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Part of
Style, Rhetoric and Creativity in Language: In memory of Walter (Bill) Nash (1926-2015)
Edited by Paul Simpson
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 34] 2019
► pp. 101–112

Chapter 6
Discourse presentation and point of view in “Cheating at Canasta” by William Trevor

| University of Lancaster

This chapter examines the closing section of William Trevor’s short story, “Cheating at Canasta” (2007). Focussing on shifts in narrative viewpoint in the passage, the chapter teases out the complex transitions in viewpoint features, showing how Mallory, the story’s focaliser, engages in changing perceptions of, and reactions to, his immediate environment. Viewpoint transitions at the level of narrative style, it is argued, engender parallel shifts in the character’s changing cognitive purview, including memory, response and flashback as well as his internal assumptions and hypotheses. The author shows how a subtle understanding of the passage (and indeed the story as a whole) can enable an appreciation of the quality of the writing, concluding that stylistic analyses help to show not just how we understand literary texts but also why and how we appreciate them.

Keywords: focaliser, politeness, speech presentation, text worlds, thought presentation, turn taking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The text
  • 2.Stylistic analysis
    • 2.1Textual proportions devoted to external narration, speech presentation and a combination of internal narration and thought presentation.
    • 2.2Speech presentation
    • 2.3Viewpoint, internal text-world variation and thought presentation
  • 3.Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.34.08sho
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(2018) An Empirical Characterisation of Ironies through the Use of a Dedicated DataBase PhD dissertation, University of Lancaster.Google Scholar
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Statham, Simon
2020. The year’s work in stylistics 2019. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:4 ► pp. 454 ff. DOI logo
Tabbert, Ulrike & Mahmood K. Ibrahim
2023. Introduction. In Sherko Bekas, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

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