We are you: The plural and the dual in “we” fictional narratives

Abstract

Abstract The essay discusses grammatical and narratological issues of first-person plural (“we”) narratives. It elaborates on the repercussions of Uri Margolin's argument (1996, 2000) regarding the semantic instability of the pronoun “we”, a feature that remains general and abstract in his formulation. Everyday language tends to conceal this instability, whereas some fictional narratives accentuate it, thereby actualizing the subversive potential of the first-person-plural pronoun and highlighting the relationship of the individual “I” to the “we” group and the relationship of this group to “others”. Like second-person narratives, first-person-plural narratives may transgress the boundary between the virtual and the actual and point to the absence of necessary connection between the grammatical form and its deictic function. The essay also proposes a distinction between plural and dual fictional narratives: due to their deictic properties, plural “we” narratives are frequently more destabilizing than dual “we” narratives, which are not characterized by semantic fluidity.

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