Semantics or pragmatics of fictionality? a modest proposal

Abstract

Fictionality is usually treated as a problem of ‘fiction’, i.e. of narrative literature alone. But in the drama, the action performed is, of course, fictional as well. In trying to elucidate both common and differing features in these two kinds of fictionality, the present article offers a new answer to the question whether fictionality should rather be analyzed in terms of semantics or of pragmatics. Within the framework of the author's ‘norm and deviation’ theory of literature it is shown that narrative fictionality is constituted by infraction of semantic conventions of standard language. dramatic fictionality, however, by infraction of pragmatic conventions. By means of this approach, a number of generic problems can be solved not only in clear cases of the drama (like Shakespeare) and the novel (like Sterne), but also in borderline cases as in the dramatic monologue, the philosophical dialogue, the documentary play, or the specific blend of Joyce's Ulysses. Narrative and dramatic fictionality coincide in the demand for fictional conclusiveness justiifying the respective linguistic deviations as their internal function.