The role of second-person narration in representing mental states in Sylvia Plath's Smith Journal

Abstract

This paper looks at instances of second person narration in the first journal published in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (Kukil, 2000) in order to determine the potential that second person narration can have for the linguistic representation of mental states. The contributions of different disciplines (narratology, linguistics, psychology) to the study of second person narration are considered and their findings are re-applied to a non-fictional text. In a corpus-informed comparative analysis, the paper takes into consideration both perspectives from narratology and developments in the understanding of language use in the field of psychology to provide an interdisciplinary, but cognitively inclined perspective on the phenomenon.

Appearances of second person narration are chronologically tracked through the data and compared to biographical developments in Sylvia Plath's life; entries written in the first- and second person are compared to each other to determine linguistic differences using corpus methods; the results of the two analyses are then interpreted in the light of traditional functions attributed to second person narration in narratology, and in the light of research in narrative psychology. The paper aims to demonstrate that second person narration can project a sense of emotional depth and inner conflict as well as of emotional balance. However, the temporal orientation of a given text will influence which of these effects predominates.