Language In Popular Fiction

First published in 1990, Language in Popular Fiction was written to provide a comprehensive and illuminating look at the way language is used in thrillers and romantic fiction. The book examines the use of language across three interrelated levels: a level of verbal organisation, a level of narrative structure, and a level at which stylistic options and devices are related to notions of gender. It introduces ‘the protocol of pulchritude’ and makes use of detailed stylistic and linguistic analysis to investigate a wide range of ‘popfiction’ and ‘magfiction’. In doing so, it provokes serious reflection on popular fiction and its claims on the reader.

First published in 1990, Language in Popular Fiction was written to provide a comprehensive and illuminating look at the way language is used in thrillers and romantic fiction. The book examines the use of language across three interrelated levels: a level of verbal organisation, a level of narrative structure, and a level at which stylistic options and devices are related to notions of gender. It introduces ‘the protocol of pulchritude’ and makes use of detailed stylistic and linguistic analysis to investigate a wide range of ‘popfiction’ and ‘magfiction’. In doing so, it provokes serious reflection on popular fiction and its claims on the reader.

Christine Ferguson's timely study is the first comprehensive examination of the importance of language in forming a crucial nexus among popular fiction, biology, and philology at the Victorian fin-de-siècle. Focusing on a variety of literary and non-literary texts, the book maps out the dialogue between the Victorian life and social sciences most involved in the study of language and the literary genre frequently indicted for causing linguistic corruption and debasement - popular fiction. Ferguson demonstrates how Darwinian biological, philological, and anthropological accounts of 'primitive' and animal language were co-opted into wider cultural debates about the apparent brutality of popular fiction, and shows how popular novelists such as Marie Corelli, Grant Allen, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, and Bram Stoker used their fantastic narratives to radically reformulate the relationships among language, thought, and progress that underwrote much of the contemporary prejudice against mass literary taste. In its alignment of scientific, cultural, and popular discourses of human language, Language, Science, and Popular Fiction in the Victorian Fin-de-Siècle stands as a corrective to assessments of best-selling fiction's intellectual, ideological, and aesthetic simplicity.

This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. Following a detailed introduction by the editors, The Language of Fiction contains 14 chapters by leading scholars in linguistics and philosophy, organized into three parts. Part I, 'Truth, Reference, and Imagination', offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, 'Storytelling', deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, 'Perspective Shift', focuses on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, namely how we get access to the fictional characters' inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see. The volume will be of interest to scholars from graduate level upwards in the fields of discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psychology, cognitive science, and literary studies.

This anthology explores and validate the nuances of Indian popular fiction which has hitherto been hounded by its ubiquitous 'commerical' success. It uncoverspopular in its socio-political and cultural contexts. Furthermore, it investigates the vitality embedded in theory and praxis of popular forms and their insurrections in mutants and new age oeuvres and looks to examine the symbiotic bonds between the reader and the author, as the latter articulates and perpetuates the needs of the former whose demands need continual fulfilment. This constant metamorphosis of the popular fueled by neoliberalism and postmodernity along with the shifts in the publishing industry to more democratic 'reader' driven genres is taken up here along with the millenial's fetish for romance, humanized mythical retellings and the evergreen whodunnits. As its natural soulmates, the anthology delves into the interstices of Indian Popular with desi (local) traditions, folk lore, community consciousness and nation building. Please note: This title is co-published with Aakar Books, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The scholarly essays in this book open up experimental and novel spaces and genres beyond the traditional and the literary world of Indian Popular Fiction as it existed towards the end of the last millennium. They respond to the possibilities opened up by the technology-driven and internet-savvy reading and writing world of today. Contemporaneous and bold, most of the essays resonate with the racy and fast-paced milieu and social media space inhabited by today's youth. Combative in its drift, this book makes possible an attempt to disband hierarchies and dismantle categories that have engulfed the expansive landscape of Indian Popular Fiction for too long. It facilitates discussion on graphic novels, microfiction, popular-entertainment and political satire on television and celluloid, social media-driven romances existing in the domain of the 'real' rather than that of 'fantasy' and mythological readings against the backdrop of gender and politics. Aimed at facilitating further research by scholars and enthusiasts of Indian Popular Fiction, this book is also an ode to the current trends generated by social and internet media cosmos. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Monika Fludernik presents a detailed analysis of free indirect discourse as it relates to narrative theory, and the crucial problematic of how speech and thought are represented in fiction. Building on the insights of Ann Banfield's Unspeakable Sentences, Fludernik radically extends Banfield's model to accommodate evidence from conversational narrative, non-fictional prose and literary works from Chaucer to the present. Fludernik's model subsumes earlier insights into the forms and functions of quotation and aligns them with discourse strategies observable in the oral language. Drawing on a vast range of literature, she provides an invaluable resource for researchers in the field and introduces English readers to extensive work on the subject in German as well as comparing the free indirect discourse features of German, French and English. This study effectively repositions the whole area between literature and linguistics, opening up a new set of questions in narrative theory.

This book charts the publishing industry and bestselling fiction from 1900, featuring a comprehensive list of all bestselling fiction titles in the UK. This third edition includes a new introduction which features additional information on current trends in reading including the rise of Black, Asian and LGBTQIA+ publishing; the continuing importance of certain genres and up to date trends in publishing, bookselling, library borrowing and literacy. There are sections on writing for children, on the importance of audiobooks and book clubs, self- published bestsellers as well as many new entries to the present day including bestselling authors such as David Walliams, Peter James, George R R Martin and far less well known authors whose books s sell in their thousands. This is the essential guide to best-selling books, authors, genres, publishing and bookselling since 1900, providing a unique insight into more than a century of entertainment, and opening a window into the reading habits and social life of the British from the death of Queen Victoria to the Coronavirus Pandemic.