Indirect Style Research Articles

A Screenplay in the Form of a Comic Strip: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Drawings for La terra vista dalla luna

This article analyzes the drawings that Pier Paolo Pasolini made for his short film, La terra vista dalla luna, in 1967. Pasolini originally intended to publish his sketches in a comic book that, in the end, he did not complete. These drawings eschew any clear-cut definition. They are an attempt at a comic book, but they also visualize Pasolini’s screenplay so closely that they could be the film’s storyboard. Whether they are functional to the film or conceived to tell the same story in a different medium, these drawings represent a residual text that sheds light on Pasolini’s conversion to the figurative arts. His hand-drawn images investigate the function of colour, while exemplifying Pasolini’s observations on linguistic contamination, the merging of high- and lowbrow expressive forms, free indirect style and the new literary monstra represented by hybrid narrative structures.

Ensuring Moral Development in Physical Education

The physical education setting offers a unique opportunity to educate the whole student. It would seem appropriate then, that physical education teachers place strong emphasis on the aspect of moral development and character building, however, this can be a challenging task. To accomplish this, the purpose of this article is to provide strategies to physical education teachers that can be easily implemented within their physical education classroom. Key strategies include modeling appropriate behavior, incorporating teacher and student led discussions, pinpointing positive as well as negative behavior, creating sporting dilemmas, using indirect teaching styles, creating a task-involving climate, and using principles such as the “hand of fair play” within physical education programs.

Training the Picturesque Eye: The Point of Views in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

This essay explores the relationship between landscape representation and narrative point of view in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, arguing that her innovations with focalization and free indirect style are informed by her knowledge of Reverend William Gilpin’s work on the picturesque and her own travels and sketches. By examining the various spectatorial stances Austen’s characters assume in light of Peter de Bolla’s insights upon eighteenth-century visual practices, the essay demonstrates how Austen uses these narrative techniques to shift the locus of authority to those who were historically marginalized.

Étude Comparative de L'emploi du Style indirect libre dans l’œuvre romanesque de Flaubert et D'Austen

Gustave Flaubert and Jane Austen died at opposite ends of the nineteenth century, on opposite sides of the English Channel, and almost at opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Consequently, their novels are in many ways very different and seldom the object of comparative studies. However, given that both novelists experimented with advanced narrative techniques usually known under the umbrella term free indirect discourse (FID) or style indirect libre (SIL), this study seeks to compare the ways in which each novelist used this technique in a selection of passages from their works.

Pivoting towards Empiricism: A Response to Fletcher and Monterosso

Suzanne Keen’s response to Fletcher and Monterosso evaluates their contribution to cognitive narratology and the psychology of narrative impact. Arguing that “there is more than one possible function for FID,” Fletcher and Monterosso design a clever experiment manipulating textual samples by increasing the amount of discourse in free indirect style in contrast to thought report (psycho-narration) or externalized narration in the originals. Employing follow-up questionnaires about affective response, perspective taking and role taking on the one hand, and attitudes towards revenge on the other hand, Fletcher and Monterosso discover that while FID enriched samples aroused emotional engagement in some readers, the increased emotional response was felt for the victim’s suffering rather than inducing empathy with the revenger’s emotions and actions. Keen discusses the narratological component, free indirect discourse, the link to reader’s empathy, and the methodology of Fletcher and Monterosso’s textual manipulations. With a nod to Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading, Keen notes that Fletcher and Monterosso’s work depicts active readers responding differently from one another. She offers cautions about the constitution of research subject pools, which should be as diverse as possible to arrive at persuasive observations about the impact of form. Keen affirms that narrative theorists can both contribute to and benefit from study of the various psychological responses to manipulations of narrative techniques.

‘Fraternity in diversity’ or ‘feudal fanatics’? Representations of ethnicity in Rwandan presidential rhetoric

ABSTRACTBetween independence in 1962 and the genocide in 1994, only two presidents ruled Rwanda. In addition to the enormous economic and developmental challenges that faced Presidents Grégoire Kayibanda (1962–73) and Juvénal Habyarimana (1973–94), each had to manage the ethnic divisions that plagued the country. In this paper Mayersen explores how each president discussed the issue of ethnicity in presidential speeches, interviews and key policy documents. Ostensibly, Presidents Kayibanda and Habyarimana both promoted national unity and advocated allegiance to a unified Rwandan identity rather than a focus on ethnicity. President Kayibanda called for ‘tolerance and understanding between the ethnicities’, while Habyarimana entreated Rwandans to ‘love your countrymen without distinction of ethnic or regional origin’. Yet in the allusive and indirect communication style typical of Rwandan discourse, underneath the presidential promotion of unity was a more complex message. Mayersen argues that the way each president addressed the issue served to maintain a high level of consciousness regarding ethnicity, and contributed to ongoing ethnic disharmony.

Cultural policy through the prism of fiction (Michel Houellebecq)

Cultural policy studies tends to talk about fiction without actually using it. A typical move is to place it in an aesthetic realm to be protected, situated and/or critiqued. This is an eminently worthwhile activity. However, this paper explores some ways in which works of fiction may, following their own dynamic, yield significant perspectives upon the world of cultural policy itself. In what ways do fictional works offer us prisms through which to reappraise the worlds of cultural policy? What are the effects of the reconfigurative imaginative play to which they subject the institutions of that world? How are the discourses of cultural policy reframed when redeployed by novelists within free indirect style or internal monologue? The article begins by distinguishing four broad modes in which fictional works refract the world of cultural policy, and then analyses in more fine-grained detail two novels by the leading French writer Michel Houellebecq.

Travel's Others: Realism, Location, Dislocation

This article explores the realist novel's reliance on the discourse of travel developed in the early decades of the nineteenth century, the discourse that authorized self-styled travelers over against the vulgar and proliferating tourists. Taking Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary as a case study, the article shows how the novel structures itself around the sets of oppositions travel discourse employed, most notably that of stasis and mobility, or dwelling and traveling. The fictional narrator strives for authority over against a set of characters differently figured as fixed in place or in entrenched mentalities, and Flaubert's masterful use of free indirect style becomes the narrator's means of establishing that authority through the demonstration of unparalleled mental mobility the technique affords.

The Words I Put in Your Mouth: The Sexual Politics of Rambling, Direct and Indirect Style in Kerouac's Tristessa

This article explores how Kerouac's instrumental use of rambling, direct and indirect styles in Tristessa (1960) impacts its sexual politics. After having deciphered the attributes of the narrative voice that integrates Kerouac's aesthetics of spontaneous prose, we will turn to the character of Tristessa and analyze the features of her speech. As a discrepancy appears between the male-subject (Duluoz) and the female-object (Tristessa), we will examine the effects that such stylistic choices entail in Kerouac's narrative project, especially at the level of its economy of desire and its translation in terms of sexual politics in the novella.

Moira Buffini's Handbagged: British History and Politics as Indirect Sources

Literature has traditionally functioned as a means of entertainment and education. In achieving this dual purpose literary texts mostly operate through indirect allusions, implications and concealments. This paper explores Moira Buffini's 2013 play, Handbagged, in its use of British history and politics as indirect sources for its subject matter. The play is significant for mainly two reasons: in terms of content and form. Contentwise the playtext can be studied as an approximation, deconstruction and reconstruction of recent British history and politics in an indirect style. Formwise the playwright employs interesting techniques of doubling in creating an older and a younger version of Britain's two most powerful women. While the playwright imagines the private nature of the Queen's and Thatcher's conversations, she creates a satirical, political theatre which is also a rich history lesson. As the title suggests the play is concerned with the past and the way history and politics are crystallised, deconstructed and recreated on stage at present.

The development of free indirect constructions in Dutch novels

Abstract Why is the free indirect style such a useful narrative means to portray characters' minds in fictional texts? This article gives more insight into this phenomenon by analyzing texts from earlier times. Previous studies state that the free indirect style for the representation of thoughts emerged in Dutch literary prose in the 19th century. However, this article shows that the roots of this technique were already present in 17th century Dutch popular literature novels. The analysis of these novels provides us with more insight into this phenomenon. Before the emergence of free indirect style, the most common form for the representation of a character's consciousness was direct discourse. The suggestion that the character is ‘thinking out loud' makes this thought representation unnatural, as emotions and feelings are often pre-verbal and wordless. Free indirect style gives the narrator the possibility to formulate that which the character cannot put into words. The free indirect style allows the author to merge descriptions of events and actions with the character's inner life, feelings, questions and wishes without a change in the narrative style when it comes to personal pronouns and tense.

A influência do resultado momentâneo do jogo nos padrões de ataque em equipes de Futebol de elite

The attacking performance in elite soccer is a complex process that is influenced by several situational variables, such as match status. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of match status on the configuration of attacking patterns of play performed by elite soccer teams based on the analysis of matches played by the semi-finalists of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. We observed 28 matches, 7 per semi-finalist team of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, resulting in 1938 attacks, further ordered according to match status (winning, drawing or losing). The SoccerEye observational instrument, SoccerEye recording software (version 3.2), and SDIS-GSEQ analysis software (version 5.1) were used. The national teams of Germany, Netherlands and Uruguay showed more difficulty in scoring goals while losing the match, although they scored after a positive crossing or after a free kick committed by the opposing team. The national team of Spain tended to shoot into the opponent goal after short passing, in both losing and winning situations. We conclude that attacking patterns of play were influenced by match status in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, with the exception of Spanish national team, which tended to use an indirect style of play with no dependence on match status.

Rancière’s Style

Jacques Rancière's political writings have enjoyed increased reception and engagement in the Anglo-American world. Yet few readers have paused to ask themselves what reading practices his works presume and evoke and if there is a politics to his stylistics. The conventional approach is one of reading Rancière with an analytic eye that finds insights into the conceptual armature of his theoretical interventions. Such a political methodology, however, is counterintuitive not only to the orientation of Rancière's political theory but also to his style of theoretical writing, which, as Bruno Bosteels rightly notes, “displays a brilliant use of the free indirect style of speech.” Style regards the arrangement of peoples, places, and events into collectivities. In this essay I elaborate Rancière's political style of writing. I begin by tracing Rancière's debt to Karl Marx's critique of capital's logic of equivalence. I then explore the sensibilities that arise from Rancière's adoption of free indirect discourse as part and parcel of his project of political emancipation. I conclude by showing how Rancière's turn to style offers a critique of political authority through a reimagining of the ambitions of political knowledge.

Parentheticals and the presentation of multipersonal consciousness: A stylistic analysis of Mrs Dalloway

The presentation of consciousness in Mrs Dalloway has long been a focus of study, and many scholars have investigated Woolf’s narrative techniques in this regard, especially her use of Free Indirect Style. However, most of the existing studies mainly concentrate on the consciousness presentation of individual characters. Few studies have provided adequate accounts concerning the arrangement of the shifting narrative viewpoints and the linguistic mechanism that facilitates the ‘multipersonal representation of consciousness’ in this novel (Auerbach, 2003 [1953]: 536). This article attempts to fill this research gap by examining the use of parentheticals in Mrs Dalloway. The syntactic independence of a parenthetical gives it a degree of freedom to digress from its host, which makes this construction a convenient device to bring in new sources of consciousness and thus shift the narrative viewpoint from one character to another. The frequent viewpoint shifts subvert the convention of adhering to a single coherent narrative point of view. Meanwhile, using parentheticals allows Woolf to present multiple points of view within a short stretch of text, even within a single sentence. In this way, a sense of simultaneity is created. Distinct sources of consciousness are brought closer to each other; the very boundaries between individual minds seem to be blurred.

How is Mrs Ramsay thinking? The semantic effects of consciousness presentation categories within free indirect style

The stylistic categories available for presenting consciousness have important semantic implications for the interpretation of fictional minds in narratives. Free indirect style, the broadest and most stylistically problematic of those categories, is particularly important because of the exceptional degree to which it grants readers access to characters’ mental experience. However, recent work in cognitive narratology (e.g. Herman, 2011a, 2011b; Palmer, 2004, 2011; Zunshine, 2006) has de-prioritized the category approach to consciousness presentation, and with it free indirect style, by adopting a cognitive science-based methodology that is less grounded in linguistic analysis. In this article I argue that a departure from consciousness presentation categories is not advantageous to the progression of narratological scholarship, and that a continued focus on the linguistic constructs that individuate the categories should be integrated with developments in the cognitive approach. This is because different categories and sub-categories have different semantic effects in terms of the extent to which they express verbal or non-verbal mental activity, as well as the aspects of consciousness that they evoke. The broad category of free indirect style in particular has a distinct semantic effect in relation to other techniques: it brings about what is best described as a representational relationship between the narrative discourse and the fictional consciousness. In order to substantiate these claims, I analyse a passage from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927), in which frequent shifts between and manipulations of consciousness presentation categories provide a context for elucidating their semantic implications.

Computer-Mediated Communication in Psychology Teaching: Influence of Cultural Background on e-Mail Content and on Appraisal

A significant amount of communication between lecturers and students takes place via e-mail. This study provides evidence that two types of cultural cues contained in the e-mail impacts lecturers' linguistic adaptation to, and appraisal of, the student. A total of 186 psychology lecturers from universities in Germany answered a fictitious student's e-mail inquiry and reported their perceptions of the student. The inquiry was manipulated with regard to ethnicity (German, Chinese) and communication style (direct, indirect). Further, the participants answered to one of two versions that differed in the wording. This was done in order to study lexical alignment. In the German ethnicity and direct style conditions, lecturers aligned more of their words to those of the students; in the Chinese ethnicity and indirect style conditions, lecturers' responses were longer and more polite. When ethnicity and style were congruent, fewer negative appraisals were produced.

Discourse markers in free indirect style and interpreting

This paper contributes to the discussion of how free indirect style (FIS) and interpreter's renditions are accommodated in a relevance theoretic approach to communication. Within relevance theory, it has been argued that FIS and interpreting are cases of attributive use: FIS representations and interpreters’ renditions are representations of the author's/interpreter's thoughts about attributed thoughts. We ask whether this approach can accommodate FIS representations and interpreters’ renditions which contain perspective dependent discourse markers, and in particular whether it captures the role played by these expressions in encouraging the reader/hearer to think that s/he has direct access to the thoughts of fictional characters/original speakers. We apply Blakemore's (2010) account of discourse markers in FIS to data from interpreter mediated police interviews where renditions include discourse markers added by the interpreter to develop an alternative relevance theoretic account. This allows us to reconcile the hearer's impression that the interpreter's voice is suppressed with research in interpreting studies which shows that interpreters are in reality both visible and active co-participants in these exchanges.

Sense and Sensibility and Suffering; or, Wittgenstein’s Marianne?

This essay approaches Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility through concerns drawn from ordinary language philosophy, developing the other minds problem against a teaching backdrop in which Elinor and Marianne serve as “pictures” of the title. I chart an alternate, minimal sensibility as the capacity to respond to stimuli at all. In addition to the troubling eclipse of Marianne as an expressive subject upon her marriage, Elinor’s opacity as a know able character is an obdurate weight inside the book. Teleological readings focusing on Austen’s so-called early free indirect style fail to register the appropriately thin (not “deep”) resiliency of the novel’s dissatisfying conclusion.

A Scientific Justification for Literature: Jane Austen’s Free Indirect Style as Ethical Tool

A Scientific Justification for Literature: Jane Austen’s Free Indirect Style as Ethical Tool

Voice and Expressivity in Free Indirect Thought Representations: Imitation and Representation

AbstractThis article addresses issues in the philosophy of fiction from the perspective of a relevance theoretic approach to communication: first, how should we understand the notion of ‘voice’ as it is used in the analysis of free indirect style narratives; and, second, in what sense can the person responsible for free indirect representations of fictional characters' thoughts be regarded as a communicator?The background to these questions is the debate about the roles of pretence and attribution in free indirect style. I argue that the role of expressives in sustaining the illusion that fictional characters speak their inner thoughts suggests that ‘voice’ should be understood in two distinct ways. On the one hand, there are cases in which the use of expressive devices leads to the formation of thoughts which are understood to resemble other (attributed) thoughts. On the other hand, there are other cases in which expressives are used as a means of simulating a fictional character's behaviour or style.At the same time, I argue that in order to accommodate free indirect thought representation in a relevance theoretic model of communication, the responsibility for ensuring that the effort of processing the text will be rewarded by optimal relevance must be decoupled from the point of view that is being represented. While the (constructed) author is responsible for orchestrating our interpretation of free indirect thought representations so that the effort of processing will result in optimal relevance, the reader does not necessarily assume this function is being performed by someone who intends to communicate their own thoughts: the relevance of the act of narration may instead lie in the sense of mutuality achieved between reader and character.