Double Deixis, Inclusive Reference, and Narrative Engagement: The Case of You and One.

Abstract

Inclusive reference is believed to drag readers into the fictional world by inviting identification with the intradiegetic perspectivizing entitiy, be it the narrator or a focalizer. This move involves a deictic shift in which readers abandon the parameters of the reading situation to occupy the perspectivizer’s vantage point inside the storyworld. Narratologists underscore the role of inclusive reference in this process, particularly of doubly-deictic you (Herman 2002; Fludernik 2011), as in “Whatever hour you woke there was a door shunting” (Woolf 2009: 5). However, the study of inclusive one is often restricted to impersonal, generic uses, as in “…the qualities one might enumerate in a lover” (Durrell 1968: 21), with little deictic anchoring power. This study explores inclusive you and one in narratives, with a focus on reader engagement, and suggests that inclusive one may also occur in doubly-deictic contexts, but with lower prototypicality than you.