Thought presentation

'This is an example of the apparently rather conscious, soliloquy-like, kind of thought we saw in the DT (cartoon 1) example in Task A. It seems deliberate and coherent.

This is like the IT example we saw in Task A (cartoon 2). We are given the propositional content of the thought, but through the narrator's words and structures, not the characters. So we are given the information in a distanced, filtered, way. As we saw in Task A, IT tends to have an even greater distancing effect than IS.

This kind of presentation of thought is at the extreme 'narrator end' of the thought presentation scale. All we know is that the character thought something, but nothing else. And so although we know she was thinking, we are distanced maximally from those thoughts. We don't know the topic of her thoughts, or what she thought about that topic, let alone what form those thoughts took.

If we compare this example with the NT and IT examples, we can see that in terms of effect it falls between the two. We are distanced more than for IT but less than for NT. We know the kind of thinking involved and the topic of those thoughts, but no more.

In the 'Varieties of speech presentation in the novel' page we noticed that the basic effect of FIS was to make the reader feel some distance between him or her and what the character said, and that this distancing effect, although not as strong as using the more indirect presentational categories, was often used as a vehicle for irony (because of its combination of distancing while giving at least a flavour of the original).

We have spelled out the basic effect of FIS in order to help you see that the effect of FIT is more or less opposite to that of FIS. With FIT, which, as here, normally involves a mix of features associated with DS on the one hand and IS on the other, readers normally feel close to the character's thoughts, not estranged from them. It is as if you are inside the character's head as he or she thinks (much as you are for DT, but the thoughts are presented as less conscious, rather more subconscious).

The reason that the effects of FIT are so different from the effects of FIS is because the norms for speech and thought presentation are different.

In speech presentation, it is reasonable to assume that the reporter heard what was said and so can say exactly what was said in the DS form if necessary. Hence any move away from DS (including FIS, which is the next to DS on the presentation scale) is perceived by readers as a move away from the norm towards the narator-controlled end of the scale. Hence the distancing effect.

NV	NRSA	IS	FIS	DS
Moving away from the norm				Norm

 

But in thought presentation it is not reasonable, even when someone reports their own thoughts, to assume that they have access to the words and grammatical structures used to think those thoughts. Hence the thought presentation norm must be down at the narrator-controlled end of the scale somewhere (IT or beyond). And it is because of this that the FIT effect is so different. It is a movement on the thought presentation scale towards the character end of the scale, and so leads to the effect of making readers feel close to the character's thoughts as those thoughts are being subconsciously, or semi-consciously produced.

NT	NRTA	IT	FIT	DT
Moving away from the norm		Norm	Moving away from the norm

 

This is another example of DT, but although the thoughts being presented appear to be conscious, they also seem rather disorganised. The person considers being a teacher. But apparently the thought about being a teacher leads her, by association, to remember (some version of) the famous George Bernard Shaw quotation ('He who can does. He who cannot teaches.'). Then, when she comes up with a 'doer' possibility, it looks as if the possibility which comes into her head is prompted by the phonetic connection between 'teach' and 'preach'.

This sentence, with its rather disorderly associational shifts (note also the dashes) and topic changes, is an example of the sort of thing which critics normally call 'stream of consciousness' writing, a technique associated with James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and others. Stream of consciousness writing can also occur in the FIT mode (where it feels a bit less conscious).

But it is important to note that the mere presence of DT or FIT do not automatically mean that the 'stream-of-consciousness' technique is involved. In addition to FDT or FIT you also need the chaotic sort of topic-shifting seen above. The stream of consciousness technique can't occur in the other thought presentation modes because they are presentation forms which are too distanced from the process of thinking to allow this chaotic sort of effect.

This is clearly a sentence of narration, but unlike narrator sentences like 'She put her dress on.' we have a narrator statement about the 'inner reality' of some character - her emotional response to something - rather than what we might call 'outer reality'. Narrators, especially 3rd-person narrators, have the ability to make statements about the insides of character's heads, as well as the rest of the fictional world. So we could call this Internal Narration (IN). Note though, that rather like the sort of example we have called NT, we can sometimes be on the verge between narration and thought presentation with IN. This is because emotional responses sometimes involve thoughts too, even if they are not made very clear.

Let's add a topic to our sentence:

'She was very angry indeed about her dismal-looking future'.

Although the above sentence still clearly represents her emotional response, it looks as if that response must have been the result of some sort of thought too.