Miriam A. Locher and Andreas H. Jucker. The Pragmatics of Fiction: Literature, Stage and Screen Discourse (Edinburgh Textbooks on the English Language—Advanced). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021. (Book Review) (original) (raw)

2023, Style 57(2): 230-240

The Pragmatics of Fiction is a pragmatics textbook devoted to the study of fictional texts—understood broadly as the novel, poetry, fictional dialogues in films and TV series, and drama—using pragmatic tools and theories. Locher and Jucker's book addresses "fictional texts as cultural artefacts in their own right" (224) rather than mere artificial depositories of linguistic data for pragmaticists. Rich in theoretical pragmatic approaches, this study explains them based on the examples of, among others, plays, novels, films, comic books, and advertisements, thus following recent scholarly trends of accepting fictional language as a reliable source of data for linguistic investigations and using pragmatics as a methodological tool for analyzing fiction (see Black; Chapman and Clark; Locher and Jucker; Wilson). It draws attention to the fact that fictional communication, much as it mimetically reflects human communication, is special because it involves the "fictional contract" or "a silent agreement between the author and the readers or viewers about the level of veracity that can be expected in a novel, a movie or another piece of fiction" (33). In this way, fictional communication often requires more sophisticated and adapted pragmatic models for its analysis. The book consists of three parts. Part One looks at fiction as a valuable data resource for pragmatic theorizing and explains why there is such a vague boundary between fictional and nonfictional uses of language. Part Two explores the participation structure of literary communication and focuses on the creation of the story worlds in fiction and on fictional characterization, narration, and plot structure. Part Three discusses various functions of dialogue in fiction and the orality features, which differ from the ones in human communication. It also investigates how societal ideologies (impoliteness, gender norms) imbue fictional texts and how fictional texts can produce real emotions in the [End Page 230] audience. I used this textbook with my students of year 3 BA in a stylistics course (specialization: English Studies in Literature and Culture), so this review is our joint effort and an effect of real classroom interaction.