The Language of Fiction

The Language of Fiction brings together new research on fiction from philosophy and linguistics. Fiction is a topic that has long been studied in philosophy. Yet recently there has been a surge of work on fictional discourse in the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. There has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. The Language of Fiction contains fourteen essays by leading scholars in both fields, as well as a substantial Introduction by the editors. The collection is organized in three parts, each with their own introduction. Part I, “Truth, reference, and imagination”, offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, “Storytelling”, deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, “Perspective shift”, zooms in on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, viz. the way we get access to the fictional characters’ inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see.

Fictional reference as simulation

According to a widespread view, the author of a fiction makes pretend assertions, which themselves rest on ancillary acts of pretend reference. Fictional discourse is thus asymmetrically dependent upon ‘serious’ (non-fictional) discourse: fictional reference and fictional assertion alike are parasitic on genuine reference and genuine assertion, which they mimic. Recently, however, several authors have criticized the pretence approach. According to the alternative, two-stage model they argue for, fiction and non-fiction are on a par (rather than one being asymmetrically dependent upon the other). This chapter shows how this debate connects with the current controversy about the force/content distinction. A sustained defence of the pretence approach is provided, and the approach is shown to extend to the parafictional uses of fictional names.

Sharing real and fictional reference

This chapter extends the framework of MSDRT (Mental State Discourse Representation Theory) to the problem of reference in fiction, and to the role and function of fictional names. Central to the investigation is the notion of an Entity Representation (ER), a central feature of MSDRT and used previously in the communication-theoretic analysis of the pragmatics and semantics of non-fictional names in Kamp (2015). As argued in that paper, the use of proper names within a speech community leads to networks of connected ERs in the mental states of their users. These networks provide the names with a kind of intersubjective identity. In this respect, fictional names resemble non-fictional names—those that refer to real entities, that exist in the actual world in which we live. This chapter proposes an analysis of fictional names and fictional reference that capitalizes on this resemblance.

Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations

The aim of the paper is to defend the view according to which all simple fictional sentences are meaningless. If their assertions seem to convey some truth evaluable information, and fictional sentences themselves seem to be true or false, it is because some pragmatic mechanisms are operative, enabling the expression of propositions not encoded in the semantic content of these sentences. According to some theorists, the mechanisms responsible for that process are the same as those responsible for generating conversational implicatures. I argue against that claim and maintain that to comprehend the information conveyed by a fictional assertion, one must determine what kind of fictional assertion it is and only then apply the relevant interpretative rule adjusted to the fictional sentence used in that act.

Rethinking Role Realism

Role realism is a promising realist theory of fictional names. Different versions of this theory have been suggested by Gregory Currie, Peter Lamarque, Stein Haugom Olsen, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The general idea behind the approach is that fictional characters are to be analysed in terms of roles, which in turn can be understood as sets of properties (or alternatively as kinds or functions from possible worlds to individuals). I will discuss several advantages and disadvantages of this approach. I will then propose a novel hyperintensional version of role realism (which I will call impossibilism), according to which fictional names are analysed in terms of individual concepts that cannot be matched by a reference (a full-blooded individual). I will argue that this account avoids the main disadvantages of standard role realism.