Volume 43, Issue 2 - Special Issue: Pronouns and Perspective in Literature

This article investigates the interaction of person marking and focalization in the short story ‘Signs and Symbols’ (first published 1948, The New Yorker ) by Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov. This story has been studied extensively for its symbolism, its metafictional aspect, and its narrative structure. However, researchers have consequently ignored its most striking linguistic features: the almost exclusive use of pronouns in referring to the main characters and their characterization solely through lexical expressions focusing on outward appearances. This article offers a cognitive-stylistic analysis of these linguistic features in order to explain why many readers of ‘Signs and Symbols’ report a feeling of uncanniness while reading. Drawing on insights both from empirical linguistics and literary studies, the article aims to explain the role of pronominal expressions and deictic descriptions in reader's theme-construction and affective response to the text.

For this study we investigated all occurrences of Dutch second person pronoun subjects in a literary novel, and determined their interpretation. We found two patterns that can both be argued to be functionally related to the de-velopment of the story. First, we found a decrease in the generic use of second person, a decrease which we believe goes hand in hand with an increased distancing of oneself as a reader from the narrator/main character. Second, we found an increase in the use of the descriptive second person. The increased descriptive use of second person pronouns towards the end of the novel is very useful for the reader, because the information provided by the first person narrator himself becomes less and less reliable. Thus, the reader depends more strongly on information provided by other characters and what these characters tell the narrator about himself.

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.

Free indirect discourse is a way of reporting what a protagonist thinks or says that is distinct from both direct and indirect discourse. In particular, while pronouns and tenses are presented from the narrator's perspective, as in indirect discourse, other indexical and expressive elements reflect the protagonist's point of view, as in direct discourse. In this paper I discuss a number of literary examples of free indirect discourse in which the narrator slips into the language, dialect or idiolect of the protagonist. I argue that the leading formal semantic analyses of free indirect discourse, which rely on semantic context shifting, fail to account for such language shifts. I then present an alternative account that treats free indirect discourse as a form of mixed quotation.