PERSON AND TENSE IN NARRATIVE INTERPRETATION

This study investigated the pragmatic role of two grammatical devices, tense and person, in narrative. These devices normally serve deictic functions in nonfictional discourse which are inappropriate in fiction . We present data which support the notion of shifting deictic markers from the world of the reader to that of the story world, and a pragma tic analysis of the possible roles of variations of tense and person i n fiction. Three short stories were modified to generate four versions of each story. The versions differed in that the primary foregrounded states and events were written in either first or third person, and p ast or present tense. Each subject read one version of one story and w as then asked questions about her interpretive stance toward the story . The results show that getting involved with a story is the primary d imension of story appreciation, and that different readers interact wi th the same story in different ways. One role of the first person is t o invite the reader to identify with the main character, but whether o r not she does so is a complex function of the properties of the story , the first person character, and the reader. This interaction suggest s that the psychological properties of a reader play an important role in determining how a fictional narrative is interpreted. Tense seems to play some role in story interpretation, but what that role is was n ot sufficiently clarified.