Bilgewater: Speech & thought presentation
Task E - Our answers
(1) The interview seemed over.
This sentence is actually an example of something we have not covered
in our brief work on Thought Presentation in this topic. The first thing
to notice is that because some narrators can be omniscient, narration
can be either external, telling us facts about the external fictional
world (e.g. S2, 'The Principal sat looking at the candidate') or internal,
telling us facts about the internal, mental worlds of characters (e.g.
'Mary felt very worried').
Internal Narration (NI) is at the borderline between narration and thought
presentation, and sometimes, as with 'The interview seemed over', it is
genuinely difficult to know whether we have narration or thought presentation.
If 'seemed' was replaced by 'was' the sentence would definitely have been
a sentence of narration. The use of the non-factive verb 'seemed' makes
the sentence ambiguous discoursally: it allows us to see the sentence
as either (i) a presentation by the narrator of the situation from the
character's viewpoint or (ii) a presentation of something the character
herself realised at that moment (which would then tip it into thought
presentation).
Given that we are at the very beginning of the novel and know nothing
about any of the characters yet, the reader would probably find it disconcerting
to be vaulted into more dramatic thought presentation forms. So Gardam
seems to be using this discoursally ambiguous sentence to lead us gradually
into the mind-set of the candidate, by beginning with a form which is
connected solidly with the narration.
(10) She wondered whether she would be offered a cigarette.
This is a clear case of indirect thought:
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NRT
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IT
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She wondered |
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whether she would be offered a cigarette.
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Grammatically, the reporting clause is followed by a subordinate reported
clause nested as the object of the predicator of the main clause, 'wondered'.
All of the deictic items are appropriate to the narrator's position, and
we know the propositional content of the thought, but nothing about the
words and structures that the character used to think it. Compared with
sentence 1, we are now a bit further along the thought presentation cline,
but still down near the narrator end of it. Jane Gardam is thus drawing
us gently into the candidate's inner world. It is interesting to note
that the sentence we are considering is the fourth (and final) example
of IT, all of which cluster near the beginning of the extract:
(5) The candidate sat opposite wondering what to do.
(7) . . . - then wondered about crossing her legs at all.
(8) She wondered whether to get up.
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