Page 286 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Language and Logic
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The term 'fiction' commonly connotes something made up or imagined. The items of most relevance to students of language are obviously those expressed in a linguistic medium, such as stories, novels, and plays. The term 'logic of fiction,' however, is susceptible of both wide and narrow definition. It can mean any account which explains in abstract and general terms the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, and by implication the distinction between fictional and nonfictional discourse. More narrowly, the term can connote any attempt to accommodate the salient fea- tures of fiction within the purview of a logical or technical semantic theory.
1. ProblemsandDistinctions
Some of the difficulties encountered in developing a logic of fiction can be traced to pretheoretical intuitions. On the one hand, there are texts which are both meaningful and in some sense 'about' characters and imagined events. On the other, there is the under- standing that one is not being informed about real things. This immediately raises questions concerning reference and truth: how can one refer to what does not exist or make true statements about it? Talk about fictional characters is not readily equated with factual error. Moreover, the sense in which terms in fiction lack reference is not the same as that in which say, an obsolete term like phlogiston lacks reference. The lat- ter case is one of failure of reference; but in the fic- tional case there is no intention to refer to any real entity. Yet people in general, and not just literary critics, are prepared both to make truth claims about fiction and also what seem to be acceptable inferences from the textual content of works of fiction. In this connection, one important distinction to be made is that between 'discourse within fiction' and 'discourse about fiction,' where the former is the language in which the author creates the work, and the latter is the language in which readers and critics discuss or express their reasoning about it. It is moot whether this distinction requires correspondingly distinct logics.
2. Theoretical Perspectives
The most conspicuous contributions to this topic have a philosophical provenance. Two broad approaches can be distinguished: (a) theories which explain language in relation to the beliefs and intentions of its users and the types of linguistic act involved in communication; (b) theories which view language as an abstract system whose components are charac- terized independently of concrete contexts of use or speakers' intentions.
2.1 Pragmatic Theories
According to one very influential theory, the writer of fiction is performing a special kind of speech act in which the conventions of normal assertion are sus- pended. Typically, fiction is described as 'pretended assertion' and hence immune to assessment in terms of truth and falsity. It is not, therefore, an elaborate form of lying; the pretense is without intention to deceive. Since the usual conventions are in abeyance, notions like 'reference' are subject to different and nonsemantic conventions. So names of fictional characters or places, e.g., 'Sherlock Holmes' or 'Lil- liput' might be said to 'refer' but in a sense which carries no implication of full-blooded existence. This approach has been open to the objection that it mar- ginalizes fictional discourse as a 'nonserious' use of language.
Other theorists view fictional discourse as the com- munication of a special kind of intention on the part of the author. The author is seen as engaged, not in any kind of pretense, but rather in the attempt to secure a certain kind of conventional response in the reader. What is communicated to the reader is an invitation to engage in acts of imagination.
2.1 Logico-semantic Theories
Theories of this kind exhibit at least as much diversity as those already considered. Logicians have tra- ditionally been concerned with the construction of formal systems equipped with a rigorous semantics.
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Fiction, Logic of D. E. B. Pollard