In search of the narrator

The chapter proposes a semantic analysis of narrators in fiction, addressing three main issues: (a) in fiction, we cannot rely on reality to determine the identity of the narrator, (b) there are linguistic items beyond pronouns to introduce a narrator, and (c) narrators can be unreliable. It shows how narrators in fiction can be modeled by discourse referents (drefs) in dynamic semantics. At the core of the analysis is the assumption that hearers derive subjective meanings by taking into account all contexts c that could be the context they are in. Combined with dynamic semantics, this captures the intuition that a narrator can be both unique and indefinite. Different types of narrator introduction are surveyed: apart from first-person pronouns, speaker-oriented items like exclamatives, questions, and evidentials trigger the accommodation of a narrator dref. Other items, like predicates of personal taste, can but need not refer to the narrator dref. The analysis is extended to unreliable narrators and narrations about humanless worlds.