An Enquiry into the Meaning and Truth of Fictional Discourse

Abstract

Our day-to-day talk about the world becomes meaningful by aiming at being true, by making singular reference to past and present particulars and by presupposing that each item talked about is such that it either bears a certain property or its complement. Fictional discourse, whether original or derivative, does not seem to aim at plain truth and, on the face of it, makes singular reference to items like Pegasus which are not real at any time, not even in any possible world. And Sherlock Holmes is notoriously neutral between having or lacking a mole on his back. Yet talk about Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes or Mr Pickwick is not gibberish. It is even evaluated for correctness.1 How is this possible? To answer this question is to flesh out my idea of game (2). In this chapter, I shall discuss the questions of meaning, illocutionary force, and truth-value of different types of fictional talk. Related questions about the reference of names like “Desdemona”, the ontological status of characters of fiction, correct analysis of reports of real readers’ emotional reactions to unreal fictional objects, and about the alleged indeterminacy of fictional items will be taken up in the next chapter.