Person deixis and impersonation in Iain Banks’s Complicity - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Language and Literature Année : 2015

Person deixis and impersonation in Iain Banks’s Complicity

Résumé

The article focuses on the specific use of the second person pronoun in Iain Banks’s Complicity and the complex relationship it entertains with its first-person counterpart as the novel alternates between first- and second-person narratives. The personal pronouns construct two completely opposed mindstyles: the highly personal narrative of the first-person protagonist contrasts with the depersonalised style of the ‘you’ protagonist-narrator. Not only is the second person pronoun a grammatical ‘imposter’ (Collins & Postal, 2012)—it actually hides an ‘I’—but it is a psychological one as the narrator seems to hide his real self behind a convenient ‘you persona’. In addition, the article brings to light the pragmatic paradox ‘self-address you’ embodies in the peculiar position it assigns to the readers. If it tends to ‘encroach upon’ their territory, forcing them into complicity, it is also guilty of manipulating their emotions. Lastly, the linguistic and stylistic analysis of Banks’s novel will here be coupled with cognitive and psycholinguistic approaches in order to understand how the reader switches from one ‘frame’ of mind to the other. Particularly helpful is the ‘Rhetorical Processing Framework’ discussed by Sanford and Emmott (2012) in order to grasp how readers construct mental representations to process the writer’s sometimes misleading style.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Person deixis and impersonation in Iain Banks’s Complicity.pdf (186.91 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)
Loading...

Dates et versions

halshs-01271605 , version 1 (09-02-2016)

Identifiants

Citer

Sandrine Sorlin. Person deixis and impersonation in Iain Banks’s Complicity . Language and Literature, 2015, 24 (1), pp.40-53. ⟨10.1177/0963947014568754⟩. ⟨halshs-01271605⟩
65 Consultations
1432 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More