Demoting Fictional Names—A Critical Note to Predelli’s Fictional Discourse: A Radical Fictionalist Semantics

Abstract

The first line in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone reads: (Making)‘Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal…’ (Rowling 1997, p. 7) (Making) is an example of fiction-making talk. It is one of numerous linguistic constructs that make up the Harry Potter novel. Contrast (Making) with: (Reporting)‘Mr and Mrs Dursley like to think of themselves as normal people.’ (Reporting) is an example of fiction-reporting. Unlike fiction-making, whether you are doing a good job at fiction-reporting depends on an already created fiction. Some of us will find (Making) and (Reporting) puzzling. With (Making), Rowling (1997) appears to be saying of Mr and Mrs Dursley that they think of themselves as normal people, and with (Reporting), we appear to be saying pretty much the same. Yet, we know that Mr and Mrs Dursley are fictional characters, not real people. But if there are no Mr and Mrs Dursley, then what is the semantic contribution of the fictional names in (Making) and (Reporting)? Some hold that the denotations of fictional names, including as they occur in fiction-making talk, refer to abstract fictional characters (e.g. Salmon, 1998). Others argue that fictional names are not really names but disguised descriptions (e.g. Currie, 1990). Still others insist that fictional names are empty names, contributing nothing but an empty slot to the gappy propositions the sentences containing them encode (e.g. Eagle, 2007).