The ‘dual voice’ of free indirect discourse: a reading experiment

Abstract

The emergence of cognitive poetics has focused attention on how stylistic features are processed by readers. One area ripe for empirical investigation in this respect is point of view. Little attention has previously been paid in cognitive science to the specifics of how point of view is identified during reading. This essay reports on an experiment designed to examine how readers respond to a narrative style that has attracted a great deal of interest from both stylisticians and literary critics: free indirect discourse. The experiment tested two questions in particular: (1) Do readers hear a ‘dual voice’ when reading passages of free indirect discourse? and (2) What kind of ‘contexts’ influence the identification of point of view? Some critics have noted the importance of the preceding co-text in deciding whose point of view is present in ambiguous passages; this experiment suggests that the succeeding co-text might also be relevant. This in turn has implications for the flexibility of the reading process, especially when more than one point of view may be present.