Fictionality, Narrative Modes, and Vicarious Storytelling

Abstract

This article contributes to fictionality studies with an emphasis on features of narrative discourse, especially those related to mind representation. In order to study the traffic from the fictional to the everyday in narrative means of mind representation, we identify signposts of fictionality in a life story interview and analyze how they function in a nonfictional environment. The article introduces the term cross-fictionality to characterize a narrative where the frame of reference is nonfictional but the narrative modes include those that are conventionally regarded as fictional. We demonstrate that modes of mind representation characteristic of fiction travel to other narrative environments also outside the artistic sphere. Our results indicate that further research is needed regarding the interpretative effects of these narrative features that have mostly been analyzed in literary fiction so far. As fictionality is a question of quality and not of genre, it needs to be studied by using theoretical-methodological frameworks that are sensitive to the semiotic factors of narrative, and not confined to authorial intentions or to the ontological status of the subject matter.

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