A semantic study of tense backshift and its literary effects in FID

Abstract This study presents a semantically-oriented theoretical and descriptive study of tense backshift and its literary effects in FID. Based on Fludernik’s study (1993), the detailed linguistic indicators of FID are described in order to provide the criteria for data collection for this study. The data are FID passages collected from four canonical English novels: Austen’s Persuasion, Conrad’s Lord Jim, and Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. A theory of tense semantics underlying FID is explored, and the literary effects of tense backshift in FID are examined. The results of this study show that: (1) the mechanism of tense backshift in FID is tense backshift from absolute tense defined by the default temporal reference point t0 in present time domain in the narrator’s intensional domain into relative tense defined by the central time of orientation in past time domain in the represented character’s intensional domain; and (2) the literary effects of tense backshift in FID, analysed in terms of relative past tense, relative lazy past tense, relative past progressive tense and relative past future perfect tense are shown to be effects of remoteness, terseness, close-up and irony respectively.