CHAPTER ONE: THE CASE FOR LINGUISTIC

SUBJECTIVITY

An increasing number of publications have emerged from inter-disciplinary research into a

contentious area known to some as literary semantics (Eaton, 1979; Margolin, 1984), to others as
stracturalist narratology (Barthes, 1966; Bremond, 1966; Chatman, 1978; Genette, 1966; Todorov,
1966), to the Russians as literary semiotics (Bakhtin, 1980; Lotman, 1975; Voloshinov, 1983), to
some American academics as studies in narrative structure (Johnstone, 1987) but to other American
literary critics (Booth, 1961 and the Chicago school) as part of the exercise in practical criticism.
Other contributions came from hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1984), stylistics (Cassirer, 1975; Enkvist,
1973; Fish, 1970) and different schools of literary criticism. Clearly, it is difficult to situate the
analysis of narrative voice exclusively in any of these disciplines.
However, following the lead of many linguists who have perceived scope for linguistics to
have its say in the elaboration of narrative structures and strategies (Adamson, in progress; Greimas
and Courtes, 1976, 1982; Fowler, 1986; Fowler et al, 1979; Fraser and Joly, 1979; Leech and Short,
1981; Wright, 1987), the main task of this chapter is to explore the tools that linguistics can offer in
the identification of narrative voice.
Among the fundamental premises underlying the methodology adopted herein it is believed
that propositions are uttered by speakers who appropriate a given linguistic system for their own
subjective purposes (to be defined below); that speakers necessarily leave traces in the utterance of
their attitudes both to their message and to their addressee(s). As Lyons has put it (1977:724):
If propositions are treated as psychological entities, rather than as purely abstract third-order
entities, then it is natural to treat as their location the persons (or the minds, or brains, of the
persons) who have what philosophers might describe as a propositional attitude (knowledge, belief,
etc.).
It is necessary therefore to adopt a linguistic framework which argues the case for the need
to systematically study which linguistic forms produce which subjective effects. Then it is up to the
narratologist to measure the frequency and degrees of intensity of these forms and come up with
conclusions that will hopefully pave the way for a typology of narratives (Ducrot and Todorov,
1981).

I.1 Jakobson's shifters: the need for an extension:

Modern theories of enunciation (reviewed by Fuchs, 1979), the growing interest in
egocentric particles (Russel, 1940), and the influential findings in the indexical aspect of language
(Todorov 1970) especially on deixis (Benv‚niste 1966, 1970; Fillmore 1973; Lyons 1977, 1979)
deal with various aspects of the same class of linguistic categories, namely Jakobson's class of
shifters.
The notion of duplex structures, Jakobson argues (1956), plays a vital role in the study of
language. Speaking from a dualist Saussurian perspective (namely the dichotomy of langue vs
parole), he distinguishes four duplex structures, two of which are circular (message referring to
message, and code referring to code), and the other two overlapping (message referring to code and
code referring to message) (1956:133):
In order to classify the verbal categories two basic distinctions are to be observed:#1) speech
itself (s), and its topic, the narrated matter (n);#2) the event itself (E), and any of its participants (P),
whether "performer" or "undergoer".#Consequently four items are to be distinguished: a narrated
event (En), a speech event (Es), a participant of the narrated event (Pn), and a participant of the
speech event (Ps), whether addresser or addressee.
When the code obligatorily refers to the message the category involved is what, following
Jesperson, he calls shifters. Shifters are verbal categories akin to Pierce's indexical symbols, since,
having a general conventional definition at the code level, they are partly symbols, and yet, being in
existential relationship with the object they designate, they come under the category of indices.
Thus shifters are categories implying compulsory reference to the speech event (../Es) (procŠs de
l'‚nonciation) and/or its participants (../Ps) (namely the enunciator and enunciatee(s)).
The discrimination of shifters from among the whole set of grammatical categories is a
necessary exercise, Jakobson insists, in any systematic classification of such categories. According
to whether or not grammatical categories meet the requirement of referring to (../Es) and/or (../Ps),
they will qualify either as shifters or nonshifters. Starting from this distinction, Jakobson classifies
eight categories in the following table:
P involved P not involved
---------------------------------------------------------------
non-shifters
gender/number voice status/aspect taxis
(Pn) (PnEn) (En) (EnEn)
---------------------------------------------------------------
shifters person mood tense evidential
(Pn/Ps) (PnEnPs) (En/Es) (EnEnsEs)
---------------------------------------------------------------
fig .1. condensed from Jakobson's two diagrams (1956:136)
The categories classified as shifters are what Jakobson calls "person" (Pn/Ps) characterising
the participants of the narrated event with reference to the participants of the speech event; "tense"
(En/Es) involving the narrated event with reference to the speech event; "mood" (PnEn/Ps) having
to do with the relation between the narrated event and its participants with reference to the
participants of the speech event reflecting thus the speaker's view of the character of the connection
between the action and the actor or the goal; and finally what he calls, for want of a better name,
"evidential" (EnEn/Es) involving a narrated event, a speech event and a narrated speech event
(alleged source of authority about the narrated event).
These categories will be examined in detail in the first part of the thesis mainly in the
chapters on deictic subjectivity (chapters two, three, four and five) and on modal and affective
subjectivity (chapters six and seven). One common denominator between them is their reference,
whether explicit or implicit to the speech event (act of enunciation) and its participants (both
enunciator and enunciatee(s)). This characteristic is of vital importance in the definition of shifters,
and will be shown to be instrumental in the detection of subjectivity indices or cues within the
utterance "énoncé".

I.2 Problems with Jakobson's "non-shifters":

The controversial categories are those classified as "non-shifters". The following problems
could be detected in them.
I.2.1 The categories of "gender" and "number":
Jakobson claims that both "gender" and "number", abbreviated as "Pn" characterise the
participants themselves "without reference to the speech event". Against this unqualified statement,
it will be argued that both gender and number do involve an ideological investment on the part of
the speaker besides the cultural mediation infiltrating through the language used. Thus, the choice
of these categories within the utterance could be taken as a cue revealing the latent attitude of the
speaker to the participant(s) of the narrated event (the délocutés). Pushed a little further, this
selection could be part of the speaker's discursive strategy to influence the addressee and to produce
the desired effect on him.
A serious criticism of the presumed transparency of the category of gender comes from
Violi (1987) who, being a semiotician, is mainly concerned with the uncovering of the cultural
codes and symbolising processes underlying the grammatical forms in a language:
ce n'est pas la donnée naturelle de la différence des sexes, sa "matérialité grossière" comme
dirait Sapir, qui structure les catégories linguistiques, mais c'est la symbolisation que cette
différence a déjà subie, sous des modalités largement antérieures et indépendantes des formes
grammaticales spécifiques avec lesquelles les diverses langues les reflèteront. Postuler un
investissement de sens antérieur … la forme linguistique, signifie lire la différence sexuelle comme
une structure déjà signifiante, déjà symbolisée, et capable … son tour de produire un sens et des
symbolisations.
Grammatical gender does not transparently reflect natural distinctions. Behind the assignment
of gender lies both the speaker's culture, as embodied in and imposed by the language used, and in
varying degrees, the speaker's own strategies. The semantic act of gender assignment is not one of
immediate objective observation but constructed and negotiated in the process of its genesis. That
is why grammatical gender offers a wide range of possibilities for manipulation.
For instance, Kress and Hodge (1979) argue that when the gender system is overt, it fixes a
set of sexual associations for a culture. Such associations are often wider and more subtle than the
overt system indicates. Their argument becomes stronger when they analyse the ideological
manipulations of implicit or covert gender in advertisements. After comparing the gender status of
"car" in German, French, and English, they conclude that the basis for the gender assignment is not
biological but ideological.
Similarly, the choice of number (singular, dual, plural or any other possible arrangement) is
not simply dictated by objective reality. In fact, there are many cases where speakers enjoy
considerable "freedom" to define things either as singular or plural [although the word "freedom"
has to be qualified in view of the fact that a great deal of these ideological stances are already
prestructured and imposed as mediating grids by the language used] (Lodge, 1981).
As will be explored in the next chapter (section on person displacement), English, like
French and, more markedly Arabic, offers its speakers possibilities to use the plural for other
purposes than number; the pronouns "we" and "vous" are not simply the plurals of "I" and "tu"
respectively. Besides, the speaker's point of view or vis‚e is a decisive factor in determining
whether words like "the government", "the United States" or indeed "Liverpool" are singular or
plural; or whether many substances are apprehended as countable or uncountable (Quirk et al 1972).
In Arabic, virtually all inanimate objects or natural phenomena are conjugated in the third person
female singular.
But most importantly, the choice of number in newspaper editorials, political speeches, and
any such well processed discourse, is widely used as an efficient means of persuasion to manipulate
the readers or audience by foregrounding or exaggerating certain items and minimising or obscuring
others (see Fowler et al 1979 for interesting exemplification ).
In English, the plural has different effects ranging between imprecision, uncertainty and
dullness of focus on the one hand and exaggeration or foregrounding on the other. The former
effect is held by Kress et al (1979:89) to be a convenient means for obscuring facts and mystifying
the addressees :
The general effect of a plural is to indicate a compound field. A sentence in which everything is
in the plural will feel more diffused and complex than a sentence which uses only singulars, even if
the reality described is the same.
The latter effect is commonly obtained in newsbulletins and correspondent reports from
countries where a number of "victims" of oppression or of "champions" of a cause in a
demonstration is deliberately amplified. The most blatant manipulations of number are found in
military communiqués in a war.
Thus, contrary to Jakobson's claim, the categories of gender and number do refer to the
speech event, or at least to the ideological investment of the participants of the speech event. Their
exclusion from the class of shifters is not justified.
I.2.2 The categories of "status" and "aspect":
The second misleading category in Jakobson's "non-shifters" is what he calls "status and
aspect" characterising the narrated event itself "without involving its participants and without
reference to the speech event". Presumably, by this he is referring to what other linguists
(Benv‚niste, 1966; Joly & Roulland, 1981; Todorov, 1970) call sentential modalities [modalit‚s
phrastiques] such as the affirmative, the negative, the interrogative, the subjunctive and the
conditional "moods" (as they are traditionally known).
Most of these categories will be discussed under the section on modality (chapter seven), but
it may be useful here to point out where Jakobson is wrong. The affirmative has a very strong
modal force, and by implication, a greater speaker investment in the utterance. As Lyons
(1977:808-809) has put it:
It would be generally agreed that the speaker is more strongly committed to the factuality of "It
be raining" by saying It is raining than he is by saying It must be raining. It is a general principle,
to which we are expected to conform, that we should always make the strongest commitment for
which we have epistemic warrant. If there is no explicit mention of the source of our information
and no explicit qualification of our commitment to its factuality, it will be assumed that we have full
epistemic warrant for what we say....There is no epistemically stronger statement than a categorical
assertion.
Similarly, the imperative and interrogative are "you-centred forms", to use Adamson's
terminology, because they are oriented toward the addressee, and by implying "you" necessarily
presuppose "I". Such linguistic forms indicate the presence of the speaker indirectly by
necessitating the presence of an addressee. The dialogical inter-dependence of the first and second
persons entails that when one of these interlocutors is implied in an utterance, the presence of his
dialogical counterpart is automatically established. As Adamson has perceptively stated (in
progress1:22):
In texts, therefore, YOU and YOU-centered forms are particularly important in establishing "I"
as a speaking presence. By the YOU-centered forms, I mean imperative and interrogative forms,
both of which prompt us to infer an I-YOU dialogue, even when the presence of an "I" or a YOU
has not been explicitly stated.
Indeed, in the major syntactic functions of enunciation in an utterance enumerated by
Benvéniste (1970), categories such as questions and imperatives have the function of enlisting and
calling for a response from the addressee(s) to the speaker's performative act. Thus they inevitably
presuppose reference both to the speech event and especially to the participants of the speech event:
L'INTERROGATION, qui est une énonciation construite pour susciter une "réponse", par un
procès linguistique qui est en même temps un procès de comportement … double entrée. Toutes les
formes lexicales et syntaxiques de l'interrogation, particules, pronoms, séquence, intonation, etc,
relèvent de cet aspect de l'énonciation. (Benvéniste, 1970:15)
Consequently, it could be argued that the occurrence of questions, imperatives, and other forms
of intimation should be taken to provide significant clues indicating the speaker's presence, and his
intention to influence his addressee(s) one way or another (Benvéniste, 1966). The study of
performatives and the different forms of doing has been the major contribution of speech act
theories (Austin, 1962; Grice, 1975; Searle, 1969) and pragmatics (Leech, 1983; Levinson, 1983).
What is common to these findings is the construal of enunciating as a form of doing and the
exploration of the forces contained in an act of enunciation (locutionary, illocutionary and
perlocutionary forces). What is vital for the present argument is that, contrary to Jakobson's claim,
these forms make a necessary reference to the present of enunciating (what Jakobson calls the
speech event and its participants) and have to be included as shifters.
I.2.3 The categories of "voice" and "taxis":
The third category classified as a "non-shifter" is what Jakobson terms "voice" (PnEn)
which is supposed to characterise the relation between the narrated event and its participants
"without reference to the speech event or to the speaker", whereas the fourth category failing to
satisfy Jakobson's criteria for shifters is "taxis" (EnEn) "charaterising the narrated event in relation
to another narrated event and without reference to the speech event". The difficulty with these
categories is that, although they do not explicitly involve reference to the speech event or its
participants, they do make this reference implicitly through other channels.
For instance, in narratives, (especially those in the first person), one of the main constraints
on storytellers is to capture in their talk various levels of what Johnstone (1987:44) calls "footing":
Footing, as Goffman defines it (1981:128) is "the alignment we take up to ourselves and the
others present as expressed in the way we manage the production or reception of an utterance". It is
the "projected self" of a speaker as this self emerges in interaction. A person involved in an
interaction and telling a story about a previous interaction must manipulate footing on at least two
levels: the level of the storytelling interaction and the level of the interaction in the story. One's
alignment with respect to others changes in the course of interaction, and these changes, on both
levels, must be encoded too.
The two levels of story and discourse in structuralist narratology (Chatman, 1978; Genette,
1966) cannot be separated. In other words, the telling/narrating/discourse level is always
underlying to and presupposed by the histoire level. In linguistic terminology, enunciation
[énonciation] is necessarily and always presupposed by the utterance [énoncé]. There has to be an
axis of reference with respect to which relations are perceived, this being either a deictic centre
(Fillmore 1973), i.e.the I/here/now ordering personal and spatio-temporal relations, or a perceptual
centre (Adamson, in progress) experiencing and perceiving things, or a cognitive centre (Gréimas
and Courtès, 1976) known also as a sentient centre (Lotman, 1975) affectively and modally
reacting to things and evaluating them.

I.3 Suggested adjustments to Jakobson's model:

What is important as a corrective to Jakobson is to argue that not to refer to the speech event
or to its participants is a structural impossibility . In fact, as Gustave Guillaume has put it (quoted
in Joly 1981:545):
Tous les actes d'expression - sans exception aucune - sont affectifs vu que tous ont pour objet
d'agir sur l'interlocuteur, de l'affecter. Il n'est pas de phrase qui ne soit affective.
Herman Parret (1983) claims that speakers could be said to have an affective competence
"compétence passionnelle" that inevitably marks their discourse. Therefore, from the preceding
discussion, it should have become apparent that it is very difficult, if not virtually impossible, to
stop the erosive effect of the categories of shifters. It will be argued, together with Guespin (1976)
that there is no clearly defined borderline between shifters and non-shifters. A large and ever
growing shady area lies in between.
However, what could be deduced from Jakobson's argument is that grammatical (and
particularly verbal) categories shift differently, or, better still, linguistic forms belong to different
kinds of shifters and lend themselves to different degrees of transparency. In brief, there are
tendencies either towards shifting in [embrayage] where the subjective presence of the speaker is
more readily apparent, if not foregrounded (as is the case with deictic categories), or towards
shifting out [débrayage] where the presence of the speaker is less readily available and a disjunction
of the utterance from I/here/now onto what is not-I/not-here/not-now takes place (tendency towards
objectivity). To use the terminology of Greimas and Courtès (1982), the subjectivising tendency
will be called engagement whereas the objectivising tendency will be called disengagement.
Instead of Jakobson's sharp distinction between shifters and non-shifters, a scale or cline of
gradations could be envisaged with "total" engagement or disengagement at either extremity. The
linguistic forms could then be assigned degree-of-shifting values ranging from the most minimal to
the most maximal. Consequently,the dichotomy between "subjective" and "objective" utterances
does not operate at the deep level since, by its very definition, an utterance is the result of a
subjective act of appropriating a linguistic system by a speaker (see below). In so far as there is a
speaker latent to any conceivable speech event, then every utterance could be said to be subjective.
What warrants the dichotomy on the other hand is that there is in an utterance a number of cues
giving the impressions either of subjectivity or of objectivity (Morot-Sir, 1982:128).
In the discursivisation process (Gréimas and Courtès, 1982) the speaker inscribes in the
utterance either an engaging egocentric force or else a disengaging objectivising force. Thus, the
import of the categories enumerated by Jakobson is that, when used in discourse, they either tend to
give the impressions of subjectivity or at least to prompt the reader to take into account their
shifting reference (Jakobson's shifters called here overt shifters) or on the contrary give impressions
of objectivity by suppressing overt reference to the speech event and its participants (Jakobson's
"non-shifters" called here covert shifters). It is important to bear in mind the fact that the notions of
subjectivity and objectivity are relative and set into relief the very problematic of indeterminacy in
borderline cases.

I.4 Jakobson's linguistic functions:

Two more fruitful concepts could be borrowed from Jakobson's legacy. In his widely
quoted closing speech (1973), Jakobson listed several functions of language, two of which are
extremely important for the present argument. The first of these is the emotive function (involving
the attitude of the speaker/locutionary agent toward his own discourse). Since the main concern of
this thesis is the systematic search for clues indicating narrative voice, it stands to reason that an
analysis of utterances in terms of this function is particularly rewarding. The second function to
borrow from Jakobson is the conative function (involving the speaker's consciousness or vis‚e of his
addressee) as could be reconstructed from elements in the utterance. This function is particularly
helpful in understanding the working of person deixis and, in particular, what, following
Voloshinov (1983), will be termed the social orientation of the utterance (see chapter two).
It could be concluded thus that Jakobson's legacy has paved the way towards a linguistics of
enunciation where the speaking subject has a central place.

I.5 Emile Benvéniste's legacy: the nature of linguistic subjectivity:

The problematic of shifters found a considerable boost in the work of Benv‚niste on
linguistic subjectivity and the formal apparatus for enunciation (1965, 1966, 1970 in particular).
Operating within the structuralist duality of langue vs parole, he defines linguistic subjectivity with
respect to them (1966:263):
Le langage est donc la possibilité de la subjectivité, du fait qu'il contient toujours les formes
linguistiques appropriées … son expression, et le discours provoque l'émergence de la subjectivité,
du fait qu'il consiste en instances discrètes. Le langage propose en quelque sorte des formes "vides"
que chaque locuteur en exercice de discours s'approprie et qu'il rapporte … sa personne.
The emptiness, but not meaninglessness, of these forms provides the key feature of what is
generally understood by shifters as construed in an extended framework. Shifters are thus
inexorably linked to the emergence of the speaking subject within the utterance. It is because these
empty forms lend themselves for appropriation by an individual speaker who by so doing
transforms what is conventional and codified into something personal and idiosyncratic that they
are called shifters. Hence, the study of shifters finds a natural place as a vital integral part in the
study of linguistic subjectivity. This is what has been admirably perceived by Benvéniste
(1966:259-60):
C'est dans et par le langage que l'homme se constitue comme sujet; parce que le langage seul
fonde en réalité, dans sa réalité qui est celle de l'être, le concept d'"‚go". La "subjectivité" dont nous
traitons ici est la capacité du locuteur … se poser comme "sujet"...n'est que l'émergence dans l'être
d'une propriété fondamentale du langage. Est "égo" qui dit "égo".
It is this process of appropriation of the linguistic system by an individual speaker which
defines the concept of enunciation. The speaker by annexing for his own use the formal apparatus
of a language necessarily leaves traces of his presence as a speaker on the surface of his utterance.
The task of the linguist is thus to focus on the imprint (marks, traces, cues, indices, clues...) of the
process of enunciation in the utterance (Benvéniste, 1970:14; Kerbrat, 1980).
These cues are pervasive. Speech is so impregnated with subjective markers that it is
inconceivable to study its function without recourse to them (Bevéniste, 1966:261). The occurrence
of such cues emanates from the relationship between the speaker, the utterance and especially the
other participants both in the speech event and the narrated event. As Ducrot and Todorov (1981)
have pointed out, the presence of these cues in different degrees of intensity in every utterance is a
presence-indicator, revealing information on the speaking subject. It is from the centrality of the
speaker in his utterance that the linguistic indices of enunciation stem (Benvéniste, 1970:14):
L'acte individuel d'appropriation de la langue introduit celui qui parle dans sa parole. C'est l…
une donnée constitutive de l'énonciation. La présence du locuteur … son énonciation fait que
chaque instance de discours constitue un centre de référence interne. Cette situation va se
manifester par un jeu de formes spécifiques dont la fonction est de mettre le locuteur en relation
constante et nécessaire avec son énonciation.
Most modern theories of enunciation are indebted to Benvéniste for this systematic search
for clues and their assigning to a centre or axis of reference. The gains to narratology from this
linguistic approach are innumerable. Person, spatial and temporal deictic forms will only take their
meaning when assigned to an internal centre (presented below as the deictic centre). Modal
auxiliaries, adverbs and all other realisations of modality (chapter seven) presuppose the subjective
attitude of a locus of consciousness (Greimas's cognitive centre). The selection of lexical items, and
a miscellany of other forms betokens the presence of an affective/ideological or sentient centre.
The linguistic items presupposing an interaction of the individual with the environment stem from a
perceptual centre. The attribution of all these forms to their respective centres draws on what
Kerbrat (1980:31-2) calls faits énonciatifs:
Dans cette perspective restrainte, nous considérons comme faits énonciatifs les traces
linguistiques de la présence du locuteur au sein de son énoncé, les lieux d'inscription et les
modalités d'existence de ce qu'avec Benvéniste nous appellerons "la subjectivité du langage". Nous
nous intéresserons donc aux seuls unit‚s "subjectives"...porteuses d'un "subjectivème". (italicised in
the text)
Expression is inseparable from expressivity (Joly, 1973, 1979, 1980). That is, encoding a
message is a complex process where subjective elements infiltrate into the speaker's already
culturally prestructured initial project at different levels of the encoding process (Greimas's
discursivisation process) so much so that the final product (the utterance) is a necessarily modified
version of an already subjective input (LeGoffic, 1980). Consequently, the speaker is present
everywhere in his utterance whether we as addresses or overhearers perceive his presence as
explicit or implicit.
I.6 Narratology's need for enunciatory linguistics.
One "literary-oriented" frame searching for subjectivity cues which explicitly attempts to
bridge the gap between the contemporaneous disciplines of linguistics and literature on the one
hand, and the historically related disciplines of rhetoric and stylistics on the other is Cassirer's
argumentative stylistics defined (1975:39) thus:
Its objective is to make semantical and logical analyses of argumentative and persuasive
(influence exerting) texts to investigate which techniques the writer uses in order to achieve which
effect, to reveal and expose illusory objectivity in allegedly factual statements, etc. Argumentative
stylistics is consequently directed towards the question of the means used to achieve a particular
effect and - vice versa - what these means as used in a text can indicate about a non-explicitly
expressed intention or attitude of the writer.
As adapted for the present argument, argumentative or interpretative stylistics requires a
systematic search for indicators of voice (piecing together linguistic indices of subjectivity, or
noticing their scarcity, attributing them to their respective centres, having insights into the particular
world views and mindstyles (Fowler, 1986) underlying them, exposing the speaker's strategies and
latent intentions, etc.
 Summary:
We need a linguistic frame which undertakes to retrieve the most salient subjectivity
markers in language, to inventory through illustrative examples from literary extracts some of their
most striking effects, and to indicate how such cues could serve as presence indicators and primary
clues in the identification of narrative voice. This is what the thesis precisely attempts to explore.