text-internal deictic center, whereas the verb there reflects speaker access to the text-internal deictic center. The division of labor among different deictic centers, therefore, can be quite complex.
As noted with Example text 37, the text world has both text-external and internal modal access: the narrator but not Jim knew who had witnessed the accident and the source of the shouts, whereas all of the
events in the accessed space of Figure 25 are presented as being perceived or experienced by Jim, through his modality. This is similar to the example of the three Englishmen cited above: the initial uncertainty as
to whether they were tourists belongs to the subjective character, not to the narrator, and the facts presented—the presence of the Englishmen and their appearance—are from the subjective character’s
perception at that time. The same is true in the two texts from Mbyá Guarani that were presented in §3.6.2. In the coati text Example text 35, the epistemic particles ty ‘surprise’ and ra’e ‘just discovered’
reflect text-internal modality, as well as the reported thought “He’s smiling,” which would have been incorrect coming from the narrator’s point of view. In the “Golden grandson” text Example text 41, in
addition to verbs of perception that were already noted, three additional lines are formally based on the epistemic modality of the subjective character: ‘it seemed as if there were roosters crowing on the ridge’
line 190, ‘he listened again and thought he heard sheep bleating’ line 191, ‘it was in the sky that the sheep were bleating…’ line 194. This last line has the epistemic particles ty ‘surprise’ and ra’e ‘just
discovered’ mentioned above. What is subjective about a subjective character seems always, and necessarily, to involve that character’s epistemic and evidential modality in place of the narrator’s.
Figure 26 shows a common division of labor for accessing deictic dimensions.
Deictic dimensions Speaker access
Text-internal access
tense + past
- Time
adverbials - +
now deictic verbs
- + come
Place adverbials
+ here, there + here, there
1
st
2
nd
pr + I, you
+ I Reference
3
rd
person + he, she, it, NPs
- Modality epistemic
- +
perception evidential
- +
evidence
Figure 26: A common division of labor for accessing deictic dimensions
The deictic dimensions in the right-hand column of text-internal access are closely associated with the person of the subjective character especially place deixis or reflect his mental processes time adverbials
and modality. The deictic dimensions that commonly occur with speaker access, on the other hand, have mostly to do with the action tense or with other referents. It is true that third-person references to a
subjective character also reflect speaker access, but sometimes a subjective character is referred to in first person. Alternatively, the division of labor may derive from the common “remembering” mode of text-
internal access, in which the subjective character is coreferential with the narrator but is displaced in time and sometimes space, as the narrator “remembers what it was like” when he experienced certain things
see Chafe 1994, ch. 15. This division of labor requires much further study.
“Easy comprehension practice” §2.6.6 requires deictic shifts to be identified in a clear way, since in text comprehension, addressees need to know the locus of epistemic modality in defining their own
evidential modality. “There are times when the boundaries between real world and storyworld discourse [are] not clearly marked, as there are times when the location of the deictic center is not clearly marked….
In these cases, the reader reaches a point of confusion…. One task for the writer or discourse presenter is to select boundary cues that can be identified by readers” Segal 1995a:77. Existing data—
“performance”—establishes a zone of permissible variation, but it is also useful to identify central practices that contribute to easy comprehension.
3.6.4 Subjective character as accessor and discourse topic
We have noted certain properties that a subjective character seems commonly to share with an established discourse—especially paragraph—topic:
encoding situation speaker
tense spatial
orientation reference
Theme: send help to ships step 1: news of accident
step 2: manning the cutter step 3: lowering the cutter
step 4: loosing the cutter step 5: cutters departure
accessed space
internal accessor
space Jim
hears shouts
hears other sounds
is jostled, pushed, rushed
sees other activities
sees ship
sees cutter
explanation, literary effects
• he is active—possibly even center of attention §2.4.2—throughout the discourse unit, even across
longish stretches of perceived phenomena during which he is not mentioned; •
the subjective character has the speaker’s intrinsic interest as his “epistemic proxy”; •
he integrates a space in which he experiences things, the internal accessor space of Figure 25; •
he is often given a formal introduction §3.5.1; •
subjective material usually does not begin initial in a discourse unit, only after the subjective character has been established.
The active or center-of-attention status of the subjective character is commonly noted: “the reader is… continually conscious of the character’s presence” Emmott 1995:87; “the subjective character is the
most psychologically activated for anaphor resolution” Hewitt 1995:338.
In these ways, a subjective character generally “feels like” and “acts like” a topic. However, in texts like the Lord Jim excerpt Example text 37, the subjective character is not a topic in the space to which
he gives access, the
ACCESSED SPACE
. These facts can be explained if we consider that the discourse unit in question is jointly represented by two spaces: the accessed space and the internal accessor space.
These two spaces can be thought of as being superimposed on the discourse unit though they need not be coextensive, in the sense that the discourse unit realizes the schemas and themes of both spaces. The
internal accessor space has a discourse topic, the accessor; other components are the concepts he accesses and the experiences he has Figure 25, narrated in temporal order as events. The accessor integrates this
space via the relation of experience or access this also happens with the dominion of a referent, Figure 4, and in this relation the speaker has intrinsic interest in the accessor as his “epistemic proxy.” It is
largely through this text-internal access that addressees learn of the content in the accessed space, although there are often certain kinds of information with speaker access. A composite illustration of this
excerpt is shown below:
Figure 27: Superimposed spaces for the Lord Jim excerpt
In Figure 27, one is to think of the internal accessor space, with Jim as its topic, as being superimposed or
PROJECTED
on the accessed space, similar to what Langacker 2000:270 calls multiple “planes of representation.” The discourse unit—the paragraph from Lord Jim in Example text 37—is simultaneously
represented by both spaces, hence has two simultaneous schemas. The heavy dashed vertical arrows from the internal accessor space to the accessed space indicate internal access. There is a hole in the internal
access space, representing information that Jim does not access but which is supplied in the accessed space by speaker access; in this text, this information has to do with explanation and literary effects that
are found principally in line 04 and in descriptive noun phrases. Dimensions of deictic orientation that have speaker access, such as tense and reference in Figure 27, proceed directly from the narrator to the
accessed space. Dimensions with text-internal access, such as spatial orientation in Figure 27, go from the internal accessor space.
A text-internal accessor space is not a mere base space for the accessed space, since it gives the discourse unit another schema and theme topic.
Superimposed spaces need not be coextensive. The essential thing is that the projections overlap. In the case of Lord Jim, in fact, the projection of the internal accessor space is both more and less extensive
than the above accessed space: it is more extensive in the sense that the paragraph cited is just one of a sequence of paragraphs for which Jim is internal accessor; it is less extensive because part of the
paragraph line 04 has speaker access. It appears that the accessor is “paragraph topic” for whatever area its projection covers within the paragraph in question. However, this area needs further study.
For factual first person narratives, the narrative process is one of remembering instead of imagining Chafe 1994, ch. 15. The following example also see Figure 28 is a travel narrative in which the author
goes from Port Elizabeth on the Eastern Cape of South Africa westward into the Karoo and visits the city of Graaff-Reinet:
Example text 43: Somewhere over the rainbow, excerpt Bell 2000:262–264
It happened quickly. One minute I was peering through flickering wiper blades at an industrial suburb of Port Elizabeth, the next I was over a mountain pass and beholding a desolate plateau
shimmering beneath a metallic blue sky.… After the noise and bustle of a city, driving alone through this primal landscape with hot, dry air flowing through the open windows was balm to
the soul. Yet it was a hard and unforgiving place. It was said that to survive in the Karoo you had to be a good Christian or build good dams. The other thing you could do was find a grassy spot in
a horseshoe bend of the Sundays River, build a neat town of Cape Dutch and Victorian cottages, and sell coffee and koeksisters to the sheep farmers. This is more or less what the founders of
Graaff-Reinet did, thereby providing the Karoo with a ‘capital’ and the invaluable services of carpenters, blacksmiths, wagonwrights and saddlers. Through time their settlement in a cleft of
the Sneeuberg range came to be known as the gem of the Karoo, and more pretensiously as the Athens of the Eastern Cape. When I arrived it was closed. Or at least it being Saturday afternoon,
it had gone to sleep for the weekend. Its 220 listed buildings bearing national monument plaques were snoozing in the sun like an abandoned film set, a make-believe frontier town after the
production crews had gone home. I stopped for a coffee in an old hotel, startling a receptionist who had nodded off with a House Garden magazine open on her lap. When I sat on a creaky
leather armchair, it cracked like a gunshot. After a while I got up and crept quietly out of this town of Rip van Winkles, careful not to disturb their slumber any further.
This passage has a text-internal point of view, in the sense that readers imaginatively visit the locations primarily via the perceptions of the narrator as participant, not via the narrator as narrator. This
is more difficult to see than for fictive point of view, but in fact certain signals of text-internal point of view described in §3.6.2 are common in this passage: immediate experiential access to sights, sounds; and
other perceptions a creaky leather armchair; it cracked like a gunshot; reported private states a balm to the soul; careful not to disturb their slumber any further; rich detail a House Garden magazine open
on her lap; spatial orientation I was over a mountain pass and beholding; I crept quietly out; some temporal orientation it being Saturday afternoon; internal modality with much the same syntax as in the
Mbyá Guarani Example text 41 When I arrived it was closed; a continuous flow of immediate perception that makes discourse units difficult to identify. This indicates that the discourse unit has
superimposed spaces, an internal accessor space and an accessed space.
The accessed space, as is typical for the travelogue genre, is a blend of narration and description. The basic schema is narrative, with its temporally ordered events, but those events are carefully chosen for
what they describe, and in relating them the narrator passes on his perceptions of people and places. In
encoding situation speaker
tense orientation
reference
accessed space
internal accessor
space
sees sights
feels heat finds town
closed stops for
coffee his chair
cracks creeps
quietly out
feels satisfaction
speaker as participant
S enters K spatial
S visits G-R S arrives
S stops S leaves
S continues in K
explanation, history
S visits Karoo
addition, within the framework of the schema the author inserts generous passages of explanation, comprising history or description.
Figure 28: Superimposed spaces for Somewhere over the rainbow excerpt
In the accessed space, the Graaff-Reinet visit is part of the Karoo schema; as mentioned above, both schemas are basically narrative. The schema of the internal accessor space, as for Lord Jim in Figure 27,
is a blend of narrative and access, with the narrator integrating the space as topic. Once again, there is a hole in the internal accessor space, consisting of items of information and history that are supplied to the
accessed space by speaker access. This material is primarily found in five sentences in the middle of the paragraph: Yet it was a hard and unforgiving place…the Athens of the Eastern Cape.
Superimposed spaces are also found in the last part of the Book of Daniel, which has to do with prophetic messages which Daniel received: he is both narrator and, like the author of Somewhere over the
rainbow, a first person subjective participant see reasons in §3.5.1. Thus, this last part of the book has superimposed spaces, with Daniel as topic in the internal accessor space. In the first, narrative part of the
book, there is a macropredication that “Daniel and his friends honored God and he honored them.” This is consolidated and used as a step as in Figure 10 in arguing the more general point that “God honors those
who honor him.” Figure 29 therefore updates Figure 17.
head: God honors those who honor him
ch. 1-6 God controls world
rulers
Ds life shows that God is sovereign in the affairs of men
D friends honored God he honored them
D accessing prophecy
ch.7-12 step
Figure 29: Updated spaces in the Book of Daniel
Since Daniel is intrinsic to the role of both parts of the book in the global schema, which is headed by the macropredication “Daniel’s life shows that God is sovereign in the affairs of men.” Superimposed spaces,
as well as consolidating a narrative unit to serve as a step in a further argument, make it possible to see Daniel as global topic for the book.
If an accessed space has a referential theme, that is, a discourse topic, which is distinct from the accessor, then the paragraph will have two topics: an accessed topic and an accessor topic, in two distinct
spaces. This happens in several places in the last part of the Book of Daniel. One is in Daniel 8:13–18, where the topic in the accessed space is apparently an angel: “Then I heard a holy one speaking.… So he
came near to where I was standing, and when he came I was frightened and fell on my face; but he said to me, ‘Son of man, understand that the vision pertains to the time of the end.’ Now while he was talking
with me, I sank into a deep sleep with my face to the ground; but he touched me and made me stand upright. And he said….” This discourse unit had two topics, Daniel and the angel, but they belong to
different superimposed spaces see §3.4.5. Discourse units with superimposed spaces of this kind therefore furnish one possible answer to the question, raised in §3.4.5, of how discourse units can have
two topics and discourse schemas can still have a single head. With superimposed spaces, each space has its own schema which could have a topic, and nothing suggests that one or the other schema has more
than one head.
In “Somewhere over the rainbow” and the last part of Daniel, the narrator is also text-internal accessor, which entails being “present” in the accessed space. The narrator, by remembering, talks about
himself, and “uses” the remembered self in accessing other information in the same way that Conrad, in
Lord Jim
, uses Jim for that kind of access. The question arises whether the narrator himself could in some sense have an accessor space. The answer is “Yes,” and if that kind of analysis remains implicit for some
texts, there are others for which it is necessary and needs to be recognized explicitly. It is to that possibility which we now consider.
3.6.5 Speaker as accessor and discourse topic
