Introduction: Approaches to Fictional Dialogue

Abstract

This special issue is devoted to a cross-disciplinary investigation of a specific literary phenomenon, fictional dialogue. Fictional dialogue is used to refer to passages of character-character conversation within a literary text. More specifically, the articles of the issue deal with fictional dialogue as a narrative mode in prose fiction. The issue aims to engender an appreciation and a better understanding of the workings of dialogue by drawing on the insights and methods from both literary studies and linguistics. These methods include a rhetorical-ethical approach to narrative, cognitive and “natural” narratology, the study of everyday conversational storytelling, and Conversation Analysis (CA). Combining these methods helps us to understand that while dialogue is a central means to depict character-character relationships it also serves other levels of communication in a narrative and thus contributes to the reader's comprehension of the narrative design's rhetorical and ethical dimensions. The articles also suggest that while understanding dialogue depends partly on the reader’s experiences of real-life conversation, the interpretation of dialogue is determined by the overall design of a literary text and the historically changing conventions.

Narrativt skrivande i årskurs 1

“…I textens struktur kan dialogen användas för att bryta upp handlingen. Samtidigt kan dialog användas för att vara just handlingsdrivande (Larsen, 2008;Koivisto & Nykänen, 2016;Nordlund, 2016), ett avbrott för att utveckla karaktärernas eller bygga interpersonell spänning. Funktionerna med elevernas tillämpning av problem och dialog i sitt narrativa skrivande kan således förstås vara olika.…”

“…Att skapa spännande berättelser uttrycker eleverna stort personligt intresse för, vilket inte promptas i någon av ledtrådarna i läranderesurserna men däremot modelleras i sagan genom karaktärernas dialog. Förutom att fylla en spänningsbyggande funktion inom narrativet kan dialog förstås som en resurs att spegla hur människor samtalar utanför ramen av ett fiktivt narrativ (Koivisto & Nykänen, 2016), vilket är en koppling som Elev 6 reflekterar över i intervjun:…”

Deployment of Rhetorical and Literary Tropes in Ewa-ọma Festival Performances of Nkporo, South-East Nigeria

“…The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012, p. 357) defines dialogue as "an exchange of words between or among dramatized speakers in literature." Dialogue is a conversation between two characters or a group of people (Nykänen & Koivisto, 2016). Agoro (2001) identifies conflict and collaboration as the two characteristics of dialogue.…”

“…Their speech contains the signs of the dramatic situation, indicating the relation of the characters to each other, their attitudes, their conflicts and alliances, and also their relation to the fictional world they inhabit. (p. 117) Fictional dialogue has actually been observed to thrive in daily conversational style (Nykänen & Koivisto, 2016). This is not to suggest, however, that there is a total absence of literary tropes as language components in the ewa-ọma performances dialogues.…”

Annotation Guideline No. 7 (revised): Guidelines for annotation of narrative structure

“…Figure1: Levels of narrative transmission, from Koivisto and Nykänen 6. The second-lowest level (narratornarratee) and lowest level (FC, fictional characters) correspond to what is annotated according to this guideline.…”