Abstract

This study unveils some strategies deployed by James Joyce to manipulate the reader when they experience textual patterns to decipher meaning from the text. Investigating Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this study delves into how the reader is pragmatically positioned and cognitively (mis)directed as Joyce guides their attention and influences their judgment. Thus, the text is a tool in the hand of the reader which evokes certain responses in readers and makes them invest time and struggle in understanding the text. Joyce’s use of speech categories and their speech acts or their summaries are crucial determining factors for the scales and corresponding modes of discourse presentation (Semino and Short 2004,p.19). The study concludes by providing the significant and functional role of the interplay between two highly complex discourse phenomena: speech acts and discourse presentation.

Key Words

Manipulating the Reader, Discourse Presentation, Speech Acts, Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation

Introduction

The lines quoted above are enough to alert the reader who is involved in Joycean fiction that the author is difficult to understand and the interplay of discourse categories makes the work more challenging. Busse (2017) in the very first sentence of her book addresses the importance of the phenomenon of speech, writing and thought in a literary text and suggests this as an integral part of narrative progression and discourse presentation.  Bernaerts (2010, p.283) also stresses the importance of speech and thought by stating, “the interpretation and evaluation of a narrative are affected by the particular interplay between a narrator’s and characters’ speech and thought”.

The functional categories applicable to speech presentation can thus not easily be transferred to thought presentation on a one-to-one basis. The thought is a cognitive activity and thought report is not always a private passive flow of consciousness but may include the presentation of emotions, sensations, or beliefs. However, thought presentation – or the activities of the fictional mind (Palmer, 2004) – do not occur within a vacuum but is shaped by the character’s social environment. Consciousness and its portrayal are thus active, social, and contextual. As such, characters react to what has happened or been said around them. Using a speech act model to describe what is presented in the mind of the character does not entail an equation of thought presentation with the notion of “inner speech” (Palmer, 2004, p.53). However, mental events may have a verbal component because they are dialogic and develop in reaction to something. The reader’s processing of the “fictional mind” 

(Palmer 2004) can thus be described within this dialogic, socially and contextually based model of speech thought, and writing presentation. 

Since the modernist literature deviates from the established literary norms and the writers tend to utilize their individual style of writing, Joyce has created an interplay of discourse categories to introduce the readers with ambiguity in the text. He manipulates the readers by creating the interplay of speech, writing and thought categories in his narrative with the amalgamation of speech acts. Therefore this study tries to reach the following aims; First, it aims to identify the most distinguished varieties of speech writing and thought presentation used by James Joyce and how these varieties interact to shape fictional reality. Second, it clarifies how the blurred boundaries and fuzzy-edged nature of modes of speech writing and thought presentation can be manifested in James Joyce's short stories. Third, it aims to investigate how the categories of speech Writing and thought presentation serve to clarify the 

the controversial issue of viewpoint as well as to identify the writer’s position.

Research Questions

1. This study endeavors to address the following research questions; How James Joyce has created the interplay between speech acts and discourse presentation?

2. In what ways it can be claimed that James Joyce has manipulated the reader?

3. What type of modes are used in narrative fiction to report about mental, verbal, and written activities in the selected text?

Literature Review

There is no agreed set of analytical categories of speech acts, although Searlean (1979) felicity conditions – ranging from preparatory conditions over sincerity conditions to essential conditions (Cruse, 2000, pp.343-344) – are among the factors that help determine the illocutionary force of a speech act. Issues that are frequently discussed are the identification and classification of speech acts, as well as the interplay between the form chosen and their functions. Illocutionary-force indicating devices, such as, for instance, formal elements that mark a particular force, or the performative use of verbs, are highly explicit means of indicating the speech act performed. In the attempt to determine a speech act as well as to illustrate the functional interplay between a speech mode chosen and a respective speech act category, the exclusive search for such explicit means of speech act indication is, however, too narrow. 

Similar to the problems attached to the identification of speech acts, it can be said that the classification of speech acts cannot be reduced to one particular model. However, despite the fact that some speech act verbs can be labeled under more than one of its categories, Searle’s generally accepted classification of speech acts is highly useful, keeping in mind that the speech act verb and the speech act it performs cannot be related on a one-to-one basis and that the reaction of the hearer, that is the perlocutionary effect, plays a crucial role. Following Searle (1979), illocutionary acts can be classified into five categories: 

i. Assertives

ii. Directives

iii. Commissives

iv. Expressive

v. Declaratives

Assertives are acts in which the words state what the speaker believes to be the case, such as “describing,” “claiming,” “hypothesizing,” “insisting” and “predicting.” They “commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed proposition” (Searle, 1979; Cruse, 2000, p.342). Directives, such as “commanding,” “requesting,” “inviting,” “forbidding,” or “suggesting,” describe acts in which words are aimed at making the hearer do something. Commissives are acts in which the words commit the speaker to future action or acts which predicate something about the future activities of the speaker, such as “promising,” “offering,” “threatening,” “refusing,” “vowing,” or “volunteering.” Expressives are acts in which the speaker states what he/she feels, as these acts express his/her psychological state or attitude to a presupposed state of affairs (Cruse, 2000, p.342). Examples are “apologizing,” “praising,” “congratulating,” “deploring,” or “regretting.” Finally, declaratives change the state of the world. Therefore, they also create so-called status functions (Searle, 2010, p.11).

Some speech acts work by purporting to represent how things are in the world. These have a word-to-word direction of fit and comprise perceptions, beliefs or statements because the propositional content of the utterance fits in independently existing states of affairs. For the word-to-word direction of fit, speech acts are not supposed to represent how things are but how we would like them to be. Some utterances have a direction of fit that goes both ways: world-to-word and word-to-world. These include declaratives. Some speech acts’ direction of fit is empty because the success of fit may be presupposed by the utterance.

Research Methodology and Theoretical Framework

This study utilizes a qualitative approach in order to understand the phenomenon of manipulating the reader and making the reader struggle in the process of capturing the real sense that is in the text. For this purpose, the analysis is guided in the light of one of the most widely accepted frameworks for the description of the phenomenon in this tradition which is Leech and Short’s (1981) model. Leech and Short proposed parallel scales of speech and thought presentation categories for the novel, arranged on a cline of different degrees of apparent narratorial interference. As one move across the cline from left to right, the categories reflect an increasing lack of apparent narrator ‘control’ of the report. This results at the extreme right of the scale in the categories of ‘free direct’ speech or thought, the effect of which is to suggest that what we have in these instances are the words and thoughts of the characters

themselves, with no narratorial intervention at all.

Speech  Categories NV NRSA IS FIS DS FDS

Writing Categories NW NRWA IW FIW DW FDW

Thought Categories NI NRTA IT FIT DT FDT

The narrator enjoys absolute authority in a narrative text to decide how characters and events are presented and this provides an opportunity for interpretation of the work as a whole. From the outset, it should be stated that there are problems inherent in delineating discourse so precisely into clearly defined modes. This is something that Leech and Short themselves identify when they discuss how the various modes they propose are easily able to slip into one another, with the boundaries between them at times hard to demarcate.

Analysis of the Text

Readers’  Manipulation by Joyce

In order to introduce the functional interplay between a speech act chosen and the respective category of discourse presentation in which it occurs, let me quote the following example from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

—No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t go to bazaars and he doesn’t flirt and he doesn’t damn anything or damn all (p.48).

In terms of discourse presentation, this quotation is direct speech (DS), because the reporting clause “said Heron” is a finite clause that is embedded in or interrupts the reported clause. It also contains the prototypical verb “say.” In terms of speech acts used, the first negative “No” functions as a directive, but it is immediately followed by an assertion (“Dedalus is a model youth”) which announces the actual compliment – that is the expressive speech act – to follow: “He doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t go to bazaars and he doesn’t flirt.” This exchange is part of the verbal fencing between Stephen and Heron. The reporting clause interrupts the utterance “no”, which has the form of a negative but has the illocutionary force of an expressive.

Apart from identifying the speaker, the reporting clause, interrupting the illocution, also prepares for and foregrounds what Heron has to say, namely that he looks through Stephen and that he knows how sure he is of his success. The reporting verb “say” further builds up tension, and advances narrative progression because the reader expects that something will follow: in this case the expressive speech act (Searle, 1976) and direct speech. Because direct speech makes the reader feel particularly close to the character (Toolan, 2001, p.180; Semino & Short 2004, p.50), the interplay between the two discourse modes becomes obvious. It is through this interaction that the reader understands not only the narrator’s voice and ironic comment on the exchange between Stephen and Heron, but also that Heron is ironic in his praise of Stephen’s achievements as regards the refinement of his social performance. 

The next sections are about the meaning-making interplay between speech, thought, and writing acts and modes of speech, writing, and thought presentation in James Joyce’s (1816) novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. They will illustrate how the interaction between these two complex modes of discourse not only informs the reader about the narrator’s controlling comments but also how it manipulates the reader and creates his/her evaluation of the characters. I shall illustrate some broad linguistic indications of illocutionary force (including the use of modality) in the respective categories of discourse presentation. Further, it will be investigated how a certain speech act may point to the discourse presentation mode that is being used. I shall also analyze how the reporting clause (if present) and the reported clause in the respective types of speech, writing, and thought presentation interact in the construal of illocutionary force and investigate the ways in which the reporting clause frames the illocutionary force of the speech act.

Speech Presentation Co-Occurring with Speech Acts – Manipulating Characterization in Communication

Due to the importance of speech presentation in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man all Searlean (1979) types of speech acts occur in the different discourse presentation scales. Therefore, in this section, I will not illustrate the respective speech act realization for each mode of speech presentation. Instead, I focus on the analysis of the speech presentation of one particular theme in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Love declaration. The aim is to illustrate how the mode of presentation chosen and the actual speech act works together and how:

a) this interplay serves as means of characterizing the speaker, 

b) how information is revealed to the reader which allows him/ her to make cognitive inferences as to the meaning implied, and how the reader is manipulated by the narrator.

Reports of speech acts are dramatically rearranged with paralinguistic features (Brown, 1996), such as kneeling and praying in his closet and raising the pitch of voice. Following this report, Mr. Stephen’s expressions are gradually introduced from NRSA to FIS which is supposed to emphasize the decree of faithfulness by moving further to the character’s words. 

The expressive speech acts “hoping – fearing – adoring” within NRSA are foregrounded through the repetition of these participle forms. It is implied that Mr. Elton’s expectations, as well as his love declaration, is not at all welcome. NRSA is used as a prelude to FIS, including such expressive compliments and declarations as “ready to die if she refused him.” FIS “is often associated with ironic effects when it is used to present character speech in fiction” (Semino  & Short, 2004, p.13). The following analysis deals with the interplay between the speech modes chosen and the respective speech acts that co-occur with them in Mr. Stephen’s declaration of love for God. 

These reports illustrate that the illocutionary force of the associated speech act is that of a commissive, although the indication as to “How d’ye do’s” makes it clear that they establish phatic communion and exchange empty phrases of politeness. Interestingly, the narrator adds some paralinguistic information with the help of the two adjectives “quiet” and “constrained,” which frame the speech acts reported about in the NRSA as highly reserved. 

The use of FIS following NRSA is very effective because, although it is often used to create irony, it signals to the reader that the characters’ constrained behavior towards each other will not last very long. Therefore, linguistic indicators of direct speech, like the affirmative particle “yes,” are also used. 

The narrator’s foregrounded presentation of Mr. Stephen’s speech and the respective speech acts co-occurring with these modes of discourse presentation construe him to be in an emotional turmoil due to his love for God. Yet, as usual, the narrator intrudes before the reader is able to read these lines.

Writing Presentation Co-Occurring with Writing Acts – Manipulating Characters’ Faithfulness

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, writing presentation is visible in notes and letters sent from one family or person to another and these letters play an important role with respect to Father Arnall and his teaching at the school in the novel. For instance, Father Arnall wrote a hard sum on the board and then said: (pp, 293-294). While for Father Arnall, the writing is an integral way to impart knowledge to pupils and Father Arnall cites the writing of his pupils as in this example, “—He wrote a bad Latin theme, Father Arnall said, and he missed all the questions in grammar”. Hence, writing plays an important role in teaching and learning at a school. 

Stephen and his classmates are also engaged in writing activity “He saw the heads of his classmates meekly bent as they wrote in their notebooks the points they were bidden to note, nominal definitions, essential definitions and examples or dates of birth or death, chief works, a favorable and an unfavorable criticism side by side”(p. 268). 

Some representative observations about the speech act used will in the following be made on the basis of selected letters and notes from the novel. Often, however, when writing a presentation occurs in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the mode of discourse presentation is that of NRWA, as in “they wrote in their notebooks the points” (p.48). NRWA describes that the act of writing has taken place in marking an actual speech act. Following Semino and Short (2004, p.48), NW “captures those cases where the narrator/reporter simply mentions that someone is engaged in writing […], but tells us a little more than that.” Hence, the speech act is involved and accordingly, speech act analysis can be undertaken in stretches of NRWA.

The categories NRWA, IW, FIW, DW, and FDW can be better analyzed for their use of speech acts. As in NRSA, in NRWA the speech act value of what is written is indicated, often with a specification of the topic of the speech act in form of a nominal group, but without any elaboration of what is said in the anterior discourse. Therefore, the summarizing nature of NRSA and therefore also of NRWA displays a loose connection with both what is said (its propositional content) and how it was said (the words and structures used to utter the relevant propositional content).

Narrator’s Presentation of Writing Acts Co-Occurring with Writing Acts

The speech acts in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that occur within NRWA contain assertions which inform – to use Toolan’s (2000) terminology – that is, they are representatives. Examples are “Saint Catherine of Siena once saw a devil and she has written that, rather than look again for one single instant on such a frightful monster, she would prefer to walk until the end of her life along a track of red coals.” (p.48), where Saint Catherine of Siena’s warning towards the devils creates fear. The fact that readers are presented with Saint Catherine of Siena’s reproach and warning in NRWA which raises the mystery as to his personality and stirs up the characters’ and the reader’s suspense concerning the reality of the devils. At the same time, the choice of an instance of writing presentation, on the one hand, adds a faithfulness claim but, on the other hand, the fact that it is NRWA somewhat diminishes

 this claim, as the reader is not informed of the exact words. 

In addition, this technique also conveys an ironic comment on the part of the narrator. At the beginning of the novel, the reader expects Stephen’s courage never to submit. But by the time that this warning is provided to the readers has postponed his visits to prostitutes. The reader is therefore familiar with the verbosity of writing. The discourse presentation mode the narrator chooses here – that of writing – as well as the specific category of NRWA, engages with the assertive speech act in a playful way. Following lines;

“The formula which he wrote obediently on the sheet of paper, the coiling and uncoiling calculations of the professor, the specter-like symbols of force and velocity fascinated and jaded Stephen’s mind.” (p.315).

The speech act used is also that of assertive to which information about an expressive utterance is added, as Stephen is informed about the scientific calculations and formula that make his mind jaded. Note also the irony that is conveyed through the interaction between the discourse mode of writing chosen here and the speech act of assertive. 

Expressives, such as apologies, deploring, and regretting acts are directly or indirectly conveyed. Again, it is Stephen who is said to have sent a letter expressing his need for new glasses: “It was unfair and cruel because the doctor had told him not to read without glasses and he had written home to his father that morning to send him a new pair.” (p.162). 

Commissives in NRWA contain the habit of students at school as Stephen writes “From force of habit he had written at the top of the first page the initial letters of the Jesuit motto: A.M.D.G.” (p.162).  Again, it should be stressed here that the choice of the discourse presentation mode of NRWA in co-occurrence with a commissive characterizes Stephen as superficially complying with social decorum and addresses the reader who is supposed to understand their functional potential within this context.

Indirect Writing Co-Occurring with Writing Acts

Generally, my corpus of narrative fiction contains fewer incidents of IW than of NRWA. In IW, the speech acts used are reported about, but often without giving the actual words. Like IS, IW is less dramatic than DW. A speech act that often accompanies IW in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that of assertive, as in: 

Saint Catherine of Siena once saw a devil and she has written that, rather than look again for one single instant on such a frightful monster, she would prefer to walk until the end of her life along a track of red coals. These devils, who were once beautiful angels, have become as hideous and ugly as they once were beautiful. They mock and jeer at the lost souls whom they dragged down to ruin. It is they, the foul demons, who are made in hell the voices of conscience. (p.173) 

In this passage, the description of devils has been received through the saint via stretch IW. Although, generally speaking, writing presentation contributes to the verisimilitude of what is said, the choice of IW with the speech act of representative has the contrary effect because of verbosity.  To conclude, discourse presentation in IW reports speech acts that carry informational value and also summarizes expressive emotional reactions.

Direct Writing and Free Direct Writing Co-Occurring with Writing Acts 

More than the other modes of writing presentation, direct writing gives the narrator the chance of;

(a) characterizing those who report about direct writing and 

(b) to give the impression that the faithfulness of the writer is supported because the exact words of a written act are being reported. 

Hence, it can be hypothesized that FDW and DW contain the speech act of commissives, such as apology, regret, or excuse, and manipulate the reader towards superficially believing in the truth of what is written. It is a common practice by students that they write about their whereabouts on the pages of books. Consider the following example: 

“That was in his writing: and Fleming one night for a cod had written on the opposite page:

Stephen Dedalus is my name,

Ireland is my nation.

Clongowes is my dwelling place

And heaven my expectation…” (p.119) 

The different modes of writing presentation to be found in the text combined with almost all types of speech acts. The high proportion of writing presentation found with one specific character in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen, in interplay with the respective speech acts chosen often seems to have the opposite effect on the reader as regards faithfulness claims. Although characters seem to have expectations of what letters should contain and how they should be like, their function is reduced. At the same time, the narratological voice of the narrator becomes more prominent.

Thought Presentation Co-Occurring with “Thought Acts” – Manipulating the Expression of Characters’ Feelings and Mind?

Mention has already been made of the illusory assumption that in thought presentation, in general, we have access to other people’s thoughts. Cohn (1978, p.76) argues that presenting thoughts in language includes the conversion of a phenomenon that might have consisted of non-verbal cognitive activities, because (F)DT especially creates the illusion that it renders what a character really thinks, while FIT creates a closeness to the character that is not possible in real life. Further, presenting speech acts is different from presenting thought acts. Speech acts are defined in relation to the illocutionary force and are therefore intimately related to communication (Semino & Short 2004, p.130). Generally speaking, thought acts are not inherently communicative acts, but in fiction, they communicate with the reader. In other words, it is rather an artistic convention that these modes of discourse presentation exist and that they play a crucial role in the interaction, or communication, between the narrator and the reader. As mentioned before, the presentation of how the mind works embrace an active, social, and contextual focus which also includes the reader’s processing (Palmer, 2004). The character is not a social eremite whose consciousness is presented in a vacuum. When seen on a continuum, mental events may have a verbal component to them. They are dialogic and happen in interaction with something that has already been uttered or expressed. 

The categories of thought presentation that will be dealt with are NRTA, IT, FIT, DT, and FDT. NI will be excluded because NI is “the presentation of [a] character’s internal states, but without any indication that he or she engaged in anything that could be described as a specific thought act” (Semino & Short 2004, p.118).

Narrator’s Presentation of “Thought Acts” and Indirect Thought Co-Occurring with Thought Acts

As Semino and Short (2004) state, “where the NRSA and NRTA categories can be seen as most familiar is in the minority of cases in which someone is presented as performing mentally what would normally count as a speech act” (Semino & Short 2004, p.130). NRTA may function as the report of a thoughtful act and it may also function as reference to the occurrence of a specific individual thought in the mind of a participant in the story (which does not include any indication of the propositional content or the wording of the thought; verbs used are cognition verbs like think, remember, or wonder; Semino & Short 2004, p.130). NRTA sets up a contrast between verbal behavior and private reflections and the focus is on the internal state of the protagonist. The verb of cognition can be followed by a noun or prepositional phrase indicating the topic. This is not a summary but provides a brief insight into what somebody is thinking.

In “He mistrusted the turbulence and doubted the sincerity of such comradeship which seemed to him a sorry anticipation of manhood.” (p.340), Stephen, represented by the narrator in NRSA, hypothesizes that Heron woes him. This is one of the few incidents where Stephen’s thoughts are presented. The narrator obviously pursues a strategy by not giving the reader Stephen’s thoughts in DT. The narrator while at the same time indicating to the reader Stephen’s inner turmoil. Stephen’s thought process, which is then followed by FIT, the reader is able to perceive the manipulating strategy and the ironic insinuations regarding Stephen’s inability to acknowledge to himself his real feelings for Heron. 

IT gives the impression that we are given the entire propositional content of some particular thought, although it is more understated and less dramatic than FIT and (F)DT. Cohn (1978) covers IT under the heading of “psychonarration” and argues that Psychonarration is in fact rarely used simply to follow consciousness through its paces since it can do so only in the form of unadorned indirect quotations – […] – which easily become monotonous. (Cohn, 1978, p.38) 

The reader gets a mixture of FIT and IT, initially culminating in “So entire and unquestionable was this sense of the divine meaning in all nature granted to his soul that he could scarcely understand why it was in any way necessary that he should continue to live.” (p.203), which, in terms of illocutionary force, is between a hypothesis, an imperative and a declaration. The use of the modal should is crucial here because in contrast to the epistemic and root meanings of must it construes a weaker obligation. However, it may also introduce his attempt to convince himself to live longer. Therefore, the utterance can be seen as another ironic comment on the part of the narrator.

Free Indirect Thought Co-Occurring with Thought Acts

FIT has a high appeal to writers because of its formal flexibility and usefulness in presenting thoughts from the point of view of the character. As often no reporting clause is involved it is difficult for the reader to detect it. The complexity of its formal realization and the need for contextual information necessitate a qualitative investigation of the relationship between the FIT and the speech acts used. There are studies of FIT used in Jane Austen’s work (e.g., Gunn 2004), but only a few of them have paid specific attention to the interplay between the modes of speech presentation and the speech acts used. Semino and Short (2004, p.19) have pointed to the fact that FIT includes many exclamations. 

When Stephen is convinced that God will absolve his sins because of his prayer and repentance, the reader encounters his persistent determination to seek forgiveness. This is expressed through the speech acts of commissives: 

He beat his breast with his fist humbly, secretly under cover of the wooden armrest. He would be at one with others and with God. He would love his neighbor. He would love God who had made and loved him. He would kneel and pray with others and be happy. God would look down on him and on them and would love them all (p.187).

Notice here the high proliferation of modals. The use of would strengthen Stephen’s determination to pursue his plan. The use of would as an indicator of volition (Görlach, 1999, p.84) and its co-occurrence with a similar syntactic structure that is repeated four times foreground the illocutionary force of her self-convincing speech act, which is almost turned into a promise on the part of the thinker, Stephen. Toolan (2009) sees these modals as being diagnostic of FIT. But the use of repetition, parallel syntactic structure, and the exaggerated use of the modal would have the effect of irony and function as linguistic indicators to the reader that something certainly will go wrong. 

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, many of the examples of FIT occur with expressions of either praise or disapproval. For instance, Stephen reacts to worldly temptations in the following way: 

He beat his breast with his fist humbly, secretly under cover of the wooden armrest. He would be at one with others and with God. He would love his neighbor. He would love God who had made and loved him. He would kneel and pray with others and be happy. God would look down on him and on them and would love them all(p.211).

Stephen laments and repents on his sinful deeds of his past. The narrator amusingly exaggerates Stephen’s behavior through a high proliferation of elliptic expressive and rhetorical statements. These expressive statements culminate in Stephen’s mental comments on his confidence that He might actually have given him a reason to believe to be in love with Him. The narrator makes Stephen almost speak to the reader so that the reader feels close to Stephen. Notice that this effect is achieved by means of expressive speech acts and the repetitive reinforcement through the use of the modal would.

The constant reiteration of the modal would strengthen his belief in God. Furthermore, the repetitive expressions foreground the final and declaring representative in: “It was most provoking.” The reader is to sympathize with Stephen’s persuasion that he is in the right and that he deserves God’s companionship and forgiveness. Later in the novel, Stephen is more critical of himself and his own behavior. However, apologies are only expressed mentally, in his head, but not verbally. FIT occurs with self-reproach and deploring of her deeds: 

How could he hit their conscience or how cast his shadow over the imaginations of their daughters, before their squires begat upon them, that they might breed a race less ignoble

than their own? And under the deepened dusk he felt the thoughts and desires of the race to which he belonged flitting like bats across the dark country lanes, under trees by the edges of streams and near the pool-mottled bogs (p.324).

FIT occurs with requests and expressive, which are repetitive and also similar in the syntactic structure. The reiterating style of the expressive mark the intrusion of the narrator’s ironic voice. HIS use of commissives – the somewhat forceful requests, in which he not only expresses his bewilderment at his own past behavior, but also his need for swift clarification – further illustrates the ways in which the narrator – for the reader only – initially portrays Stephen as superficial, arrogant, and benevolent. The following passage will be quoted in length to illustrate this strategy: 

Stephen’s moment of anger had already passed. He was neither flattered nor confused but simply wished the banter to end. He scarcely resented what had seemed to him a silly indelicateness for he knew that the adventure in his mind stood in no danger from these words: and his face mirrored his rival’s false smile (p.222).

Notice also the use of adverbials of time, such as always and never, which are repeated twice, and the switch from FIT to IT, in which the narrator, in the form of representative speech acts, reports about Emma’s evaluation of her past deeds. The narrator’s commenting voice is thus less obvious, as the reader is to believe that Emma has finally managed to make herself aware of her own

 feelings – and has learned a lesson of humbleness.

Direct Thought and Free Direct Thought Co-Occurring with Thought Acts

(F)DT occurs in cases where it is conceivable that characters could have mentally articulated their thoughts in verbal form and in moments of heightened intensity in a character’s mental life. It is important to make a distinction between DT and FDT, as with FDT, reporting strategies that may frame or reinforce the illocutionary force of a thoughtful act, for instance in the form of a reporting verb, are not present. In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, DT occurs for instance with representatives that function as a hypothesis of how thoughtful Stephen would be in regard to his attachment with Eileen: 

“—She too wants me to catch hold of her, he thought. That’s why she came with me to the tram. I could easily catch hold of her when she comes up to my step: nobody is looking. I could hold her and kiss her.” (p.112)

In this example, the reader is very close to the character and is confronted with yet another of Stephen’s vibrant frame of mind and his somewhat naïve as well as romantic ideas of how he can have his love won. It is important that through the reporting verb “he thought” the reader is informed about the fact that these are Stephen’s thought acts because it makes the reader doubt that Stephen is doing this for his own gratification rather than for the benefit of others. When Stephen thinks about Eileen, who is anxiously waiting for being his beloved, he anticipates a warm kiss from her. The narrator’s ironic and criticizing comment on her constant preoccupation with domestic life is stressed through the foregrounded and rhetorically stylized reporting clause.

The combination of DT, expressive speech acts, and additional stance markers such as indeed serves as a means for the narrator to characterize the thinker as well as to stir up entertainment, because the long passage of this emotional outburst portrays Stephen’s recourse to social recognition, which seems to be, at least superficially, necessary for him, although here the reader fully sympathizes with his mental criticism and likes his vivid and sharp disapproval of the ways of life.

Conclusion

The qualitative analysis of the interplay between speech acts and the various modes of speech, writing and thought presentation has revealed that contextual analysis is indispensable to capture the interrelations between these two highly complex discoursal phenomena. Representative speech acts that co-occur with the respective modes of discourse presentation in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man have been identified, such as expressive co-occurring with the FIT.  It has also been illustrated that the interplay between speech, writing, and thought presentation and the respective speech acts chosen – although these could often be attributed to more than one category in Searle’s (1979) classification – are crucial for the narratological strategies used to manipulate the reader. A variety of strategies of reader manipulation has been identified, such as the creation of curiosity, entertainment, satire, the adding of a faithfulness claim, misleading them, or mimicry. Although it has been stressed that, ultimately, it is the context which determines functional import, we have shown that a number of repetitive linguistic indicators either construe, reflect or determine the illocutionary force of a speech act. The use of the modality and the insertion of vocatives in the direct speech presentation are foregrounded. In addition, paralinguistic information, as well as reporting strategies, have been shown to be of great importance.

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