I throw my spoon on the table. That’s it. I’m leaving.
Linda follows me out. It’s like a revolution. Nothing like this has ever happened
before.
Danziger 1979/1987:64An important part of the register here is the first person and—as often—present tense
narration, particularly in so far as it constructs a precise orientation of narrative voice
towards a conventional situation. The function of present tense narration is to convey an
illusion of immediacy and instanteity, suppressing any suggestion that the outcome is
knowable in advance. Thus Lauren, the narrator, proceeds through specific moments of
recognition and decision—‘I can feel...’; ‘So that’s why...’; ‘That’s it. I’m leaving’; ‘It’s like
a revolution’—but each of these moments, as with the depiction of the quarrel itself, is
expressed by means of a register which consists of the clichés which pertain to it.
Linguistically, this has a double function. It is, now at the other end of the creative
spectrum, another use of language which assumes an essential link between sign and
referent; and in doing that through cliché it constitutes the text as a surface without
depth, an effect reinforced by the way present tense narration severely restricts the
possibility of any temporal movement outside the present moment. The outcome, both
linguistically and thematically, is a complete closing of meaning: there is no
interpretative task for a reader to perform, no inference undrawn. This closure even
extends to the joke with which the passage begins.
Another way to describe this is to say that the metonymic mode of writing which
characterises realistic fiction, and which enables particular textual moments to relate to
a larger signifying structure (Stephens 1992a: 248–249), has been directed towards a
closing of meaning. Another aspect of the metonymic process is that a narrative may
draw upon recognisable scenes repeatable from one text to another and which constitute
a ‘register’ of metonyms of family life. This example could be categorised as: situation,
the parental quarrel; pretext, money; actual focus, power and authority. With perhaps
unintentional irony produced by the present tense verb, the repeatability of the scene is
foregrounded by Lauren’s remark that ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before.’ It
happens all the time, especially in post-1960s realist adolescent fiction, and its
function, paradoxically, is to confirm a model whereby the rational individual progresses
to maturity under the ideal of liberal individuality, doing so through the assurance that
the experience is metonymic of the experience of everybody in that age group.
The presence of a narrative voice which interprets the scene for the benefit of readers
is a characteristic of another linguistic aspect of texts, the presentation of scene and
incident through the representation of speech and thought and the strategy of
focalisation. These are important aspects of point of view in narrative, the facet of
narration through which a writer implicitly, but powerfully, controls how readers
understand the text. Because readers are willing to surrender themselves to the flow of
the discourse, especially by focusing attention on story or content, they are susceptible
to the implicit power of point of view. Linguistically, point of view is established by
focalisation strategies and by conversational pragmatics. The first is illustrated in the
following passage from Paula Fox’s How Many Miles to Babylon?, which exemplifies a
common textual strategy in children’s fiction, the narration of incidents as they impact
THEORY AND CRITICAL APPROACHES 63