Fiction and declaration. A declarative view of fictive uses of language

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to propose an account of the speech acts performed in creating, replicating and interpreting a fictional narrative, namely, those linguistic uses that can be characterized as fictive. The main thesis to be defended is that fictive uses are declarations, namely, speech acts with a declarative illocutionary force (according to the Classical taxonomy advanced by Austin 1962 and Searle 1969). In particular, it is argued that they are institutional declarations belonging in the artistic practices of a linguistic community, namely, a kind of normative social practices; consequently, fictive uses determine some normative changes not only in the texts involved but also in their authors and interpreters, namely, there is a change of normative status affecting the different participants in the artistic practices that are associated with fictional discourse.