Free Indirect Discourse in the Translation into Finnish

Target ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarja Rouhiainen
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Person Reference ◽  
Mental Language ◽  
Third Person

Abstract Free indirect discourse (FID) is a narrative technique which purports to convey a character’s mental language while maintaining third-person reference and past tense. This paper deals with the problems the use of FID may create for Finnish translators of English literary narratives. A comparative analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love and its translation into Finnish shows that the translator’s treatment of the pronouns he/she may shift the viewpoint from the character’s consciousness to the narrator’s discourse. The article concludes with the question of what stylistic norms could explain the translator’s avoidance of the spoken-language simulation typical of the source text.

Narrated perception revisited: The case of Jane Austen’sEmma

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Pallarés-García
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Objective Fact ◽  
And Function

Jane Austen’s Emma (1816) is generally considered an ambiguous and unreliable narrative in terms of point of view (Morini, 2009: 53–57; Wallace, 1995: 77–97). These qualities are often attributed to the extensive use of free indirect discourse (Finch and Bowen, 1990: 5–6; Mezei, 1996: 72–75). This article aims to demonstrate that another narrative technique is also responsible for the ambiguity and unreliability of the novel. ‘Narrated perception’ (NP) portrays the sensory perceptions of a fictional character by describing events as they are experienced by that character (Fludernik, 1993: 305–309). NP has been pointed out by some critics to be a distinct narrative technique, but in general perception is included within the broader category of free indirect discourse (FID), and occasionally as an aspect of free indirect thought (FIT). This article suggests that there are some subtle differences between NP and FID/FIT, and thus it can be beneficial to examine NP separately. In fact, NP is frequently similar to pure narration in terms of form and function. As a case study, this article presents a stylistic analysis of a number of passages containing NP in Emma which do not typically feature in studies of FID/FIT. The analysis provides textual evidence of (1) the presence of Emma’s sensory perceptions within what looks like narration, (2) the close connection between perception, thought and emotion, and (3) the difficulty of distinguishing between perception and narration in some cases, which suggests the potential of NP to mislead the reader by presenting as a seemingly objective fact what later on turns out to be Emma’s mistaken assessment.

scholarly journals Narrative structure of literary text: Free indirect discourse as a linguistic and narratological category

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 59-68
Author(s):  
Natascha Jourdy
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse

The paper focuses on the analysis of free indirect discourse as a modernist narrative form. We outline the basic narrative and linguistic characteristics of free indirect discourse and examine its main functions in the literary texts. We undertake a comparative analysis of three examples of free indirect discourse (drawn from the texts of G. Flaubert, F. Kafka and V. Nabokov) and display their common and distinctive features.

Collective suffering and the possibility of empathy in Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 292-302
Author(s):  
Babli Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Shared Narrative

This article argues that Karan Mahajan’s The Association of Small Bombs and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss depart from conventional literary representations of the suffering of neoliberal subjects because they focus on collective rather than individual experiences of abjection. Emphasizing the breakdown in state services, the rise in insurgent groups, and the monetization of human life, the novels consider the possibility of empathy in a society structured by self-preoccupation and extreme inequality. The article compares how the two novels imagine coping with the condition of abjection, and focuses on their shared narrative technique of free indirect discourse as a means of encouraging empathy with characters.

Two Paths for the Big Book: Olga Tokarczuk's Shifting Voice

Genre ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Bartoszyńska
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
The Third ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Narrative Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Single Voice ◽  
The Third Person ◽  
World Image

This essay argues for the power of free indirect discourse in the third-person narrative perspective to serve as a collective voice, encompassing a diversity of perspectives, through a reading of two novels by Olga Tokarczuk, Bieguni (Flights) and Księgi Jakubowe (Books of Jacob). Both novels investigate the challenges inherent in the project of providing an image of the world, and alongside various interventions on the level of content, each examines the kind of world-image that different approaches to narrative voice can produce. In Flights, the narrator's striving to arrive at a more expansive and synthetic knowledge of the world is accompanied by an effort to go beyond the first-person voice, to a broader perspective. The novel subtly demonstrates the impossibility of such efforts, but, the essay argues, Books of Jacob continues this project, albeit from the opposite direction, examining the affordances of the third-person voice. Its innovative use of free indirect discourse produces a perspective that, while appearing to be a single voice, contains multiple, contradictory points of view.

FREE INDIRECT DISCOURSE AND POSSIBLE WORLDS IN IAN MCEWAN’S THE CHILD IN TIME

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-132
Author(s):  
Adriana Diana Urian ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Postmodern Fiction ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Subsequent Discussion ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Narrative Syntax

The paper discusses the nature of free indirect discourse and the manner in which it appears within postmodern fiction, more precisely in Ian McEwan’s novel The Child in Time, through the modality of possible world semantics. First it explains how free indirect discourse should be understood in this context, outlining the theoretical introduction and justification of this particular approach. The subsequent discussion focuses on speech acts and how they can be understood theoretically and in a fictional universe. It then showcases how free indirect discourse works in Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time, which offers an excellent case study for this type of analysis, given the fact that the novel is a third person narrative, an indirect account of events, and a reported story, and thus a perfect sample of free indirect discourse in fiction. Finally, by blending these perspectives within the narrative universe and observing how they render a structural matrix of fiction upon which worlds of possibility can be modally distinguished, the paper will prove that the analysis of free indirect discourse completes the picture of narrative syntax within possible world determinism.

La sceneggiatura teatrale inedita di “La Virtù di Checchina”

Revue Romane ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-300
Author(s):  
Carla Killander Cariboni
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse

Sommario This article deals with a comparison between Matilde Serao’s short story “Checchina’s Virtue” (1884) and the homonymous unpublished theatrical script written by Massimo Franciosa (1995), of which a summary is provided. The comparison between the source text and the adaptation draws on the debate about the narrativity of drama in which many scholars have engaged in the last decades: Richardson (1987), Chatman (1990), Jahn (2001), Fludernik (2008) and Nünning & Sommer (2008). The analysis focuses on two forms of diegetic narrativity that appear in the short story, i. e. free indirect discourse and the iterative mode, in order to see how the theatrical script deals with them. The analysis shows that the script preserves the narrative contents of the source text and highlights how diegetic and mimetic narrativity collaborate to the reworking and redistribution of those contents.

scholarly journals Transition and Translation of Free Indirect Discourse in Chinese Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 983-989
Author(s):  
Yixin Liu
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Basic Definition ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Narrative Strategy ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Chinese Fiction ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Definition Of

Free indirect discourse (FID) is a discourse presentation pattern of third-person narration, and it is often employed as a common narrative strategy to present characters’ consciousness in literary works. Given its ambiguous link with both the narrator’s and character’s discourse, we may feel confused about how to distinguish FID from other discourse when reading a text. After introducing the basic definition of this notion, this paper will interpret several signals which can help to distinguish FID passages in the text. Most importantly, this paper will look at how FID passages in Western literary works were translated into Chinese in early works, and then explore the development of FID in early Chinese fiction, investigating the transition of FID in Chinese.

scholarly journals Deictic Shifting in Greek Contractual Writing (I–IV AD)

Philologus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 164 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-106
Author(s):  
Klaas Bentein
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Narrative Technique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Third Person

AbstractMuch attention has been paid to ‘deictic shifts’ in Ancient Greek literary texts. In this article I show that similar phenomena can be found in documentary texts. Contracts in particular display unexpected shifts from the first to the third person or vice versa. Rather than constituting a narrative technique, I argue that such shifts should be related to the existence of two major types of stylization, called the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective’ style. In objectively styled contracts, subjective intrusions may occur as a result of the scribe temporarily assuming himself to be the deictic center, whereas in subjectively styled contracts objective intrusions may occur as a result of the contracting parties dictating to the scribe, and the scribe not modifying the personal references. There are also a couple of texts which display more extensive deictic alter­nations, which suggests that generic confusion between the two major types of stylization may have played a role.

Temporal relations of free indirect discourse events

Linguistics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakob Egetenmeyer
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Temporal Relations ◽  
Free Indirect Discourse ◽  
Indirect Discourse

Abstract In this article, we investigate the role free indirect discourse (FID) plays in temporal discourse structure. In contrast to the most widely accepted account of FID, which compares the content of FID to the surrounding content (two voices or two contexts), we take FID as a discourse entity and, thus, focus on the FID event. We follow a prominence-based approach to temporal discourse structure, through which we are able to describe the temporal relations the FID event maintains to the preceding and the following discourse in a precise manner. We can also account for the temporal developments that may be brought about by FID events. This becomes especially interesting in longer passages where FID events alternate with non-FID parts of discourse. The interaction involves the three levels which together make up our account of temporal discourse structure.

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