Why You Can't Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New Model for Understanding Narrative

DelConte, Matt, Style

In this article I argue that we need to think about narration not in terms of the narrator alone (a limitation of many influential studies of narrative structure) but rather in terms of the relationships among the narrator, characters, and narratee. I begin with an analysis of second-person narration that exposes why our current models cannot adequately account for the diversity of narrative structure: second-person narration, which is defined not by who is speaking but by who is listening, does not fit into a voice-based model of narration. I then propose a new model that examines different relationships among narrators, narratees and characters and offers a new understanding of the …

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Publication information: Article title: Why You Can't Speak: Second-Person Narration, Voice, and a New Model for Understanding Narrative. Contributors: DelConte, Matt - Author. Journal title: Style. Volume: 37. Issue: 2 Publication date: Summer 2003. Page number: 204. © 1998 Northern Illinois University. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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