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- Title
Why do we accept a narrative discourse ascribed to a 'third-person narrator' as true? The classical, and a cognitive approach.
- Authors
Szabó, Erzsébet
- Abstract
The aim of the present paper is to discuss the question of why readers accept a literary narrative discourse attributed traditionally to an 'omniscient third-person narrator' unconditionally as true. I will advocate two theses. First, that this characteristic of narrative comprehension is a consequence of a grammatical feature of the narrative discourse, namely, the absence of the 'narrating-I.' This format mimics what Cosmides and Tooby label as scope-free representation, i.e., a representation that is not bound by scope-operators and thus treated by a cognitive architecture as architecturally true. Second, narrative discourse ascribed traditionally to a third person narrator should be understood as the linguistic representation of the true states of affairs of a narrative world.
- Subjects
NARRATIVE discourse analysis; COGNITIVE analysis; PSYCHOLOGICAL criticism; OMNISCIENT narration; THIRD person narrative
- Publication
Semiotica, 2015, Vol 2015, Issue 203, p123
- ISSN
0037-1998
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/sem-2014-0075