Markers of narrator`s unreliability

The article attempts to systematize the markers of an unreliable narrative. Based on Bakhtin's understanding of the event's actor as a "witness and judge", the narrative functions of an unreliable narrator are revealed: an unreliable witness, an unreliable "speaker" (an unreliable witness and an unreliable interpreter), and an unreliable judge. It is shown that the markers of narrative unreliability are distinguished by the levels of narrative identified by V.I. Tyupa: verbalization of narration, narrative, and narrative history. The fourth level will be the narrative structure of the text, since the construction of discourses may indicate the unreliability of the narrator. At the level of narrative verbalization, the personality traits of an unreliable narrator as a personalized witness are revealed, reflected and therefore named in his narrative: deceitfulness, forgetfulness, manipulativeness, bias, emotionality. At the narrative level, such markers are omissions of narrative episodes, the absence of a narrative episode boundary, modeling and acting out "possible" plots, and metanarrativity. At the level of narrative history, the principle of event selection may indicate the unreliability of the narrator. At the level of the narrative structure, polysubjectivity and paratextuality become markers. These markers force the reader to reconsider the reliability of the narrator and lead to the need for a reinterpretation of the text, which becomes the leading strategy for reading the text in conditions of the narrator's unreliability.