Syntactical Tricks in the "Conversational" Style: A Linguistic Discourse Analysis of "Tristram Shandy"

Abstract

When the narrator in ”Tristram Shandy” claims ”writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation” (2:11) honest readers most naturally take on the role of the ”addressee.” The secret of the narrator's magical charm is delicately wrapped in various markers, which connect utterances in such a way as to presume the form and content of a conversational discourse. Under the narrator's strategic management, discourse markers successfully work out situations for him to negotiate sequences of different positions. Practically, the narrator is an opportunist when he stimulates the readers' responsive sentiment, which is willfully created and reverted for the narrator to consume. This play of consuming/consumed sentiment thus plays the role of feigning a friendly social milieu for pseudo-interactions to go on and enhance the pleasure of the readers. As Terry Eagleton assumes: ”The narrator of ”Tristram Shandy” is ostentatiously reader-friendly. His tone is genial, wryly amused, gently satirical” (89) this paper tries to genially reveal the ”reader-friendly” tricks of linguistic constructions in ”Tristram Shandy”, for readers of both linguistic and literary competency to cultivate a keener observation of textual strategies by way of thorough discourse analyses.