叙事小说中的元语言功能及意义

元语言是把语言本身作为指称和描述对象的语言。Jakobson认为元语言功能是语言的对等解释功能。文章分析了叙事小说中小说人物话语的语码突出、人物言语行为过程描写和隐含作者的语言评判等元语言手段,指出元语言在叙事小说中不仅仅是解释功能,而是叙事话语中的元话语,有着重要的叙事功能,也是叙事小说的一个重要文体特征。

Metalinguistic Devices: Functions and Significance in Narrative Fiction

Metalanguage is a kind of language used to refer to or describe language per se.Many fictional writers,in addition to adverbials and tags of direct discourse,resort to linguistic terms and metalinguistic devices to describe their fictitious characters' verbal behavior,provide narratorial information,and make implied authorial comments where necessary.This paper analyzes these metalinguistic devices and holds that they do not function in the Jakobsonian sense of "glossing",but more importantly,they are traces of authorial obtrusion,narratorial artificiality and verisimilitude,and that due to their linguistic technicality,they are stylistically expressive and discursively meta-narrative as well as impressive.