2’s deictic field within the fantasy universe would decrease as, in Galbraith’s (1995) terms, it decayed. However, there now appears to be a subtle blending of deictic fields and viewpoints. AB2’s narration in turn 651 and the stage directions work to prime a fantasy universe belonging to AB2. That Miss Shepherd’s speech occurs within a fantasy universe of AB2’s is reinforced by the fact that her first sentence appears to be a response to AB2’s speculation in turn 651, ‘Love once, even, maybe.’ Until Miss Shepherd’s death, AB1 is the only character in the play who is aware of AB2, therefore we would not expect Miss Shepherd to be able to respond to AB2 at this point in the play. Within this fantasy universe there is a spatial shift to the inside of the van, from where Miss Shepherd appears to respond to AB2’s speculation that she may once have been in love. However, although AB2 was imagining her driving ambulances during the war, Miss Shepherd makes her speech in turn 652 from inside the van (which shares some of the schematic characteristics of an ambulance but is clearly not one). Therefore this speech occurs in a different, but in some ways parallel, temporal deictic field to that which AB2 was imagining, indicating a shift to Miss Shepherd’s point of view. That this cannot logically happen contributes to the sense of the unreal as the van splits in two, and it is significant that it is within this fantasy sequence that Miss Shepherd fi-

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 Point of View in Plays

nally describes the road accident in which she was responsible for the death of a motorcyclist (see 6.4.1 for a full analysis of this turn). The logical deviation that occurs within the fantasy universe serves to foreground Miss Shepherd’s speech in turn 652. After turn 652 there is the following stage direction: The prayer turns into a mutter (possibly in Latin). The light fades and AB1 arrives back from the theatre on his bike. He stops and listens to the now dark van. AB2 comes up behind him and puts his hand on his shoulder.

There are several triggers in this stage direction that indicate a deictic shift out of Miss Shepherd’s deictic field and back into AB1’s. The first is non-linguistic and would be realised in a production of the play. The light fading would have the effect of backgrounding the character of Miss Shepherd, arguably reducing the prominence of her deictic field and, effectively, unpriming it. This would also trigger a shift out of AB2’s fantasy universe and back into the textual actual world. Within the TAW, the position that the reader/audience takes up is within AB1’s deictic field. The spatial deictic verb ‘comes’ indicates movement towards AB1’s deictic centre, and binds and primes AB1’s deictic field once again, suggesting that the reader is back witnessing events from his perspective. There is then a short conversation between AB1 and AB2, in which AB1 voices his concerns that Miss Shepherd may be dead: [653] AB1 Should I look now, do you think? [654] AB2 It’ll wait. Besides, it’s too dark. Tomorrow would be better. Perhaps then you should take some photographs.

However, the accessibility relations (Ryan 1991) between the AW and the TAW are such that we know there cannot really be two Alan Bennetts in the world at once. Therefore the reader/audience is likely to interpret this conversation as representing the to and fro of AB1/AB2’s thoughts. This once more works to create a subjective viewpoint of events in the embedded fictional world. What we can also note from turn 654 is that AB2’s discourse role has again changed from being a narrator figure to a character within the TAW. This is suggested by the fact that he appears to inhabit the same temporal deictic field as AB1 (indicated by the temporal deictic ‘tomorrow’). AB2 is no longer distanced temporally from the events that he describes, and so the temporal deictic field that was instantiated in earlier turns (e.g. turn 35, ‘Which you could of course in those unpenalized days’) is likely to decay until it is unprimed. The likely effect of this for the reader/audience is to give the scene more of a sense of immediacy, thereby increasing the dramatic tension. The scene ends without a discoursal shift back up to the level of narrator, and at the opening of the following scene (supposedly the next

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

morning), AB2 still appears to be operating at the character (rather than narrator) level of the play’s discourse structure. Thus, AB2 appears to inhabit the ‘here and now’ of AB1 in the embedded TAW. AB1/AB2 then decides to check inside Miss Shepherd’s van, expecting to find her dead. The stage directions inform us that: AB1 very nervously opens the back door of the van, face screwed up in disgust and anticipation, with AB2 peering over his shoulder. At which point Miss, Shepherd materializes on the other side of the stage and bears down on them at full speed in her wheelchair.

The stage directions give us some clue as to AB1’s internal state, as a result of the adverb ‘nervously’ and the nouns ‘disgust’ and ‘anticipation’, reinforcing the fact that the reader/audience is witnessing events in the fictional world from his perspective. It is also the case that AB1 and AB2’s deictic fields have similar spatial co-ordinates in this scene. Both have the same perceptual point of view of the inside of the van. It would seem that Bennett (the real world author of the play) is subtly conflating the two dramatic figures, and this has the subsidiary effect of further decreasing the prominence of the framing fictional world which, since it has not been referred to in the last 21 turns, is likely to have decayed and become unbound for the reader/audience. The fact that AB2 is also now operating at the character rather than narrator level is made clear by his astonishment at the appearance of Miss Shepherd: [673] Miss Shepherd What are you doing? AB2 leaps back, startled.

And again, the adjective ‘startled’ gives us some indication of AB2’s internal state, lending further weight to the notion that the reader/audience is witnessing events in the embedded TAW from a position close to his deictic field (which, as I have noted above, is now similar to AB1’s).

. The mysteries surrounding Miss Shepherd (Act Two, turns 732 to 798) In this section of the play Miss Shepherd inadvertently reveals that Mary Shepherd is not her real name. This becomes apparent when she asks AB1’s advice about financial matters: [732] Miss Shepherd Mr Bennett. Where’ve you been? I’ve rung the bell twice. [733] AB1 Seeing my mother. [734] Miss Shepherd How is she? [735] AB1 She’s very poorly. [736] Miss Shepherd Yes? Well, I’ve not been well again myself. [737] AB1 She’s in a coma.

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 Point of View in Plays

[738] Miss Shepherd Probably just having forty winks. [739] AB1 Miss Shepherd. She is dying. [740] Miss Shepherd Can’t be doing with company, probably. She should be grateful she doesn’t have to cope with letters from Mr Campbell Adamson. [741] AB1 The Chairman of the CBI? [742] Miss Shepherd He’s wanting to change the Abbey National from being a building society into a bank and he needs my consent. I have voting rights, apparently. [743] AB1 Do you have something in the Abbey National then? [744] Miss Shepherd If a person had put money on deposit in one name and that was the name the vote was in, but that wasn’t their real name, would that be against the law? [745] AB1 Why, did you do that? [746] Miss Shepherd (banging her hand) I did not say that. If a soul did. A creature. Not me. It is not me. [747] AB1 What other name? [748] Miss Shepherd How many more times? I am in an incognito position. Take an anonymous view of it. Anyway, now you’re here I want some shopping done.

This passage reveals much about Miss Shepherd’s character and her unusual mind style. In turn 736 Miss Shepherd fails to grasp (or ignores) the gravity of the situation following AB1’s description of his mother as being ‘very poorly’. Then when AB1 expands on what he has said (‘She’s in a coma’), Miss Shepherd suggests that she is simply sleeping. Her choice of informal lexis (‘forty winks’) indicates the lack of seriousness that she ascribes to the situation. This is continued in turn 740 when she dismisses AB1’s assertion that his mother is dying, saying instead that she ‘probably can’t be doing with the company’. That Miss Shepherd is trying to hide something is apparent in turn 744. She violates Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Relation by not answering AB1’s question in turn 743 and she uses indefinite reference (‘a person’) in her hypothetical question to him. Nevertheless, the very fact that she does this suggests that she is actually referring to her own personal situation. Miss Shepherd then changes the subject and tells him she wants him to do some shopping for her. AB1 asks: [757] AB1 Do you want some towels? [758] Miss Shepherd Towels? What do I want towels for? [759] AB2 I did not mean towels. I meant the kind of towels my mother used to send me next door to the draper’s and babies’ knitwear shop for when I was a boy; towels that came in plain brown-paper parcels; towels that could not be mentioned. And the reason why I am mentioning them is because I can see one such towel (probably an incontinence pad) drying by the electric ring inside the van. The stench is staggering.

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AB2’s comment in turn 759 acts as the trigger for a discoursal shift back to the narrator level, and serves to emphasise again that we are being told a story from AB2’s perspective. AB2’s narration in turn 759 also reinstantiates his narratorial deictic field as being spatially and temporally distant from those of the characters whom he describes. This is achieved by his use of past tense verbs (e.g. ‘did not mean’, ‘meant’, ‘was’, etc.). However, he then switches to the present progressive form to refer to what AB1 is saying with the fictional world that AB2 describes (‘the reason why I am mentioning them’). The effect of this is to make it seem as if AB2 is suddenly temporally closer to the events that he describes. This appears to trigger a shift back down the discourse levels from the level of narrator to the level of the character. We can also notice that when AB2 says ‘I can see one such towel’, the verb of perception indicates that his deictic field is at this point within the embedded TAW. This has the effect of binding AB2 into this deictic field, which becomes primed as a result. AB2’s use of evaluative lexis (‘stench’ and ‘staggering’) indicates his internal state – i.e. disgust at the smell coming from the van. But this evaluative lexis must also indicate AB1’s internal state, since AB2 and AB1 are different representations of the same dramatic figure. Because AB2’s narration has moved us spatially and temporally into the embedded fictional world, the conversation that follows is between Miss Shepherd and AB1. There then follow 36 turns before AB2 takes a turn again, and, arguably, in this time the deictic field in the framing fictional world, instantiated by AB2 in turn 759, is likely to have decayed and become unprimed. The reader, then, is likely to be positioned within AB1’s deictic field. AB1 discusses Miss Shepherd with the Social Worker, and becomes increasingly annoyed at her reference to him as Miss Shepherd’s carer. This culminates in AB1 appearing to lose his temper: [793] AB1 [. . .] I resent it when the professionals, as you call it, turn up every three months or so and try to tell me what this woman, whom I have coped with on a daily basis for fifteen years, is like. [794] Social Worker What is she like? [795] AB1 Mary, as you call her, is a bigoted, blinkered, cantankerous, devious, unforgiving, self-centred, rank, rude, car-mad cow. Which, Miss Aileen McNiff Naff, is to say nothing of her flying faeces and her ability to extrude from her withered buttocks turds of such force that they land a yard from the back of the van and their presumed point of exit.

The amount of extreme attitudinal lexis in turn 795 (e.g. ‘bigoted’, ‘blinkered’, ‘cantankerous’, ‘devious’, ‘unforgiving’, ‘self-centred’, ‘rank’, ‘rude’, ‘car-mad’, ‘cow’, ‘withered’, ‘buttocks’, ‘turds’) is unusual since AB1 is an introverted character who prefers to avoid conflict. Evidence for this assessment can be found throughout the play. For example, when AB1 disturbs a yob banging on the side of Miss Shepherd’s van, the yob responds by saying ‘You’re nervous. You’re trembling all over. Fuck-

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 Point of View in Plays

ing cunt.’ The language he uses thus has the effect of foregrounding this turn. The alliteration in the long stream of evaluative adjectives is also unusual and not what we would expect in naturalistic dialogue. In addition, the name ‘Aileen McNiff Naff ’ is clearly invented and has negative connotations (‘niff ’ is slang for ‘smell’, and ‘naff ’ is slang for ‘poor quality’). For these reasons, it is conceivable that turn 795 is not something that AB1 said in the TAW, but instead represents something he wanted to say in an alternative possible world. Turn 796 confirms that this inference is correct, and that turn 795 actually represents AB1’s wish world (i.e. what he wished he had said but didn’t): [796] AB2 Though of course you didn’t say a word of that. [797] AB1 No.

Turn 796 constitutes a discoursal shift (back up to the narrator level) and a temporal shift (indicated by the past tense verb) enabling AB2 to comment on turn 795, which in turn allows the reader to reappraise what AB1 supposedly said to the Social Worker. In effect, the reader shifts into AB1’s wish world (Ryan 1991) without knowing it fully, and the discoursal shift in turn 796 works to move the reader back into the TAW. What also appears to be the case is that in turn 797 AB1 has also shifted deictic fields. The statement that AB2 makes in turn 796 is from a perspective within the framing fictional world, temporally and spatially distant from the embedded TAW. That AB1 responds to this must mean that he too is now positioned within the framing fictional world and has also shifted discoursally up to the narrator level of the play’s discourse architecture. By using two Alan Bennett figures and having them shift between deictic fields and fictional worlds, the playwright has created a means of representing the thoughts and interior monologues of the dramatic figure of Alan Bennett, and hence, his internal point of view. This unique device is part of what makes the play so innovative and interesting. The interior monologue continues in turn 798 when AB2 provides more information regarding AB1’s internal state: [798] AB2 People would think that was because you were too nice. It’s actually because you’re too timid.

Here, the reader/audience gains an insight into the character of AB1, which must also apply to AB2, since he is simply the narrator representation of the same dramatic figure.

. The truth about Miss Shepherd (Act Two, turns 900 to 976) This section of the play deals with Miss Shepherd’s death and its aftermath. It is the Social Worker who discovers Miss Shepherd’s body:

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

[900] Social Worker Mary. (She knocks) Mary? She opens the door, looks in and gets into the van. [901] AB1 No one has ever done that before, got into the van. [902] AB2 She is dead. It is a van no longer. It is a sepulchre. The social worker gets out and AB1 goes and looks in. Even now I do not venture into this evil-smelling tomb but just glimpse her neck stretched out across the new clean pillow as if ready for the block. [903] AB1 I feel cheated that the discovery of the body has not actually been mine and that, having observed so much for so long, I am not the first to witness her death. [904] AB2 Now in quick succession come the doctor, the priest and men from the undertaker’s, all of whom this bright spring morning do what no one else has done for twenty years: namely without pause and seemingly without distaste step inside the van.

Turn 900 clearly occurs within the embedded TAW. However, there is an ambiguity in turn 901 in that AB1 could be addressing either the Social Worker or the audience. I would argue that this ambiguity has the effect of destabilising AB1’s deictic field. The reader/audience is now not sure whether this is within the embedded TAW or the framing TAW. Turn 902 is also ambiguous. We know that AB2 is the canonical narrator in the play, but it is unclear whether his speech is addressed to AB1 or to the audience. What we can note, however, is that AB2’s use of the present simple tense suggests that his deictic field is within the embedded TAW rather than the framing TAW. AB2’s deictic field within the framing TAW is now likely to be unbound and unprimed, as a result of this not having been reinstantiated since turn 853. The strongly evaluative lexis that AB2 uses in turn 902, such as ‘sepulchre’ and ‘evil-smelling tomb’, indicate a subjective description of events. The verb of perception (‘glimpse’) also indicates his perceptual point of view within the embedded TAW, and suggests that he does not have a full, clear view of Miss Shepherd. The verb of cognition (‘feel’) in turn 903 indicates AB1’s point of view, and this description of his thoughts suggests that he too has shifted discoursally and is now occupying a narratorial role. The effect of this is that AB1 now provides an external viewpoint of events in the embedded TAW. AB2, on the other hand, now seems positioned within the embedded TAW, and so AB1 and AB2 have effectively swapped roles. In turn 904 we can note that the spatial deictic verb ‘come’ indicates movement towards AB2’s deictic centre. AB2’s use of the adverb ‘seemingly’ in turn 904, however, indicates that he does not have access to the thoughts and feelings of the other characters he describes. The point of view that the reader/audience is presented with here is thus a subtle blend of AB1’s and AB2’s. AB1 provides commentary on the events in the embedded TAW

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 Point of View in Plays

from an external perspective, while AB2 provides commentary from within this fictional world. The purpose of having AB1 take up a deictic position outside the embedded TAW is perhaps to reflect his feelings of being left out of the final stages of Miss Shepherd’s life, after having been so closely involved with her for so long. Perhaps to emphasise this feeling of suddenly being excluded, AB2 hands over the task of narration to one of the minor characters, the neighbour, Rufus. AB2 says ‘Actually you can take this’ and the stage directions indicate that Rufus is aware of AB2. What seems to have occurred here is that once it has been established that AB1 can cross discourse roles, it then becomes possible for other characters in the play to do this too. The sense that we get at the beginning of the play, of AB2 as an author writing a play, is reinforced by AB2 now appearing to control what the other characters say. Thus, AB2’s deictic field in the framing fictional world is reinstantiated and rises in prominence, while the embedded TAW decreases in prominence. As a result of AB2’s handing over the task of narration to Rufus, Rufus shifts spatially and temporally out of the embedded TAW and into the framing TAW, and discoursally up to the narrator level. The reader/audience now witnesses events in the fictional world from his perspective which is external to the embedded TAW: [906] AB2 Professionals all, I suppose . . . one definition of the professional: the absence (or the non-expression) of disgust. Actually you can take this. Rufus, pointing to himself with a query, now goes on with the speech. [907] Rufus Surgeons. Lawyers. Even . . . I lower the stakes . . . even the gentlemen in brown overalls polishing the faucets in the stalls of the lavatory at the bottom of Parkway. What have they in common? Composure. Control.

The embedded TAW thus seems odd, due to Rufus becoming aware of the audience. This oddity might be said to arise because Ryan’s (1991) principle of minimal departure is flouted by Rufus suddenly being aware of, and being able to address, the reader/audience. Following Rufus’s speech it is then unclear whether the next scene, in which AB1 is cleaning out Miss Shepherd’s van, takes place in the embedded TAW or the framing TAW. Although the stage directions indicate that he is addressing AB2 (‘AB1 is almost giving dictation to AB2, holding up items as he clears out the van’), the amount of description and evaluative commentary in turn 910 suggests that AB1 is still, partially at least, functioning as a narrator figure. AB1 is almost giving dictation to AB2, holding up items as he clears out the van. [910] AB1 Her Rambo cap. Two bottles of Woodland Glade Moisturizer and After Bath Splash. Many packets of Options, which ought to be a business magazine or a brochure of leisure opportunities but is actually an incontinence pad. Many nasty spotted creeping insects. And a note: ‘Please arrange

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

funeral’, in brackets ‘if needed’. But no envelope. No next of kin. But there is money. Round her withered neck a bag containing £500. Bank books and building society deposits to the tune of £6,000 and trodden into the layers of sodden, urine-stained newspaper and old clothes that carpet the van there is another £900

It seems that AB1’s discourse role is, at this point, a blend of narrator and character, the effect of which is achieved by a combination of diegetic and mimetic elements. The narration provides a diegetic element whereas the actions described in the stage directions (which the reader can imagine and which the audience would be able to see) give the illusion of mimesis. The narration binds and primes the framing TAW while the actions of AB1 bind and prime the framing TAW. Thus, the reader/audience is aware of both the embedded TAW and the framing TAW; both are prominent in the reader/audience’s mind. Underwood, the character who had been blackmailing Miss Shepherd earlier in the play, then enters the embedded TAW and describes to AB1 the events that probably led to Miss Shepherd’s mental instability: [920] AB1 What had she done? [921] Underwood It’s what she didn’t do. A crossroads. Stop. Give way, you know the kind of thing. Major road ahead anyway. Banstead or thereabouts. Our lady at the wheel. Motor bike comes up, too fast maybe. Raining. Brakes, skids, hits the side of the van. Nobody’s fault. His, maybe, but not hers. She’s stationary at a junction. Gets out. Looks. He’s dead. Only young. Dead on the road. Thinks: licence? No. Insurance? No. Sees it all coming. So in a moment of panic . . . and sin . . . our holy lady drives off. Skedaddles. Does a bunk. A boy dead on the road and she fucks off. Thereby, you see, committing a felony. And you too, of course. This was an offence. Harbouring a felon.

Since AB1 and Underwood are addressing one another, it would seem that this conversation takes place at the character-to-character discourse level of the embedded TAW. The embedded TAW is thus likely to rise in prominence for the reader/audience as the framing TAW decreases in prominence and starts to decay. The decay of the framing TAW is also likely to be caused by the fact that Underwood’s speech in turn 921 in itself constitutes narration; Underwood is telling the story of what happened to Miss Shepherd. This is likely to cause the reader/audience to ‘forget’ about the framing TAW as they become engrossed in the story that Underwood tells. His story thus constitutes a description of his belief world. The way that he describes this belief world means that the reader/audience interprets events in this world partially from Miss Shepherd’s point of view. This is because Underwood’s account of the accident in which Miss Shepherd was involved describes events partially from her viewpoint, as a result of Underwood projecting her deictic centre. We can note the locational deictic expression ‘ahead’

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 Point of View in Plays

and the spatial deictic verb ‘comes’ in the description of the motor bike, both of which would reflect Miss Shepherd’s perception of events. However, the adverb ‘maybe’ in Underwood’s description of the speed of the bike reminds the reader that this is simply Underwood’s second-hand version of events. Nevertheless, the event-coding (Leech & Short 1981: 177; Short 1996: 275) of Underwood’s account (e.g. ‘Raining. Brakes, skids, hits the side of the van’) also reflects what would have been Miss Shepherd’s perception of events. Thus Underwood’s description constitutes a perceptual shift towards Miss Shepherd’s deictic centre and a temporal shift (indicated by the present tense) to the actual time of the accident. Underwood’s account, in effect, fills in the details of Miss Shepherd’s life that AB1 was unaware of. This is also the purpose of Leo Fairchild’s speech in turns 925 to 933. Fairchild turns out to be Miss Shepherd’s brother. At the point at which Leo Fairchild enters, the embedded TAW is still likely to be most prominent for the reader/audience, as a consequence of there having been no shift out of this TAW at the end of AB1’s conversation with Underwood. The framing TAW, on the other hand, is likely to have decayed. That the embedded TAW is still primed is made apparent in the stage directions preceding Fairchild’s entrance: AB1 is back inside the van, looking. As Underwood goes AB1 comes out with an envelope, which be opens. [924] AB1 Fairchild. (Calling after him) Was her name Fairchild? Storrington, Sussex? There is no answer. [925] Leo Fairchild Mr Bennett? [926] AB1 Yes? [927] Leo Fairchild You’ve written to me about a Mary Teresa Shepherd, a seventy-nine-year-old woman who has died. I have to tell you I know no such person.

The embedded TAW remains primed because the stage directions in the extract above indicate that AB1 is inside the van, which we know to exist only in this embedded fictional world. Also, AB1 speech in turn 924 appears to be addressed to himself rather than to the reader/audience, and is thus not explicit narration. Leo Fairchild then narrates to AB1 the missing details of Miss Shepherd’s life: [929] Leo Fairchild [. . .] Shepherd was not her name. She was born Margaret Fairchild. I am Leo Fairchild, her brother. Her brother who had her put away. In Banstead, which was, of course, an asylum. £7,000! [930] AB1 Why did you have her put away? [931] Leo Fairchild God. God, sin, hell. The whole bag of tricks. Morning, noon and night. My poor mother took refuge in the attic. I don’t regret it. Though in any case first chance she got she was over the wall and out. And, the

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important point, stayed free for a year and a day, which meant they couldn’t put her back. Odd length of time. A year and a day. Like a fairy story. Well, let me set your mind at rest. I don’t want the money. Give it away. Or keep it, why not?

In turn 942, AB1 appears to switch discourse role again, since he explicitly indicates what he is thinking: [942] AB1 All those years stood on my doorstep she was all the time on the run. Self-sacrifice, incarceration, escape and violent death . . . a life . . . this is what I keep thinking . . . a life beside which mine is just dull.

This access to AB1’s thoughts indicates his conceptual point of view, and since he actually voices his thoughts, it would seem that he is once more addressing the reader/audience. This affects the prominence of the embedded TAW, since AB1’s acknowledgement of the presence of the reader/audience emphasises the fictionality of it. I would argue that this causes the embedded TAW to decrease in prominence and for the prominence of the framing TAW to start increasing. In turn 943 there is a discoursal shift up to the level of narrator when AB2 describes Miss Shepherd’s funeral. However, it would appear from the use of the present simple rather than the past tense that AB2 is temporally close to the action in the embedded fictional world that he is describing. Thus, the reader/audience is aware of both the embedded and the framing TAWs. That what we are presented with is AB2’s point of view is apparent through the first person pronouns that are the subjects of the verbs of perception (e.g. ‘gaze’) and cognition (e.g. ‘reflect’ and ‘imagine’) that he uses: [943] AB2 I gaze down on her coffin and reflect that her new quarters are rather more commodious (and certainly sweeter) than that narrow stretch of floor on which she had slept these last twenty years. One of the undertaker’s men takes the eye though scarcely more than a boy. Not an occupation one drifts into, I imagine, undertaking, and one that, like becoming a policeman, implies a certain impatience with ordinary slipshod humanity . . . and in particular this piece of humanity that has got so slipshod as actually to die.

In turn 943, AB2 also projects, albeit ironically, the viewpoint of one of the undertakers. The reference to ‘ordinary slipshod humanity’ constitutes free indirect thought (Short 1996: 314) and is clearly a viewpoint that AB2 ironically ascribes to the undertaker, as is ‘this piece of humanity that has got so slipshod as actually to die’. This cannot be AB2’s personal point of view since using the phrase ‘this piece of humanity’ implies a lack of personal involvement with the deceased. Turn 943 thus presents AB2’s conceptual point of view but also projects the viewpoint of one of the undertakers. The shifts in viewpoint that occur are arguably as complex as any that occur in prose fiction writing.

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 Point of View in Plays

Following turn 943, the stage directions indicate that ‘Miss Shepherd rises from the grave’. This contradicts the physical laws of the Actual World, and since we have not been explicitly informed otherwise, we expect the TAW to resemble the AW in all respects (cf. Ryan’s 1991 principle of minimal departure; see 5.3.3). Because of this I would suggest that the stage directions (or the acting out of these in performance) trigger a shift into a fantasy universe belonging to AB2. The conversation that then follows between AB2, AB1 and Miss Shepherd occurs in this fantasy universe which is now bound and primed. Further evidence for this interpretation is the fact that Miss Shepherd now recognises the existence of AB2, whereas previously she has been unaware of his narratorial presence. Miss Shepherd then initiates a discussion about her van becoming a place of pilgrimage, during which she displays the same kind of jumps of logic that I argued in Chapter six indicates a deviant mind style: [957] Miss Shepherd Say the van were left on site, that would encourage a cult. Healing might take place and any proceeds . . . donations, jewellery and so forth . . . could go towards the nuns.

Miss Shepherd’s statement that if the van were ‘left on site’ it would ‘encourage a cult’ is not an inductively valid and so not a plausible conclusion, and her supposition that ‘healing might take place’ is, similarly, not a reasonable assumption to make. From what we know of Miss Shepherd’s reasoning abilities (see 6.3.2), this would seem typical of her logical jumps. AB2’s presentation of Miss Shepherd in his fantasy universe builds on the deviant mind style that she exhibits throughout the play. From her beyond-the-grave fantasy viewpoint, Miss Shepherd appears to be turning herself into a saint. Following this, the events of the play become increasingly more odd. Miss Shepherd appears to know that AB1 is writing a play based on her life (‘This play you’re writing, pump it up a bit’), and even suggests to him how he might improve it: [963] Miss Shepherd Why do you just let me die? I’d like to go up into heaven. An ascension. A transfiguration, possibly.

This is odd since characters do not prototypically talk across the character/narrator divide. This oddity (i.e. the fact that Miss Shepherd cannot possibly have made these comments after her death) is resolved if we recall that we are witnessing this scene from a position within AB1 and AB2’s fantasy universe. Since this fantasy universe is bound and primed, it is more prominent than either the embedded TAW or the framing TAW. Both of these TAWs will be less prominent than the fantasy universe, the framing TAW because it will be decaying, and the embedded TAW because its prominence will have decreased. Therefore it is easy for the reader/audience to lose sight of the fact that Miss Shepherd’s rising from the grave

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Chapter 7. Point of view in The Lady in the Van 

is actually a fantasy of AB1/AB2’s. The conversation that occurs is therefore one that AB1/AB2 imagines Miss Shepherd would have been likely to engage in had she actually known that Alan Bennett (the real world author) was indeed writing a play about her life. What makes The Lady in the Van so innovative is that, via such shifts into fantasy universes, Bennett the playwright is able to create complex point of view blends of a kind that are traditionally associated with the novel, and can also be found more easily in film and television drama than stage drama. For example, in the conversation between Miss Shepherd and AB1 and AB2 in turns 944 to 969, Bennett (the playwright) presents AB1’s external viewpoint of the embedded fictional world from the perspective of the framing TAW, narration from AB2 but within the embedded TAW, and the viewpoint of Miss Shepherd as AB2 imagines it might have been, had she known that Alan Bennett was writing a play based on her life. By having Miss Shepherd mention the writing of the play, Bennett points up the fictionality of the story he is telling. However, coupled with this is our knowledge that the story is based on fact. Therefore it is difficult to comprehend whether what we are reading/watching is fictional or not. In the study of prose fiction, the type of writing that blurs fiction and reality in this way is sometimes referred to as faction (Lodge 1971; see also Short 1996: 260). Miss Shepherd then gets into the van: Still laughing, she gets into the van. Workmen in hard hats now come on and with a good deal of ‘All right your end?’ -type dialogue which I shan’t attempt to transcribe they attach cables to the van, a flashing orange light offstage indicating the presence of the council truck. Slowly the van is hoisted up and as it ascends the workmen remove their hats, gazing upwards in reverence as, to celestial music and even a heavenly choir, the van disappears from view, leaving the stage dark and desolate and the two Alan Bennetts alone.

It is difficult to know at this point whether we are still in the fantasy universe or if we have left it and have been shifted back into the TAW. The reference to the workmen and the council truck would suggest the TAW, though there are vestiges of the fantasy universe remaining (indicated by the celestial music and the heavenly choir). The oddity appears to arise from the fact that, as at the beginning of the play, it is difficult to work out which particular world we are witnessing events in, and from what deictic field. Following the action described in the stage directions, AB2’s turn constitutes a discoursal shift back up to the narrator level within the framing TAW, as he reflects on his life with Miss Shepherd:

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 Point of View in Plays

[970] AB2 Starting out as someone incidental to my life, she remained on the edge of it so long she became not incidental to it at all. As homebound sons and daughters looking after their parents think of it as just marking time before their lives start, so like them I learned there is no such thing as marking time, and that time marks you. In accommodating her and accommodating to her, I find twenty years of my life has gone. This broken-down old woman, her delusions and the slow abridgement of her life with all its vehicular permutations . . . these have been given me to record as others record journeys across Tibet or Patagonia or the thighs of a dozen women. Actually her only permanent legacy is moths . . . or moth, as the upper classes say. Moths, which I thought went out with my childhood, Mr Attlee, utility furniture and Cremola pudding, now infest my home and the houses of all my neighbours, their eggs like a smudge on the fabric, clustered on the edge of the papers that I sift through for this play.

AB2’s mention of ‘the papers that I sift through for this play’ also suggests that we have returned to the temporal point in the framing TAW at which the play began – i.e. with AB2 sitting down to write a play about Miss Shepherd. This contextual trigger effectively unbinds and unprimes the deictic fields of the characters within the fictional world that AB2 describes, and prepares the reader/audience for a shift out of the framing TAW and back into the AW. The prominence of AB2’s deictic field is therefore likely to decrease as we become more aware of our default deictic field in the Actual World. Our default deictic field is made even more prominent because of AB2’s reference to the reader/audience using the pronoun ‘they’ in turn 974: [973] AB1 Look. This has been one path through my life . . . me and Miss Shepherd. Just one track. I wrote things; people used to come and stay the night, and of both sexes. What I mean to say is, it’s not as if it’s the whole picture. Lots of other stuff happened. No end of things. [974] AB2 They know that.

For the reader/audience, the move out of the fictional world and back into the real world is then triggered by the final stage direction in which AB2 and AB1 leave the stage: He puts his arm around him and they go off together.

Having both AB1 and AB2 leave the stage means that there is no member of the dramatis personae left to tell the story. This indicates the end of the play and unbinds and unprimes the framing TAW. The reader/audience consequently shifts back into their default deictic field in the Actual World, which has becomes bound and primed once more.

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. Conclusion In the analysis above I hope to have shown how it is possible to apply the modified version of deictic shift theory (involving also Emmott’s 1997 work on narrative comprehension and Ryan’s 1991 approach to possible worlds) that I outlined in Chapters four and five in a cognitive stylistic analysis of viewpoint in The Lady in the Van. I would argue that applying this analytical technique assists in interpreting and appreciating the play. For example, it explains some of the seemingly impossible occurrences in the play, such as Miss Shepherd’s return from the grave, by postulating that the reader/audience moves not only between deictic fields, but also between the alternative possible worlds of the TAW. By applying the modified version of deictic shift theory I have also been able to show how Bennett (the playwright) is able to create innovative and interpretatively meaningful viewpoint effects throughout the play. I would argue that the subtleties of the viewpoint shifts in the play contribute substantially to making the play such a complex and inventive drama, and that the point of view effects in the play are arguably as complex and subtle as any to be found in the novel.

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Chapter 8

Conclusion

. Summary I set out in this book to explore how the notion of point of view is relevant to the stylistic analysis of dramatic texts. My reasons for doing this stemmed from the fact that, although viewpoint has largely been disregarded in the criticism of drama, some dramatic texts exhibit discourse architectures that are at least as complex as prose fiction narratives (sometimes more so, as I showed in 1.6). This in itself suggests that point of view is relevant to the analysis of dramatic texts too, though, as I have shown, even in those dramatic texts exhibiting more prototypical discourse structures point of view effects can arise. In exploring the issue of point of view in drama I have focused to a large extent on Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van, since this is a play that has the kind of complex discourse architecture mentioned above. The motivation for this approach stemmed in many ways from the established stylistic practice of examining the unusual in order to obtain a better perspective on the usual (cf. foregrounding theory, van Peer 1986). Nevertheless, throughout the book I have also attempted to consider those dramatic texts with discourse structures more prototypical of drama. In order to explain the means by which viewpoint effects are created in dramatic texts I have considered a number of different approaches to viewpoint. In Chapter two I examined existing taxonomies of point of view in prose fiction. I began by considering definitions of the terms narrative and narration, concluding that narrative is best seen as a fuzzy concept and that, consequently, some dramatic texts will fall within this category. I then provided a critique of work on point of view in prose fiction. I showed how Genette’s (1980) work on focalisation is too imprecise to be an applicable model for stylistic analysis. Uspensky’s, Fowler’s, and Simpson’s work on the categorisation of narration in prose is a distinct improvement on Genette’s work, though these models still prove too restrictive to apply to dramatic texts. The frameworks outlined by Uspensky (1973), Fowler (1996 [1986]) and Simpson (1993) suffer as a result of their not being able to cope with types of narration that may not fit within the categories they propose. As a result of this, I then considered Chatman’s work on point of view (1978, 1986, 1990), which is useful in part due to the fact that it was developed for use on both prose fiction and film. Having discussed the categories of narration and point of view proposed

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by Genette, Uspensky, Fowler, Simpson and Chatman, I then described the checklist of linguistic indicators of viewpoint outlined in Short (1996). I demonstrated how these could be applicable to dramatic texts and also introduced some further linguistic indicators of point of view discussed by Short (2000) and myself (McIntyre 2004). I showed how examining linguistic indicators of viewpoint is useful when describing the triggers for the deictic and world shifts discussed in Chapters four, five and seven. In Chapter three I provided a critique of the small amount of work that has been done on point of view in drama. I began by arguing that the traditional distinction between mimesis and diegesis cannot be held, and that in dramatic texts the illusion of mimesis is created by diegetic means. This position provides support for my argument that the discourse structure of dramatic texts is more complex than has traditionally been thought. Following this, I outlined the early work of Groff (1959) on point of view in drama, before considering Richardson’s (1988) taxonomy of categories of narration in drama. I suggested that this taxonomy suffers from the same problems as those of Uspensky (1973), Fowler (1996 [1986]) and Simpson (1993). It cannot necessarily account for every variety of narration in drama and it cannot explain the co-occurrence of viewpoints, or how particular points of view are constructed. I also showed how none of the existing work on point of view in drama explains how viewpoint effects are created linguistically in dramatic texts, which I have consequently tried to spell out in detail in this book. In Chapter three I also looked at stage directions, an aspect of the dramatic text much neglected by critics. In considering the taxonomies of stage directions proposed by Aston and Savona (1991) and Feng and Shen (2001), I showed how stage directions can generate viewpoint effects as a result of them often constituting narrative elements in the dramatic text. Finally in Chapter three I considered work on point of view in film drama, and how some cinematic techniques for creating viewpoint effects might also be realised in stage drama. In Chapters four, five and six I focussed on demonstrating how the point of view phenomena noticeable in drama might be explained. In doing this I presented a modified version of Duchan et al.’s (1995) deictic shift theory to explain viewpoint effects in dramatic texts. The extended analysis of The Lady in the Van that I presented in Chapter seven highlights the active role of readers in constructing fictional viewpoints from the textual and contextual triggers they encounter as they read. In applying deictic shift theory to explain the creation of point of view effects in drama, I have speculated on the cognitive activities of readers as they navigate their way through a dramatic text. The modifications that I have made to deictic shift theory are designed to provide a greater degree of descriptive and explanatory power to the analysis of viewpoint. Deictic shift theory points out that the first shift that a reader makes when they begin to read a text is from their deictic field within the real world to a deictic field within the world of the text. The

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Chapter 8. Conclusion 

modified version of deictic shift theory I have employed spells out in more detail exactly what is involved here, by mapping concepts from Ryan’s (1991) model of possible worlds on to deictic shift theory. Ryan’s notion of re-centering equates to what deictic shift theory refers to as the PUSH into the fictional world. I have argued that as well as distinguishing between the real and the fictional world, we can also distinguish between varieties of possible worlds within the text itself. Each of these worlds will contain deictic fields and thus it is possible within a text to move among worlds, and also to move among the deictic fields of these worlds. In order to better explain how it is possible for readers to be aware of and monitor multiple worlds and deictic fields, I have further suggested that concepts from Emmott’s (1997) contextual frame theory might be gainfully employed within deictic shift theory. In 4.6.2 I showed how it is possible for more than one world or deictic field to be, in Emmott’s (1997) terms, bound (that is, linked to a specific context) at any one time, and that, of these, one particular world or field will be primed. This accounts for instances such as that in Death of a Salesman (see also 4.6.2) where the reader/audience is exposed simultaneously to multiple worlds and deictic fields. I also used the term prominence, to refer to the extent to which a world or deictic field might be primed. What I have suggested is that worlds or deictic fields that are at the forefront of a reader’s mind can be said to have a high degree of prominence. Various medial forms of prominence are also theoretically possible.

. Concluding remarks My purpose in this book has been to consider the notion of point of view and how this relates to dramatic texts. Throughout, I have concentrated predominantly on Alan Bennett’s play The Lady in the Van, and this culminated in the extended analysis presented in Chapter 7 that demonstrated how it was possible to apply in detail a slightly modified version of deictic shift theory in the analysis of viewpoint in drama. As Stockwell (2002c: 73) points out, though, all stylistic analysis should have as one of its main aims the interpretation of texts. For this reason it is worth summarising the interpretative value of applying point of view analysis to The Lady in the Van. My analysis of viewpoint in The Lady in the Van shows up how interesting and innovative Alan Bennett’s play is. By shifting the reader/audience between the fictional worlds and variant deictic fields of the text, Bennett is able to create the type of viewpoint effects found most commonly in the novel. Hence, we are exposed to the subjective viewpoints of AB1 and AB2, as well as the point of view of Miss Shepherd and, at times, the play’s minor characters. In the dramatic figures of AB1 and AB2, Bennett has created a unique means of presenting characters’ thought, in addition to allowing the reader/audience both external and internal points of

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 Point of View in Plays

view on the events in the fictional worlds. By moving the reader/audience between viewpoints within the fictional worlds, Bennett is also able to create subtle point of view blends, and I would argue that techniques such as these are what make the play so complex, subtle and innovative, and have led to the critical plaudits it has received. I have argued throughout this book that, far from being an irrelevance to the genre, point of view can be as important in dramatic texts as it is in the novel, and that applying viewpoint analysis in detail to play-texts can be interpretatively revealing and can highlight the structural complexity of a dramatic text and show up the kind of viewpoint effects most commonly associated with prose fiction. There remains, of course, much work to be done in this area, both in extending and operationalising the theories involved and applying them to a range of dramatic texts which have interesting viewpoint effects. I hope that this book will provide a point of departure for such future work.

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Index

A accessibility relations see possible worlds theory Across the Hall  actual world see possible worlds theory All Quiet on the Western Front  alternative possible world see possible worlds theory And Then There Were None  Archer, D. , – As You Like It ,  Aston, E. , , , ,  B Bühler, K. – background see foregrounding theory Bal, M. , –, –, , ,  Barnard, J. –, , – Being John Malkovich  belief world see possible worlds theory Bennett, A. , –, , , , , , – Beyond the Fringe ,  binding see contextual frame theory Bockting, I. , ,  Bordwell, D. , – boulomaic see modality Brannigan, E. ,  Brecht, B. , –, – Brimstone and Treacle ,  Brooks, P.  Brooks, C. ,  Brown, S. , ,  Bruder, G. A.  see also Duchan, J. F. Burton, D. 

C Captain Corelli’s Mandolin –,  Carroll, N. – category see prototype theory Caucasian Chalk Circle, The , ,  center – Changing Places – Chatman, S. , –, , , , –, , , , , , , , ,  Chicago Conspiracy, The , ,  Clockwise  cognition , , –, , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , –, –, , , , ,  cognitive linguistics , ,  cognitive metaphor theory  conceptual metaphor  conceptual point of view see point of view contextual frame theory , –, , , ,  binding –, , ,  priming –, , , , ,  Culpeper, J. ,  D Death of a Salesman –, , , , –, , , ,  deductive see logic definite reference , –,  deictic shift theory –, , –, , –, , –, –, , ,

, -, , , , – deictic decay  deictic field –, , –, –, , , –, –, , –, –, – deictic projection  deictic shift –, , –, , –, , –, –, , , , –, , , , , , , ,  edgework – pop –, –, –, ,  push –, –, , , , , , –,  deixis , , , –, ,  deictic centre , –, –, , –, , , –, , , –, –, , – empathetic , –,  person  place  relational  social –, – spatial –, , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , –, ,  temporal  deontic see modality diegesis , –, , ,  direct speech see speech presentation discours 

 Point of View in Plays discourse –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , –, , , , –, –, , , –, –, –, , – discourse architecture see discourse structure discourse role , , , , ,  discourse structure –, –, , , , , , , , , , –, , , – distance –, , , , , , , –, , , ,  Dombey and Son – Dr No – dramatis personae –, , –, , ,  dreams , , , , , , ,  Duchan, J. F. , , –, ,  E edgework see deictic shift theory Educating Rita  Elam, K. ,  Emmott, C. , , –, , , ,  emotion ,  empathetic deixis see deixis epistemic see modality evaluative lexis see point of view, linguistic indicators of event-coding see point of view, linguistic indicators of Exception and the Rule, The –, –,  external point of view see point of view external focalization see focalization external narration see narration extra-dialogic see stage directions F fabula –, ,  faction  fantasy universe see possible worlds theory Father of the Bride 

fictional world , –, , , , –, , , , , , –, –, –, , –, –, –, –, , , –, , –, –, , –, –, , –, –,  Filling ,  film , , –, , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , , , – filter see point of view first-person see narration flashback , ,  Fludernik, M. – focalization –, –,  external – focalizer , ,  internal – non-focalized narrative  zero focalization – focus of narration ,  foregrounding theory background , , , , , , –, , ,  foreground , , , , , , –, , , , ,  foregrounding , –, , , , , , ,  formalist ,  Fortune and Men’s Eyes  Fowler, R. , , , –, –, –, –, , , , –, , –, , , – frame , , –, –, , –, , , , ,  frame narrator see narrators, types of frame-story – framing , , , , , –, , – fuzzy see prototype theory

G Galbraith, M. , , , –, –, , , , ,  generative narrator see narrators, types of

Genette, G. , , , –, , , , , – Goon Show, The ,  Grice, H. P. –, , , , , ,  Groff, E. , , –, , , , , ,  H Halliday, M. A. K. ,  Harris, S. , , , , ,  heterodiegetic see narration Hewitt, L. E. see Duchan  histoir  homodiegetic see narration Hound of the Baskervilles, The ,  I ideological point of view see point of view implied author  in medias res , , , ,  indefinite reference , –, ,  indirect speech see speech presentation inductive see logic Insurance Man, The – Island of the Day Before, The ,  intention worlds see possible worlds theory interest-focus – interference  internal point of view see point of view internal focalization see focalization internal narration see narration intra-dialogic see stage directions intransitive , , ,  INUS conditions see narrative connections invalid see logic involvement , , , , ,  K Kiss Kiss ,  knowledge world see possible worlds theory

Index 

L Lady in the Van, The , , –, , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , –, –, , –, –, , , – Last English King, The  Leech, G. , , , , , –, ,  Levinson, S. , , , , , , , ,  Life of Brian – limited viewpoint see point of view logic deductive – inductive , , –, –, , ,  invalid  premise –,  valid , , –, ,  Lyons, J. , –, ,  M metaphor see cognitive metaphor theory mimesis , –, , ,  mind style , , , –, , , , –, –, , , ,  see also world view modality , , ,  boulomaic  deontic  epistemic  modal , , , ,  Moll Flanders , – monodramatic narrator see narrators, types of Monty Python’s Flying Circus  Mousetrap, The – Moving Finger, The  N narration –, –, , –, –, , , , , , , , –, –, –, –, , –, , , , , –, , , –, , –, , – external –, , 

first-person , , , , , , , ,  heterodiegetic  homodiegetic ,  internal , ,  second-person , , , ,  third-person , , , –, , , , ,  narrative –, , –, –, , –, , –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, , –, , , , –, , , – narrative mood  narrative voice ,  narrative comprehension , –,  see also contextual frame theory narrative connections – INUS conditions  narratorial mediation see narrator narrator types of frame narrator , – generative narrator ,  internal narrator  monodramatic narrator – narratorial mediation , , , , ,  non-focalized narrative see focalization O objective –, , , , ,  obligation worlds see possible worlds theory Old Times , ,  Our Town – P paradigms of reality , , –, – paralepsis  paralipsis  Pennies from Heaven –, , , , ,  perception , , –, , –, , , , , , , , –

perceptual point of view see point of view performance , , –, , , , , , –, , –, –, , , , , –, , –, ,  person deixis see deixis perspective , –, , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , –, , , –, –, , ,  Peter Pan –, –,  place deixis see deixis play-text ,  point of view –, –, –, –, –, , –, –, –, –, –, –, , , , , , , , , –, , , –, –, , , , –, , , , , – passim conceptual , –, , , –, , , , , , ,  external , –, –, –, , , , , –, –, , , –, ,  filter – ideological –, , , ,  internal , , –, –, , –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , –,  limited  linguistic indicators of deixis see deixis (main entry) evaluative lexis , , ,  see also value-laden language event-coding , ,  given information – new information – psychological sequencing ,  schema-oriented language – see also schema theory value-laden language  see also evaluative lexis

 Point of View in Plays on the ideological plane , , , ,  on the phraseological plane – on the plane of psychology  perceptual , , , –, –, , , , , , ,  psychological ,  slant – spatial – spatio-temporal , , ,  temporal , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, –, , ,  pop see deictic shift theory possible worlds theory see also truth conditional semantics Ronen, R.  Ryans’s model accessibility relations , ,  actual world –, –, , , –, , , ,  alternative possible world ,  belief world , ,  fantasy universe –, –, , –, – intention worlds  knowledge world – obligation worlds  principle of minimal departure , , ,  prospective extensions of knowledge worlds  textual reference world  textual universe ,  wish worlds  premise see logic presupposition , ,  priming see contextual frame theory principle of minimal departure see possible worlds theory Princess Bride, The ,  prominence –, –, , –, , , –, –, –, , 

prose , , , , , –, , , , , , –, –, , –, –, , –, , , , –, , , ,  prospective extensions of knowledge worlds see possible worlds theory prototype theory categories , , , , , – fuzzy , , ,  proximity , , , ,  psychological point of view see point of view psychological sequencing see point of view, linguistic indicators of Puny Little Life Show, The  push see deictic shift theory R real world , –, , , , –, , , –, –, , , –, , , –,  reality , , , , , –, , , , –, , –, –,  reality paradigm see paradigms of reality reflector ,  relational deixis see deixis Richard III , ,  Richardson, B. , , , –, –, , ,  Rimmon-Kenan, S. – Ronen, R.  see also possible worlds theory Ryan, M. L. , , , , , –, –, , , , , –, , , , ,  see also possible worlds theory S Savona, G. , , , ,  schema theory  schema –,  schematic knowledge , –,  screen directions , , –, –, , , , , , 

see also stage directions Searle, J. R.  second-person see narration Segal, R. , , , , , ,  semantics see truth conditional semantics Semino, E. , , , , , –, , , ,  shift see deictic shift theory Shklovsky, V. ,  Short, M. , –, –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, ,  Simpson, P. , , –, –, , , , , – sjuzhet –, , , ,  slant see point of view social deixis see deixis sociology  Sound and the Fury, The ,  spatial see deixis spatial point of view see point of view spatio-temporal see point of view speech presentation – direct speech –, –,  indirect speech – stage directions , , –, –, , , , , –, , , , , –, , , –, , –, , , , , , , , , –, –,  see also screen directions extra-dialogic – intra-dialogic  stance , ,  Stockwell, P. , , , –, –, , ,  subjective –, , , , , , , , , ,  T temporal point of view see point of view temporal deixis see deixis text worlds  see also fictional world, possible worlds theory

Index 

textual reference world see possible worlds theory textual universe see possible worlds theory third-person see narration thought presentation , , –, , , – see also speech presentation transitivity , ,  truth conditional semantics – U underlexicalisation  Up Pompeii –, 

Uspensky, B. , –, , –, –, , –, , – Usual Suspects, The  V valid see logic value-laden language see point of view, linguistic indicators of Veltrusky, J. ,  W Warren, R. P. ,  Weingarten, B. E. , , –,  Werth, P. 

Wilson, G. M. , –,  Wilson, P.  Wind in the Willows, The  wish worlds see possible worlds theory Withnail and I –, , , –, , ,  world-view , –,  see also mind style Y Young, K. G.  Z zero focalization see focalization

In the series Linguistic Approaches to Literature the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 3 2 1

McIntyre, Dan: Point of View in Plays. A cognitive stylistic approach to viewpoint in drama and other text-types. 2006. xi, 203 pp. Simpson, Paul: On the Discourse of Satire. Towards a stylistic model of satirical humour. 2003. xiv, 242 pp. Semino, Elena and Jonathan Culpeper (eds.): Cognitive Stylistics. Language and cognition in text analysis. 2002. xvi, 333 pp.

Point of View in Plays: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Viewpoint in Drama and Other Text-types (Linguistic Approaches to Literature)

Cognitive and communicative approaches to linguistic analysis

Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis

Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre (Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance)

Language in the Context of Use: Discourse and Cognitive Approaches to Language (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Towards a Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Language Comprehension

Critical Approaches to Literature

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture)

Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture)

Directions in Empirical Literary Studies: In Honor of Willie Van Peer (Linguistic Approaches to Literature)

Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology

On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humor (Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 2)

Studies In Linguistic Motivation (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary and Phraseology (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Studies In Linguistic Motivation (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach

A Certain Point of View

Words and Other Wonders (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

A Certain Point of View

The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach

Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of René Dirven (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of RenA© Dirven (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature

Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature

Grimm Language: Grammar, Gender and Genuineness in the Fairy Tales (Linguistic Approaches to Literature (Lal))

The Language of Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology - Vol. 13)

The Point of View

A View to Possession

Phonology: A Cognitive View (Tutorial Essays in Cognitive Science Series)

Point of View in Plays: A Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Viewpoint in Drama and Other Text-types (Linguistic Approaches to Literature)

Cognitive and communicative approaches to linguistic analysis

Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis

Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre (Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance)

Language in the Context of Use: Discourse and Cognitive Approaches to Language (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Towards a Cognitive Linguistic Approach to Language Comprehension

Critical Approaches to Literature

A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

The Neural Imagination: Aesthetic and Neuroscientific Approaches to the Arts (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture)

Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts (Cognitive Approaches to Literature and Culture)

Directions in Empirical Literary Studies: In Honor of Willie Van Peer (Linguistic Approaches to Literature)

Literary and Linguistic Approaches to Feminist Narratology

On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humor (Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 2)

Studies In Linguistic Motivation (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Cognitive Linguistic Approaches to Teaching Vocabulary and Phraseology (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Studies In Linguistic Motivation (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach

A Certain Point of View

Words and Other Wonders (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

A Certain Point of View

The Morphology of Chinese: A Linguistic and Cognitive Approach

Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of René Dirven (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of RenA© Dirven (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics)

Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature

Other Renaissances: A New Approach to World Literature

Grimm Language: Grammar, Gender and Genuineness in the Fairy Tales (Linguistic Approaches to Literature (Lal))

The Language of Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology - Vol. 13)

The Point of View

A View to Possession

Phonology: A Cognitive View (Tutorial Essays in Cognitive Science Series)

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