Culpeper&Fernandez-Quintanilla - in Press - Fictional - Characterisation

This is the final pre-publication version of Culpeper, Jonathan, and Fernandez-Quintanilla, Carolina
(in press). Fictional characterisation. In: Miriam A. Locher and Andreas H. Jucker (eds.), Pragmatics
of Fiction. Berlin: De Gruyter.
4. Fictional characterisation
Jonathan Culpeper and Carolina Fernandez-Quintanilla
Abstract
The topic of character construction and interpretation in fiction, or fictional
characterisation, seems to spill into a multitude of disciplines and be
approachable from a multitude of perspectives. This chapter discusses work
in the linguistics-related field of stylistics, especially cognitive stylistics and
the stylistics of drama, but also draws on narratology and other fields
besides. Having outlined some ontological and interpretative fundamentals,
it describes how characters are constructed in the interaction between top-
down knowledge from the reader/perceiver’s head and bottom-up
information from the text. Focusing on the latter, it argues that three
dimensions are key in characterisation: narratorial control, the presentation
of self or other, and the explicitness or implicitness of the textual cue. It
elaborates on narratorial filters (point of view, mind style and the
presentation of speech and thought), character indexing (through, for
example, speech acts) and inter-character dynamics (through, for example,
the manipulation of social relations).
1. Introduction
Within stylistics, a field that overlaps to some extent with

narratology, characterisation has been especially important in two areas:
cognitive stylistics and the stylistics of drama. Both have pragmatic issues at
their heart. Cognitive stylistics, as outlined in Semino and Culpeper (2002),
approaches characterisation by combining linguistic analysis with cognitive
considerations in order to shed light on the construction and comprehension
of fictional characters. Examples of work that has, broadly speaking, taken
this path are Gerrig and Allbritton (1990), Culpeper (1994, 1996, 2000,
2001, 2002, 2009), Schneider (2001), Bortolussi and Dixon (2003), Snell
(2006) and McIntyre and Lugea (2015). The stylistics of drama, as
exemplified by works like Culpeper et al. (1998a) and Herman (1998), has
always considered characterisation a central concern. Plays, screen-plays,
films, TV dramas, and soaps, whether read, experienced in the theatre, heard
on the radio, or seen and heard on television, are largely constituted by
fictional dialogue (see also Ch. 5, this volume). Here the link between
character and language is relatively direct: characters are not typically
filtered through narrators. Moreover, studies of the language of play-texts
have exploited the potential afforded by classic pragmatic concepts and
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frameworks, including: speech act theory (e.g. Hurst 1987; Lowe 1998),
implicature (e.g. Cooper 1998), (im)politeness (e.g. Leech 1992; Simpson
1989; Bousfield 2007) and Conversation Analysis (e.g. Burton 1980;
Herman 1991; Piazza 1999). Studies of TV/film dialogue have also
deployed implicature (Desilla 2012) and impoliteness (e.g. Culpeper 1998b;
Dynel 2012, 2015), but have spread the net wider to include expressive
features (Bednarek 2010), point of view and mind style (McIntyre 2006),
and more besides (see also Richardson 2010). We will accommodate these
broader aspects in this chapter, thereby extending our scope to (more
explicitly) narrative genres.
In the following section, we introduce some fundamentals of
character and characterisation. We start by discussing the ontology of
character. This issue is important because what one takes character to be
will influence what one says about characterisation. We also outline some
features of inferencing that are distinctive of fictional characterisation.
Section 3, our most extensive section, examines “inputs” into
characterisation. First, it examines top-down inputs, that is, information that
feeds into character from prior knowledge. Second, it examines bottom-up
inputs, that is, information that feeds into character from linguistic material.
In Section 4, we discuss character dynamics in the local contexts of the
fictional world, especially interpersonal aspects. Finally, in Section 5, we
look at work on the perception of characters.
2. Fundamentals of character and characterisation
2.1 The ontology of character
In their introduction to Characters in Fictional Worlds, a substantial,

multidisciplinary volume, Eder et al. suggest that there are four major
positions with regard to the ontological status of characters:
1. Semiotic theories consider characters to be signs or structures of

fictional texts.
2. Cognitive approaches assume that characters are representations of
imaginary beings in the minds of the audience.
3. Some philosophers believe that characters are abstract objects beyond
material reality.
4. Other philosophers contend that characters do not exist at all.
(Eder et al. 2010: 8)
Full discussion of each of these can be found in Eder et al. (2010). What
will be obvious, however, is that (2) is the only position that accommodates
an audience. For this reason, it is the one that is most in tune with pragmatic
concerns, concerns which revolve around the communication of meanings.
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Note that this position involves “imaginary beings” (our emphasis); in other
words, they are not actual people or representations of actual people. This is
clearly the case for anthropomorphic animal characters (e.g. the rabbits of
the novel Watership Down (Adams 1972)) or characters of science fiction
(e.g. Doctor Spock of the Star Trek films). However, some imaginary
characters have a closer relationship with actual people than others, and can
even be modelled on a specific actual person, as, for example, in the case of
the protagonist of the semi-biographical film of Margaret Thatcher, The
Iron Lady (2011; directed by Phyllida Lloyd). Conversely, identities of real
people are never an exact representation of that person, but a partial
representation constructed in situated communication, shaped by particular
goals, cultural and ideological forces, and so on. A safer statement, then,
would be that characters vary as to how closely they represent specific
actual people, but prototypically they are more imaginary, more distant from
specific actual people.
A danger in thinking of characters as “imaginary beings“ is that it
could obscure the role that actual human beings more generally play in all
characterisation. As Emmott (1997) puts it:
In reading narrative texts, we imagine worlds inhabited by individuals who can

be assumed to behave, physically and psychologically, in ways which reflect
our real-life experiences of being situated in the real world. (Emmott 1997: 58)
And following from this, we might note Margolin’s (1989) comment

on reductive, functionally-oriented structuralist approaches to character (cf.
position 1 above):
Plainly speaking, I suspect that the scholars who expressed the dissatisfaction
with the current state of affairs feel, like Wallace Martin, that ‘our sense that
[many] fictional characters are uncannily similar to people is not something to
be dismissed or ridiculed, but a crucial feature of narration that requires
explanation’(Martin 1986: 120). (Margolin 1989: 10)
It is difficult to deny that what we all do when we read a book, or

watch a play or film is to attempt to interpret characters, despite their
imaginary status, in large part with knowledge about people acquired
through our real life experiences (see also Bortolussi and Dixon 2003: 134-
141). We generally have a humanising approach to characterisation
(Culpeper 2001: 6-7). Gernsbacher et al. (1992) and Graesser et al. (1994)
provide empirical evidence that the mental representation of the goals,
motives, beliefs, traits and emotions of fictional characters proceeds in
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much the same way as for real people. One might add here that the reverse
is possible too: the interpretation of a character can affect our real life
experiences, as, for example when the audience experiences empathy (see
Section 5) or even adapts behaviours to mimic characters (consider the
effect of Harry Potter). Thus, our interaction with characters is just that:
interaction. For instance, Wodak (2009), in her analysis of the American
serial political drama The West Wing, points out aspects of this kind of
interaction in the relationship between the political real world and political
fictional world, including contrasts made by journalists between the
imaginary president Jed Bartlett and George W. Bush.
What exactly are we interpreting in the process of characterisation?
The key focus of our interpretation must be the language. This point is
forcefully made by van Peer (1988: 9):
[...] the category of character is, for its very formation, dependent on linguistic
forms. Character, it can hardly be denied, is what readers infer from words,
sentences, paragraphs and textual composition depicting, describing or
suggesting actions, thoughts, utterances or feelings of a protagonist. Thus the
linguistic organisation of a text will predetermine to a certain degree the kind of
‘picture’ one may compose of a protagonist. Therefore the particular forms by
which this is achieved need to be studied in detail.
This is in tune with pragmatics, although the scope of pragmatics is

not restricted to linguistic forms but includes semiotic behaviours in all their
multimodality. Pragmatics does not focus exclusively on abstract linguistic
phenomena or psychological or cognitive functions – something which
distinguishes it from a number of syntactic theories and from much
cognitive science. It has much more to do with “what readers infer” from
the language or behaviours, and the way in which those will “predetermine
to a certain degree” interpretations, including that of character.
2.2 Inferring character
Character inferencing has only been discussed in a few studies, notably

Margolin (especially 1983) and Culpeper (1996). Whilst, as noted in Section
2.1, we may draw on our knowledge about real-life people in interpreting
characters, we cannot assume that the characteristics of real people are
inferred in exactly the same way as those of imaginary, fictional characters.
Culpeper (1996: 352-353) suggests that there are two key differences. The
first is that fictional character behaviours are complete. Note: the claim here
is that behaviours are complete, not the entire conception of a character,
which will partly rely on inferences made by the reader/perceiver triggered
by those behaviours. In our face-to-face interactions with real people we
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meet in the street, at work, at parties, and so on, we never have a complete
set of behaviours diagnostic of personality (although usually we have
enough information to make predictions about a person’s behaviour that are
strong enough for our purposes). Those people continue with their lives –
they continue speaking and behaving – after our encounters with them. And,
of course, there would have been behaviours before which we were not
party to. The lack of knowledge of these 'extra-encounter' behaviours means
we do not have a complete behavioural record. This is not the case with a
fictional character. For example, if an author has a character speak in one
dialogue and we never hear that character again, then their contribution to
that one dialogue is the character’s entire behavioural set and the complete
basis for any inferences.
The second is that character behaviours have greater significance.
An assumption underlying the process of extracting personality information
from the behaviours of real people is that there are occasions when people
act in ways consistent with their personalities. This idea is the basis of
correspondent inference theory (e.g. Jones 1990), one of the foundational
attribution theories in social psychology. You make a correspondent
inference when you are able to transfer your description of a person’s
behaviour to your description of that person’s disposition (e.g. aggressive
behaviour results from an aggressive disposition). Inferences do not
correspond when something in the context is the cause of the behaviour (e.g.
aggressive behaviour could result from a temporary bad mood caused by a
headache rather than an aggressive disposition). Much of correspondent
inference theory is geared to working out when inferences correspond and
when they do not. The same assumption also underlies the interpretation of
character behaviours, and indeed attribution theories can be applied (see
Culpeper 1996, for elaboration and illustration). The key difference lies in
the fact that the particular discourse framework of most fictional works has
the effect of lending additional weight to that assumption. Interaction
between characters might be described as a discourse embedded within that
of the discourse between author and reader (Short 1989; see also Messerli,
Ch. 2, this volume). Short (1989) draws the important implication for
characterisation:
[…] the important thing to notice is the general embedded nature of drama,
because features which, for example, mark social relations between two people
at the character level become messages about the characters at the level of
discourse which pertains between author and reader/audience. (Short 1989:
149)
In the perspective of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995),

any character behaviour is also part of an ostensive act of communication
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between the author and the reader, and as such “communicates a

presumption of its own optimal relevance” (1995: 260). Thus, we can
assume that character behaviour has additional significance or relevance, so
that our processing efforts will receive sufficient cognitive rewards.
These two differences make it likely that more interpretive effort
will be spent on behaviours in fictional worlds compared with real. To
illustrate briefly, a man was observed by one of the authors of this chapter
reversing out of a car parking space and nearly colliding with his partner.
The event was attributed to a moment of distraction, a non-correspondent
inference. Within a fictional work, the same event might have triggered
more interpretative effort and have led to correspondence inferences, such
as “he is an evil man with murderous intentions”, especially when the act is
deemed consistent with other behaviours and/or there is a supporting
context (e.g. it is a work of crime fiction).
Of course, not all fictional works consist of just two discourse levels.
If we consider narrative genres (e.g. novels, short stories, ‘small stories’),
then the number of discourse levels is likely to include a narratorial level,
involving a narrator and a narratee, between the two levels mentioned above
(cf. Leech and Short [1981] 2007: Ch. 8). In fact, a further level is typically
added just below author-reader, consisting of discourse between an implied
author and an implied reader (see, e.g., Leech and Short 2007: 207–210).
The point of this is to accommodate the fact that authors are not actually
addressing all the readers who will be reading their books but an assumed
readership with particular knowledge, sympathies and so on. Conversely,
readers are not actually addressed directly by the author. If this were so, we
would have to assume that the views expressed in the work were always and
automatically those of the actual author. Leech and Short (2007: 209) give
the example of Nabokov’s novel Lolita (1955), in which, although the
seducer of an under-age girl is given sympathetic treatment, we cannot, they
argue, infer that the writer is generally sympathetic to such behaviour. Of
course, further levels can be easily added to the bottom: a character could
always report the conversations of other characters, and so on.
The particular relevance of the narratorial level for characterisation
is that narrators “filter” how and what we learn about characters. The
narrator can provide information about characters, both when it is a
participating character in the story (‘autodiegetic narrator’, Genette 1980)
and when it is external to the story (‘heterodiegetic narrator’, Genette 1980).
An important consideration influencing the way in which recipients take any
information coming from the narrator is to do with reliability. Although it is
common for readers to assume that the narrator is reliable (Wales 2011:
287), sometimes we encounter narrators “whose understanding of what he
or she relates appears to be limited or deficient” (Miall 2014: 433). When
the narrator turns out to be unreliable, readers are unlikely to take the
narrator’s comments about characters at face value (for the notion of
(un)reliable narrator, see Booth 1961). Examples of unreliable narrators can
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be found in various genres, including prose fiction (as in Daniel Defoe’s

Moll Flanders) and in film (as in Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright, 1950)
(Wales 2011: 287). A key question is whether the narrator’s unreliability is
a deliberate attempt to portray issues in a distorted way or, on the contrary,
whether such unreliability is unintentional. The degree of intentionality that
readers ascribe to the unreliable narrator is likely to determine their
interpretation of any characterising information provided in the narration.
The notion of mind style becomes relevant in cases when such unreliability
is considered non-deliberate. We will examine such narratorial filters more
closely in Section 3.2.2.
3. Characterisation inputs
3.1 Top-down information
3.1.1 Social schemata

In Section 2.1, we noted that knowledge about people acquired
through our real life experiences is used in characterisation. A widely used
theory of knowledge is schema theory, often taken to date from Bartlett’s
([1932] 1995) work. The term “schema/schemata” refers to “well integrated
chunks of knowledge about the world, events, people, and actions”
(Eysenck and Keane 2000: 352). They are abstracted from an accumulation
of repeated experiences; usually taken to be relatively complex, or higher-
order, clusters of concepts, with a particular network of relationships
holding those concepts together; and are assumed to constitute the structure
of long-term memory. Other terms, such as “frames”, “scripts” and
“scenarios”, have been used in the literature, each within a somewhat
different tradition and with a somewhat different emphasis. Schema theory
has been a foundational theory in both cognitive stylistics (e.g. Cook 1994
and Semino 1997) and social cognition (it is even anticipated in Asch 1946).
In the field of social cognition, it is often related to research on the notion of
“cognitive stereotypes”. For example, Andersen et al. (1990: 192) define
stereotypes as “highly organised social categories that have the properties of
schemata”; and Hamilton and Sherman (1994: 15) suggest that a stereotype
is a set of beliefs which is “stored in memory as a cognitive structure and
can then influence subsequent perceptions of, and behaviours toward, that
group and its members”. We will refer to such knowledge about people as
social schemata.
Generally, people more easily pay attention to, memorise and recall
information that is consistent with expectations derived from their schemata;
and, given that schemata are probabilistic, exceptions can be ignored
(though if that effort is made, the information may be well remembered)
(e.g. Fiske and Taylor 1984: 149; Hamilton and Sherman 1994: 33-37). If
people stereotypes are “highly organised social categories that have the
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properties of schemata” (Andersen et al. 1990: 192), then they “can then
influence subsequent perceptions of, and behaviors toward, that group and
its members” (Hamilton and Sherman 1994: 15). Clearly, if schemata bias
perception toward schema-consistent information, then that factor operates
as a self-perpetuating bias for the stereotype, as exceptions tend to be
ignored. Not surprisingly, schema theory is sometimes used in Critical
Discourse Analysis to help account for aspects of prejudice, an example
being van Dijk’s (1987) work on racism. From the point of view of
characterisation, the important point is that social schemata explain the basis
of knowledge-based inferences about characters, inferences which can ‘fill
out’ an impression of character and be manipulated for particular effects.
Inferencing based on schemata accounts for what Toolan (1988)
refers to as the “iceberg” phenomenon in characterisation: the idea that the
words of a text are the observable part of a character impression, and
beyond them lies the unobservable but inferable and larger part. One
implication of this for writers is that it affords them economy of expression:
they can mean more than they say. In play-texts, a case in point is how
characters are first introduced in stage directions, which are usually
elliptical in style, rapidly indicating to the reader (including the producer
and actors) the kind of character who is just about to appear. For example,
the character Alfieri is introduced in a stage direction at the beginning of
Arthur Miller’s play A View from the Bridge ([1955] 1975: 11) in the
following way:
(1) Enter Alfieri, a lawyer in his fifties turning grey; he is portly, good-
humoured, and thoughtful.
In order to analyse and explain particular character inferences, the

contents of social schemata can be grouped on the basis of type of
knowledge. Culpeper (2001: 75-76) suggests that there are three key
groupings:
Social role: e.g. kinship roles, occupational roles, relational roles

Group membership: e.g. gender, race, class, age, nationality, religion
Personal: e.g. preferences, interests, traits, goals, abilities
In Example (1), rich social role information (he belongs to the

category of people who work as a lawyer) and group membership
information (he belongs to the categories of people who are male, as
indicated by the pronouns his and he, and in their fifties) are given early in
the text; personal information (he belongs to the categories of people who
are good-humoured and thoughtful) comes later. The key point about these
groupings is that together they constitute a network –a social schema – with
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the consequence that activating one part of the network allows inferences
about the other parts (Culpeper 2001: 77). For example, knowing that he is a
lawyer allows one to infer that he is probably middle-class (group
membership). Such inferences can be exploited. For example, the heroine of
the film Erin Brockovich (2000, directed by Steven Soderbergh) is
refreshingly different because she becomes a lawyer despite not being male,
middle-class or having abilities in the law acquired through law school.
More extensive illustrations of social schemata at work in characterisation
include Snell’s (2006) analysis of Emily Howard and Vicky Pollard in the
award-winning UK TV comedy series Little Britain.
One particular way in which writers exploit the schema-based
processing of characters is by creating a situation where a character is
formed according to a particular schema, but then force the reader to
abandon that schema entirely and activate another. Culpeper (2001: 96-99)
labels this switch “dramatic recategorisation”. An author constructs the text
so that it plays “garden path” tricks on the reader. Bianca, Katherina’s sister
in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, is a good example. In the first
half of the play, Shakespeare leads the reader to think that she is the goodly
daughter. In the latter half of the play, we are led to believe that this is all a
sham and that she is the truly bad daughter. Note that the fact that her
previous behaviour can be thought of as part of her duplicity means that it is
not inconsistent with treating her as a bad daughter. If we thought that both
her good behaviour and her bad behaviour reflected her character we would
have a more complex characterisation – one that suggests piecemeal
integration, which we will discuss in Section 3.1.3.
3.1.2 Dramatic roles, plot and genre

The idea of characters as dramatic roles or agents of sets of plot
functions associated with different genres is most famously pursued by
Vladimir Propp ([1928] 1968), who extended the Russian Formalist
approach to narrative structure (see Popova 2016 for a discussion of
formalist and structuralist approaches to narrative organisation). He revealed
31 underlying narrative functions performed by 8 character types or
dramatis personae in Russian folk tales. Here, as far as characterisation is
concerned, the focus is on the kind of “doer” (e.g. hero, villain, victim) as a
function of the kind of “deed” (e.g. good deeds, bad deeds), and not on, for
example, what might have motivated the doer to do the deed. By way of
illustration, we quote Wright’s (1975) characters and functions for the genre
of the classic Wild West films:
1. The hero enters a social group.

2. The hero is unknown to the society.
3. The hero is revealed to have an exceptional ability.
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4. The society recognises the difference between themselves and the hero; the
hero is given special status.
5. The society does not completely accept the hero.
6. There is a conflict of interests between the villains and the society.
7. The villains are stronger than the society; the society is weak.
8. There is strong friendship or respect between the hero and a villain.
9. The villains threatened the society.
10. The hero avoids involvement in the conflict.
11. The villains endanger a friend of the hero.
12. The hero fights the villains.
13. The hero defeats the villains.
14. The society is safe.
15. The society accepts the hero.
16. The hero loses or gives up his special status.
(Wright 1975: 48-49)
Further illustration can be found in Wodak’s (2009) Proppian

analysis of The West Wing.
An impression of character is shaped not only by schematic
knowledge of real people, as discussed in Section 3.1.1, but also by
knowledge of types of fictional character, including the dramatic roles of
particular genres (see Ch. 3, this volume, on genre). Textual cues may
influence the balance of “real people” knowledge versus “fictional
character” knowledge. Thus, if we have identified a text as an instance of
the “morality play” genre (e.g. Everyman, circa 1500), we are likely to
retrieve and use our knowledge about personified vices and virtues such as
the fictional Seven Deadly Sins (a more recent example would be the film
Seven, 1995, directed by David Fincher). In contrast, if we have identified
our text as a biography, we are likely to give more weight to our knowledge
about real people. However, fictional character-type knowledge is not
isolated from the kind of knowledge that is frequently used in the perception
of real people. As we noted in Section 2.1, there is an interaction between
fictional and real. For example, if a character in a Western does a series of
good deeds, one might infer that that character is the “hero”, and, knowing
this dramatic role, one may infer such things as “this character is unlikely to
die”. The presence of this expectation is made salient when it is violated.
For instance, in the film Homesman (2014; directed by Tommy Lee Jones),
the resolute, strong and morally-minded heroine takes on the task of
rescuing three women who have gone mad by transporting them from the
“wild west” back to the east, when all other candidates for the job have
shrunk away. Well before the end of the film, she commits suicide, much to
the surprise of the audience. As we saw, this is not part of the script of plot
functions associated with the hero in Westerns. Furthermore, knowing the
genre and relevant dramatic role, allows inferences about likely real life
person properties. Thus, one might infer that the hero is likely to be “male”
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and “young adult”, as well as “good” and “brave”. Female heroes in

Westerns, as in Homesman, or even more so teenage female heroes, as in
True Grit (2010; re-make, directed by Ethan and Joel Coen), are striking
precisely because they violate such inferences. Of course, it is worth bearing
in mind that schemata are both culturally and ideologically embedded,
something which Bartlett’s ([1932] 1995) early work on schema theory was
designed to tease.
Clearly, there are schematic associations between fictional character
types and real-life social categories. Some interesting empirical work on this
issue has been undertaken by Livingstone (2013), who conducted a study of
people’s perceptions of TV soap characters (specifically from Coronation
Street, EastEnders and Dallas). She revealed ways in which knowledge of
structural aspects of the genre took precedence over real-life social
knowledge. For example:
Viewers are clearly aware that the characters occupy different moral stances and
find the moral narratives or messages central to the programme an appropriate
way of conceiving of the characters more generally […] One might suggest that
viewers focus on what the characters do with their positive attributes (thereby
linking representation of character to that of narrative): the “baddies” use them
for exploitation and deceit; the “goodies” use them for righting wrongs and
helping others. A focus on morality implies judgement of the characters’ actions
and also an appreciation of the narrative implications of assigning characters to
a moral category. (Livingstone 2013: 142-143)
3.1.3 Mixed models

A schema-theoretic approach to characterisation is not enough.
Schema theory is a “top-down” theory, applying cognitive concepts to the
understanding of something in the world. However, most cognitive scholars
take the view that understanding is in some sense constructionist, that is to
say, it involves the integration of “bottom-up” information from the
stimulus input, in our case the language and behaviours, with the “top-
down” information retrieved from schematic knowledge. Schema theory
does not account very well for situations in which no obvious schema fits
the incoming information or in which a lack of fit develops during the
course of a reading/watching. The alternative to a schema-driven or
category-based impression is a person-based impression. The latter is made
up of the individual attributes of the target person; it is richer and more
personalised than a schema-driven impression, and also requires more
cognitive effort on the part of the person forming the impression. In social
cognition, Fiske and Neuberg (1990) present a model that attempts to
include both kinds of impression, one at each end of a continuum. In
cognitive stylistics, probably the first paper to bring such work into the
domain of stylistics is Gerrig and Allbritton (1990), a work that inspired
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Culpeper (1994, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009) and Schneider (2001) to produce
mixed models of characterisation, which, though independently produced,
are quite similar in their fundamentals. The remainder of this section
summarises aspects of Culpeper’s model.
We are predisposed, for obvious reasons of cognitive economy,
towards trying to fit textual information about people or characters into pre-
formed social schemata, rather than trying to combine individual (and
possibly unrelated) pieces information in an ad hoc way. Schema-based
impressions entail simplification, since textual information is treated in
terms of generic prior knowledge. Schema-based characters are usually the
prototypical, unremarkable and forgettable characters of fictional worlds.
For instance, as far as historical fictional works are concerned, the numerous
servants that appear in fictional works, especially historical, are typically
schema-based: they speak and act as servants. Such characters might be
described as “flat” (Forster [1927] 1987). If the reader/audience acquires
information which does not fit any particular schema, in tune with Fiske and
Neuberg (1990), they make progress down a continuum away from schema-
fit towards piecemeal integration. Two intermediate stages are possible. One
is accessing a sub-schema which is a better fit for the information. In the
Victorian period in Britain, governesses, for example, such as Charlotte
Brontë’s eponymous character in Jane Eyre ([2007] 1847), occupied an
awkward space between being servants (e.g. they were paid) and being part
of the ‘gentle’ host family (e.g. they were educated as ‘ladies’). It is possible
that a fictional character may first be perceived by the reader/audience as
either a servant or a family member, and then later be sub-categorised as a
governess. The other is recategorisation, as discussed in Section 3.1.1. Note
that the resultant character impression for either of these stages is still
consistent with a schema. In contrast, piecemeal integration occurs when no
schema can be found to act as a scaffold for the incoming information, and
instead individual pieces of information have to be combined. Such
characters might be described as “round” (Forster 1987). They are relatively
dynamic characters, both with respect to their formation, as movement
along the continuum is required, and the final piecemeal impression, which
lacks the relative fixity of a schema.
Why should perceivers bother to move away from schema-driven
characterisation towards piecemeal integration with its increasingly heavy
cognitive demands? Literacy researchers working on motivation from what
is being read, often within an educational context, have identified intrinsic
motivational factors such as (1) curiosity or interest, (2) involvement and (3)
challenge (see, for example, Guthrie et al. 1999 and references therein).
Clearly, if a writer can generate reader curiosity or interest through the text,
then that will motivate greater attention and increase the likelihood that a
character will be understood in terms of piecemeal integration. (Of course, a
writer may wish to do the opposite: in a detective novel, the writer may not
wish to motivate attention for the culprit). Brewer (1988) suggested that
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self-involvement may play a role in determining the kind of processing

involved. Self-involvement is when “the perceiver feels closely related to or
interdependent with the target person, or feels ego-involved in the
judgement task” (Brewer 1988: 9). Hence, one might predict that
sympathetic (or antipathetic) characters receive more attention than
characters one feels more neutral about (see also our discussion of empathy
in Section 5). Regarding challenge, it is obviously the case that characters
involving piecemeal integration present a greater cognitive challenge:
readers cannot simply fit the incoming information to the schema.
One way of thinking about curiosity/interest and challenge is in
terms of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995). Characters which
seem likely to offer adequate cognitive rewards for the effort spent on
comprehending them attract more attention and effort. Authors can, of
course, guide our attention by making characters more or less central. For
example, it is overwhelmingly the case in fictional works that the characters
who speak the most are the protagonists – the characters who are full of
contradictions, who change and who push forward the plot – and thus the
ones who offer most interest. By making a greater claim on our attention
(i.e. by forcing the reader / audience to attend to more dialogue), the reader /
audience can expect, according to the principle of relevance, authors to
construct characters that provide adequate reward. Self-involvement,
however, is not captured by Relevance Theory.
Let us conclude this section with an example. If you read in a novel
that a respectable, elderly lady entered a tearoom in England, it would
involve low-effort to select relevant schemata, fit them to in-coming text
information, and form a schema-based character. However, if a gruesome
murder occurred in the tearoom and this character, rather than being aghast
and retreating from the scene, proceeded to take an active interest in the
murder and present a cogent analysis of it, a schema-based impression
(fitting textual information to schemata triggered by, for example, “lady”,
“elderly” and “respectable”) would be difficult to sustain. Assuming we
have not encountered a character like this before and assuming we are
interested in or curious about that character, we might abandon a primarily
schema-based impression and instead expend cognitive effort in combining
text-based information in order to create a relatively unique, detailed and
personalised impression of the character– a piecemeal impression. The
character we have been describing is, of course, Miss Marple of the Agatha
Christie murder mystery novels.
3.2 Bottom-up information
As we discussed in Section 3.1.3, recipients’ impressions of

characters result both from top-down and bottom-up processes. Our aim in
the rest of this section is to address bottom-up aspects of characterisation;
13
that is, ways in which textual (linguistic or non-linguistic) cues shape

characterisation.
3.2.1 Types of characterisation cue

Characterisation cues vary according to degree of narratorial control,
whether they orient to the self of the character or other characters, and
whether they are explicit or implicit. These are not mutually exclusive
dimensions.
a) Degree of narratorial control

Of course, ultimately, all character talk and behaviour choices are
under narratorial control, because character discourse is embedded within
narratorial discourse (see Section 2.2). However, there are some cues over
which a character notionally has control. Free direct speech, for example,
especially over extended dialogue as in plays or film, allows the impression
that the characters control the choices they make (see Section 3.2.2). And
there are other cues over which characters clearly do not have control, being
in the orbit of the narrator. An example of such cues is names. Proper names
for characters might trigger particular associations about the name-bearer
(age, nationality, social class, etc.). Shakespeare’s naming choices for his
characters perform three characterising functions: reference to historical
figures (e.g. Antony, Cleopatra, Macbeth), nationality markers (e.g. Italian
names such as Silvia or Lucetta), and names with conceptual meanings (e.g.
Anthony Dull, Shallow or Silence) (Culpeper 2001: 230-231). Of course, the
reliability of the narrator is an issue, as mentioned in Section 2.2. Bianca,
noted in Section 3.1.1, is an unreliable narratorial name choice for a
character who turns out to be bad.
b) Self and other

Scholars distinguish between self-presentation, which “occurs when
a character or person provides explicit information about him or herself,”
and other-presentation, which “occurs when a character or person provides
explicit information about someone else” (Culpeper 2001: 167). The latter is
also called ‘altero-characterisation’ (e.g. Eder at al. 2010). Importantly,
other-presentation can be regarded as self-presentation at the same time
since the statements which work towards characterising others implicitly
reveal the characteriser’s own values (Eder et al. 2010: 33).
Reliability is again an issue. The way characters present themselves
or others can respond to strategic considerations (Culpeper 2001: 168; Eder
et al. 2010: 33). For example, characters can make statements about
themselves and others both in the presence and in the absence of other
characters. When characters are alone, as in soliloquies and asides within
drama, they are usually taken to be sincere (Culpeper 2001: 169). When
characters are in the company of other characters, a range of scenarios are
possible, depending on the context: for example, they might want to present
14
themselves and in-group others in a positive light, while they may seek to
present their opponents in negative ways. These and other strategic
considerations will determine recipients’ readiness to take any
characterising information at face value.
c) Explicit and implicit

Character information can be provided in varying degrees of
explicitness or directness. Explicit or direct characterisation involves the
“explicit naming of the traits”, or indeed any kind of character property,
whereas implicit or indirect characterisation means that “the traits and the
entire personality of the character (…) need to be guessed from words,
opinions and actions” (Eder et al. 2010: 32). Since explicit character
information is relatively straightforward, we focus on implicit
characterisation cues in much more detail in Sections 3.2.3 and 4. The key
point to remember about implicit cues is that the information always has to
be derived by inference, and contextual factors need to be taken into account
(Culpeper 2001: 172).
3.2.2 Narratorial filters

As we mentioned in Section 2.2., narrators filter how and what we
learn about characters. Indeed, narrators largely shape the fictional world
since their role is that of mediators in the presentation of the story
(Fludernik 2009: 5; see Popova 2016 for a discussion on narration and
narrativity). The narrator’s account of the storyworld therefore plays a
crucial role in character perception. Here we pay attention to three different
narratorial filters, namely point of view, mind style, and narratorial report of
speech and thought. It is worth noting that these three narratorial filters can
operate simultaneously.
a) Point of view
A distinction needs to be made between the story and the point of
view from which the story is told (Fowler 1996: 161). Point of view is a
very wide notion that has been studied from a variety of angles. Much of the
groundwork in the development of the study of point of view within
narratology was done by Genette (1980) and Uspensky (1973). Later
developments came with Fowler’s ([1986] 1996) and Simpson’s (1993)
work. Here we present Fowler’s (1996) framework for the analysis of point
of view, which is the most influential in linguistic stylistics.
Spatio-temporal point of view is to do with the viewing position
from which events are seen in the fictional world (Fowler 1996: 162), and it
is usually analysed by looking at linguistic indicators such as spatial and
temporal deictic markers. The opening of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ([1962] 2003: 1) is a good example:
(2) They’re out there.
15
Some group of people (they) are currently located (present tense

‘are’, ’re) in some space away from where the speaker/writer is (out there).
These expressions implicitly build the point of view of one particular
character.
Ideological point of view is to do with “the set of values, or belief
system, communicated by the language of a text” (Fowler 1996: 165). This
concept captures “those aspects of world views that are social, cultural,
religious or political in origin” (Semino 2002: 97). Ideological point of view
is important for characterisation, especially when value judgements are
found in a particular character’s speech and/or thoughts. In Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness ([2007] 1899) the character-narrator Marlow describes
his first experience of Africa as follows:
(3) We were wanderers on prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of
an unknown planet.
The narrator is presenting the viewpoint of Europeans, since “the

term ‘prehistoric’ brings with it here a set of assumptions about cultural
naïvety which are clearly connected to the Eurocentric attitude” that is
explored in Conrad’s novella (Short 1996: 278).
Psychological point of view is concerned with the access to
characters’ consciousness which is granted by the mode of narration. This is
highly relevant to characterisation because “gaining knowledge of a
character’s inner life is an important factor in characterisation, and one
likely to lead to a ‘rounder impression of character’” (Culpeper 2001: 170).
The category of psychological point of view includes internal (and external
narration, which are basically to do with whether events are narrated from
within or without characters’ consciousness (see Ch. 9 in Fowler 1996). We
will briefly focus on internal narration (type B) to illustrate such narratorial
intervention. Internal narration type B consists of third-person accounts by
an omniscient narrator “who claims knowledge of what is going on in the
characters’ heads, reporting their motives and feelings” (Fowler 1996: 173).
Fowler illustrates this by examining an extract from Mervyn Peake’s Titus
Groan (1946), where the character, Steerpike, is planning his escape:
(4) Again he fastened his gaze upon the first dozen feet of vertical stone,
choosing and scrutinizing the grips that he would use. His survey left him
uneasy. It would be unpleasant.
Fowler points out that the verbs ‘choosing’ and ‘scrutinizing’ are the
narrator’s own words to describe the character’s internal processes, and that
these lexical choices are “part of an extensive lexical system by which
Steerpike is characterized throughout the book as a deliberate, calculating
entrepreneur” (Fowler 1996: 174, our emphasis).
16
b) Mind style
Starting from a basic distinction between what is told in a story and
how it is told, the what would be the fictional world itself whereas the how
would be concerned with mind style, that is, the ways in which the fictional
world is apprehended or conceptualised (Leech and Short 2007: 150). The
notion of ‘mind style’ was coined by Fowler (1977: 103) to describe “any
distinctive linguistic presentation of an individual mental self”. Some mind
styles can “easily strike the reader as natural and uncontrived” (Leech and
Short 2007: 151), whereas others may not do so. In fact, the study of mind
style in fiction becomes particularly relevant when the fictional mind seems
to work in peculiar ways, thus reflecting an “unorthodox conception of the
fictional world” (Leech and Short 2007: 151). It is largely the case that the
characters whose mind style tends to be analysed more often are those who
have nonstandard ways of conceptualizing the fictional world, as Example
(5) illustrates (from Leech and Short 2007: 162-166). In William Faulkner’s
The Sound and the Fury ([1959] 1929), Benjy, one of the character-
narrators, describes the following scene:
(5) Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them
hitting. They were coming toward where the flag was and I went along the
fence. […] They took the flag out, and they were hitting. Then they put the
flag back and they went to the table, and he hit and the other hit.
What the reader does not know at this point in the story is that Benjy
is watching a game of golf. Readers are likely to draw inferences about the
ways in which Benjy’s mind works. Benjy is characterised as “mentally
subnormal” (Leech and Short 2007: 162), and his cognitive limitations are
reflected in his use of language, especially in the simplicity of his lexis and
syntax (Leech and Short 2007: 164). Such language use contributes to
characterisation implicitly (see 3.2.1) in the sense that it triggers inferences
about characters. Mind style can be examined by looking at “systematic
linguistic and textual patterns” in the narrative (Semino 2007: 153). A wide
range of linguistic features have been analysed as contributing to the
projection of characters’ mind style. Some of these, as summarised in
Semino (2014b: 142), are “patterns in lexis, syntax, transitivity, figurative
language, speech presentation and deixis (Fowler 1977, 1986; Leech and
Short [1981] 2007; Bockting 1995; Semino and Swindlehurst 1996; Semino
2002, 2011, 2014).”
Several disciplines have made valuable contributions to the study of
mind style, most notably, stylistics and narratology. For example,
stylisticians Leech and Short (2007: Ch. 6) and Semino (2002, 2007, 2014a,
2014b) have widely written on the topic, whilst narratologists Fludernik
(1996), Palmer (2004) and Margolin (2003) have contributed to the study of
mind and, more generally, consciousness in narrative fiction. Other
17
disciplines, such as cognitive science, corpus linguistics and pragmatics,

have become especially relevant to the analysis of mind style. Regarding
cognitive science, schema theory (see Section 3.1.1) and cognitive metaphor
theory have been used to account for conceptual workings; regarding corpus
linguistics, corpus-based methods have been used to examine the linguistic
patterns of text to identify items indicative of mind style (see Semino 2007).
Not least of all, mind style analysts have drawn on core areas of pragmatics
to analyse fictional conversations. Semino (2007: 164) argues that “salient
and systematic patterns in a character’s communicative behaviour can often
lead to inferences about the peculiar workings of that character’s mind,
especially when these behaviours can be interpreted as non-deliberate”.
Semino (2014b) analyses the mind style of the protagonists in three
novels: Elizabeth Moon’s Speed of Dark (2002), Mark Haddon’s The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) and Clare Morrall’s
The Language of Others (2008). In these narratives the ‘autistic’
protagonists display “problems with informativeness and relevance in
conversational contributions; problems with face management resulting in
unintentional impolite behaviours; and problems with the interpretation of
figurative language” (Semino 2014b: 141). They often breach Grice’s
(1975) maxims and principles of politeness. Regarding the latter, “the
protagonists’ rather relentless approach to sincerity affects their ability to
manage other characters’ ‘faces’ in interaction, and can result in
unintentional face damage (Goffman 1967, Brown and Levinson 1987)”
(Semino 2014b: 149). Example (6) is from The Language of Others. Jessica,
the protagonist and first person narrator, is meeting her boyfriend’s parents
for the first time, and they are talking about the run-down house where
Jessica grew up:
(6) ‘We’ve admired it from the road,’ said Donald.

‘You can’t see it properly,’ I said, ‘unless you go up the drive.’
Miranda leaned forward as if she was going to say something important. ‘We
went up the drive – just a little way – to have a peep. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
They had trespassed on our property. I thought of them driving in, going
halfway up the drive as if they lived there. How would they like it if my
family drove into their garden and peered through the windows? ‘It’s a private
drive,’ I said with indignation.
Jessica’s response at the very end of the extract, despite being

consistent with the Maxim of Quality, could be said to flout the Maxim of
Quantity, since the addressees already know that it is a private drive
(Semino 2014b: 150). Therefore “this flout conveys a face-threatening
implicature, namely that Miranda and Donald should not have driven up the
drive to take a better look at the house” (Semino 2014b: 150). Jessica’s
unintentionally impolite conversational behaviour achieves characterisation
in the sense that it triggers information about the way in which her mind
18
works. However, it is far from being a negative characterisation because

such behaviour seems to be non-deliberate (Semino 2014b: 151), and so
readers are likely to see the character in a positive light and sympathise with
her (Semino 2014b: 155). For further examples of analysis of mind style,
see Hoover (2016).
c) Narrative report of speech and thought

The ways in which characters’ discourse is presented in the narrative
may show strong degrees of narratorial interference, which in turn might
affect characterisation. We now introduce one of the most influential
frameworks for the study of speech and thought presentation in narrative:
Leech and Short’s (2007) framework.
Leech and Short’s (2007) framework contains a range of discourse
presentation categories which involve character speech on the one hand and
character thought on the other. These categories sit on a cline of directness
depending on how (in)direct the report of characters’ speech and thought is.
What distinguishes them are features of grammar, lexis and graphology such
as the absence and/or presence of quotation marks and reporting clauses;
how full the propositional content of the speech or thought is; whether the
tense and the person of the pronouns are more appropriate to the
character(s) or to the narrator, etc. (see Ch. 10 in Leech and Short 2007 for a
full account).
Some of these modes of discourse presentation are taken to be more
under the narrator’s control, which may have important implications for
characterisation. Let us consider Free Indirect Speech (FIS), where the voice
of the narrator seems to interfere with the voice of the character, and as a
result there is a distancing effect from what the character says (Leech and
Short 2007: 268). This might be used strategically, for instance, to make
readers less sympathetic towards a particular set of characters. In A Tale of
Two Cities ([1970] 1859), by Charles Dickens, during the courtroom scene
“Dickens uses mainly FIS to portray the speeches of those characters hostile
to the central characters of the novel”, which allows him to “cast ironic light
on what they say” (Leech and Short 2007: 269). In contrast, Direct Speech
is used when the friendly witnesses speak. As Leech and Short (2007: 269)
conclude, the different choices of modes of speech presentation create
contrasts and might contribute to characterisation in the sense that different
characters are presented in a different light by the narrator, and this may in
turn affect readers’ sympathies for the different characters (see also Section
5).
3.2.3 Character indexing in speech

In principle, any character behaviour or absence of behaviour in a
context where it is expected could contribute to characterisation. As we
elaborated in Section 2.2, the important point is that readers sift textual
information for what is meaningful about character and what is not (an
19
example of the latter being grumpy behaviour caused by getting soaked by

the rain, not a grumpy disposition). A central part of this will involve
making correspondent inferences. But what kinds of language behaviour are
taken to be indicative of character? In fact, some kinds of language
behaviour are regularly produced by some kinds of characters (or people for
that matter). In attribution theory, Kelley’s (1973) notion of “a causal
schema” accounts for this: a causal schema contains knowledge about the
probable cause of a particular effect. Thus, “sifting” for character
information can be short-circuited: some language aspects become
(semi)conventionally associated with particular character/person features
because they are typically caused by characters/people with those features
(of course, this does not mean that it will be reliable on all occasions). One
centrally pragmatic way of thinking about this is in terms of “indexicality”.
The notion of an index figures in the work of Charles S Peirce, a scholar
philosopher who contributed to the founding of modern pragmatics. In his
vision of semiotics (e.g. Peirce [1867] 1982), one kind of sign relation
concerns an index, which involves some actual connection between the sign
and its object, the classic example being smoke indexing a fire. Silverstein
(e.g. 1976) did much to develop Peirce’s work in the fields of pragmatics
and linguistic anthropology, where, broadly speaking the emphasis is on
how linguistic features “point” to particular social meanings, and the
dynamics surrounding this. A paper often cited in pragmatics and linguistic
anthropology is Ochs (1992), who makes a useful distinction between a
direct index and an indirect index. To use her examples, Japanese ze directly
indexes the voice quality of “coarse intensity” and indirectly indexes the
social category of male voice, whilst Japanese wa directly indexes the voice
quality of “delicate intensity” and indirectly indexes the social category of
female voice. From a different perspective, note that one can view an
indirect index as a correspondent inference, that is, the description of the
behaviour and the social category of the person correspond in some respect
(i.e. coarseness and maleness; delicacy and femaleness). This kind of
correspondence hardens with regularity and becomes part of the social
schema, the cognitive stereotype, relating to gender.
Aside from issues of space, we will not discuss all the various types
of possible indexes for characters for two main reasons. One is that they are
discussed at length elsewhere in this volume, including in the chapters by
Landert (18) on stance, Bednarek (5) on the role of dialogue in fiction,
Langlotz (19) on language and emotion, Planchenault (9) on regional, social
and ethnic language variation, and Kizelbach (15) and Dynel (16) on aspects
of impoliteness. The other is that overviews of such items can also be found
in the literature (e.g. Culpeper 2001: Ch. 4; Pfister 1988: 124-126, 183-195;
Rimmon-Kenan 2003: Ch. 5). We will, however, in Section 4, discuss some
aspects of social indexing in the context of studies involving (im)politeness.
In addition, here we will briefly focus on one area, namely, speech acts, not
least because it is so central to pragmatics.
20
Acts and effects, as well as contexts, lie at the heart of both speech
act theory (Austin 1962; Searle 1969) and attribution theory. A number of
studies have applied speech act theory to fictional works. We will briefly
discuss one of these studies by Hurst (1987), who analyses the characters of
Ivy Compton-Burnett’s A Family and a Fortune, a fictional novel that
contains an unusually high amount of dialogue, in terms of their speech acts.
In her conclusion the author remarks: “We can see how certain personalities
gravitate toward certain speech acts” (1987: 356). The idea that ‘certain
personalities’ correlate with certain ‘acts’ is the basic premise behind
attribution theories, especially correspondent inference theory. Moreover, a
correlation between certain speech acts and certain kinds of people is semi-
conventionalised. Studying actual people, Holtgraves (1994), for example,
found that knowing that a speaker was of high status was enough to prime a
perceiver to expect a directive of some kind in advance of any remark
having been actually made, such is the correlation between directive speech
acts (e.g. orders, requests, questions) and high status people. More
specifically, from the perspective of indexicality, the correlation is indirect:
[W]e can find particular linguistic features directly indexing social acts or social
activities, such as the imperative mode indexing the act of ordering in English
or respect vocabulary terms in Samoan indexing the activity of oratory. These
acts and activities in turn may be associated with speaking like a male or
speaking like a female and may display different frequencies of use across the
two social categories. (Ochs 1992: 341)
Hurst (1987: 345) comments that in the novel she analyses “[e]arly
conversations seem designed so that the reader can pick up the identifying
patterns of each individual”. Although she does not provide frequencies,
Hurst’s (1987) approach is to quantify types of speech act, and then draw
conclusions for character. For example, she comments on Aubrey:
Aubrey’s most common forms of speech are summary statements. Here [pp.8-
9], although Justine first responds to Clement’s outburst, Aubrey quickly enters
the fray with the summary, ‘Justine understands Clement.’ The summation does
more than get in the last word, for the representative borders on an absolute
declaration. Often in the novel, characters who are in subordinate positions, like
younger brothers or dependent aunts, express their insecurity by
overcompensating in their language and making broad, bold statements. (Hurst
1987: 346-347)
Hurst (1987) is sensitive to the fact that speech acts are context-
bound, and, as a consequence, can reveal how characters are positioned in
21
social space. Focussing on the relationship between Dudley and Edgar,

Hurst (1987: 348) notes Dudley’s preference for directives, and draws the
conclusions that “Dudley likes to tell people to tell him to do something,
and this constitutes devious manipulation”, whereas “Edgar allows himself
to be led along”. Clearly, the directives reflect an asymmetric power
relationship.
Of course, it needs to be stressed that one cannot take indexical
features as a straightforward input for characterisation. Indexical language
features are not fully conventional – they do not have a completely stable
relationship with social meanings, which is one of the things that makes
them pragmatic. Contextual factors, rather than social or personality ones,
can drive patterns of speech acts, thereby working against a correspondent
inference being made.
4. Inter-character dynamics in the text world
Recently, the notion of interpersonal pragmatics has experienced a

resurgence and a broadening of scope. This has been driven, notably, by the
2010 volume, Interpersonal Pragmatics (2010), edited by Miriam A.
Locher and Sage L. Graham, and the 2013 special issue in the Journal of
Pragmatics (volume 58), edited by Michael Haugh, Dániel Z. Kádár and
Sara Mills. We will mainly focus on both politeness and impoliteness, as
this is where the weight of research on fictional character has been focussed,
but we will also consider interpersonal relations, and briefly interpersonal
emotions.
Using (im)politeness frameworks to analyse fictional dialogue for
character has been a staple of the stylistics of plays for years (e.g. Leech
1992; Simpson 1989), and has occasionally been deployed for prose (e.g.
Martínez-Cabeza Lombardo 1994). However, there seems to have been a
recent explosion of studies using (im)politeness frameworks to analyse TV
or film dialogue, especially with character in mind (e.g. Bednarek 2012;
Dynel 2012, 2015; Mandala 2011; Richardson 2010: Ch. 9). The classic
work on politeness, Brown and Levinson (1987), saw the potential for
treating real life personality: “an understanding of the significant
dimensions on which interaction varies should provide insights into the
dimensions on which personality is built, as well as social relationships”
(1987: 232). Politeness is especially sensitive to context; mismatches with
context are characterisation focal points. There is evidence for this with
respect to real life interactions. For example, Holtgraves et al.’s (1989)
results indicate that subjects are more sensitive to the assertiveness of
conversational remarks made by same-status speakers than those made by a
higher-status individual; in other words, assertiveness in an equal
relationship clashes with assumptions about behaviour and power.
Interestingly, there is evidence that, other things being equal, impolite
22
remarks attract more attention than polite remarks (e.g. Wyer et al. 1994).
Culpeper (2001: Ch. 5) argues for the particular importance of impoliteness
in relation to the analysis of fictional characters. This importance is also
reflected in the fact that the bulk of the studies cited at the beginning of this
paragraph focus on impoliteness rather than politeness.
To briefly illustrate the power of (im)politeness in the analysis of
characterisation, we will consider the first exchanges between the
protagonists in the film Scent of a Woman (1992; directed by Martin Brest),
which is a re-make of the 1974 Italian film Profumo di Donna. We
summarize the first part of a full analysis given in Culpeper (1998b). Set in
the U.S.A., Charlie is a student at a prestigious private school, but he is not
rich and is supported by student aid. In order to make ends meet, rather than
go home for Thanksgiving, he responds to an advertisement asking for
somebody to act as a carer for their blind relative –the Colonel. The
dialogue below is their first encounter.
(8) Charlie: Sir?

Colonel: Don’t call me sir.
Charlie: I’m sorry, I mean mister, sir.
Colonel: Uh - ooh, we’ve got a moron here, is that it?
The Colonel’s conversational behaviour may come as something of a

surprise. Not only are he and Charlie complete strangers, but our prior
knowledge of the role relationship between Charlie (carer) and the Colonel
(cared for) and its power implications may well have given rise to contrary
expectations about their behaviour. The Colonel’s first utterance is oddly
brusque. Rather than reciprocal greetings and politeness, the Colonel uses
an imperative to command Charlie not to use Sir. Then, Charlie’s apology is
met by the Colonel impolitely referring to him in the third person and as a
moron. A key point about Charlie’s politeness and the Colonel’s
impoliteness is the interaction between them: Charlie is polite in spite of the
Colonel’s impoliteness, and the Colonel is impolite in spite of Charlie’s
politeness. Each type of behaviour is made more salient in the context of the
other. Their unexpected behaviour invites interpretation, strong possibilities
being to attribute their behaviour to character (a correspondent inference):
for example, the Colonel is an embittered man, a man with a warped
personality, a misanthropist; Charlie is the prototypical ‘nice guy’, rather
shy, perhaps even passive or spineless. These early impressions of the
Colonel and Charlie develop as the film proceeds.
Since the turn of the century, work on (im)politeness has been
gradually re-focussed so that neither politeness nor impoliteness are the
superordinate category within which social relations are factored, but
relations themselves are the broader framework. Thus we saw the arrival of
‘relational’ frameworks (e.g. Spencer-Oatey 2000; Locher and Watts 2005).
Such frameworks have yet to have much impact on the study of fictional
23
character. We do find studies looking at specific kinds of social relationship,

such as Bubel (2006), which focus on friendship relations in the TV soap
Sex and the City. Perhaps Mills (2014), in a paper entitled The Stylistics of
Relationships, is the first to attempt to put social relations at the centre. We
agree with her that “In analysis of characters so far, the focus has very much
been on individual characters, particularly in relation to the types of actions
that they take” (2014: 559). This contrasts with, for example, Bolander and
Locher’s (2015) study of identity construction in Facebook. Their approach
blends relational work, a post-structural view of identity (e.g. Bucholtz and
Hall 2005) and positioning theory (e.g. Davies and Harré 1990). Key ideas
include that “identity is emergent and constructed when individuals engage
in social behaviour, including communication” (Bolander and Locher 2015:
102);that identity construction in interaction involves “performing acts of
positioning, and underlining the existence of a particular self which can be
observed by others at a particular moment in time” (Bolander and Locher
2015: 102); and that the process is intersubjective – “when individuals
interact with one another, they construct their own identities and make
assumptions about the identities of others” (Bolander and Locher 2015: 103)
(see also Landert, this volume, Section 5, for similar developments in the
area of stance). These ideas are not entirely new. The analysis in the
previous paragraph is based on an original written nearly 20 years ago, but it
is clearly centrally concerned with meanings, including identities, that
emerge from the interaction between the two characters. What is new,
however, is (1) the application of a new, different, dedicated and developed
theoretical apparatus, (2) a central focus on these processes, and (3) greater
explicitness about what such analyses are doing.
Turning to interpersonal emotions, linguists have claimed that
emotion or affect is expressed by a wide range of different linguistic
features, including, for example, evaluative lexis, hedges, emphatics, modal
verbs, lexical repetition and pronouns (cf. Caffi and Janney 1994), not to
mention various non-verbal cues. With respect to fictional texts, work in this
area has generally been thin, though one might note Taavitsainen’s (1999)
investigation of “surge features” in The Canterbury Tales. However, more
recently Bednarek (e.g. 2010, 2011), focussing on television, has established
herself as the key scholar. Bednarek focuses on “expressivity”, a term she
uses to cover evaluative, emotional and ideological meanings. She
introduces the term “expressive character identity” to cover the aspect of
identity constructed from such meanings. In her work on the TV drama-
comedy Gilmore Girls (Warner Brothers, 2000-7), she shows not only that
certain expressive items (e.g. terms of endearment such as honey;
interjections such as wow, and evaluative adjectives such as weird)
distinguish characters, but also how groups of characters share expressive
resources and how some expressive identities are more stable than others.
For more discussion of interpersonal emotions, see Langlotz, Ch. 19, this
volume, and also, at a different discourse level, our discussion of empathy in
24
Section 5.
5. The perception of characters
Now we turn our attention to the other end of the communicative

process: the recipients of the text. We need to be reminded of the fact that
recipients co-create the narrative through their engagement with the story
world and its characters. Therefore, characterisation can be seen as a
“process to which both the text and the recipient contribute” (Eder et al.
2010: 34), as we elaborated in Section 3.1.3. In this section we briefly
mention some research on how characters can be interpreted and
experienced by recipients and then focus on empathy as one possible
response towards characters.
In order to study recipients’ experiences of characters, three
possibilities exist for the analyst: (a) we can start from the linguistic analysis
of the textual data and form hypotheses about possible reader reactions, (b)
we can empirically examine actual readers’ experiences of characters by
collecting and analysing extra-textual data, and (c) we can combine both
types of analysis in order to test previous hypotheses from the linguistic
analyses against recipients’ actual responses. The analyst should however be
careful not to assume one-to-one relationships between textual features and
effects on all recipients: “we can only say that some of them take effect on
some recipients under certain conditions at particular times” (Eder et al.
2010: 56).
As far as character reception is concerned, our responses to
characters range from the cognitive to the affective (Eder et al. 2010: 47).
Regarding cognitive responses, we already mentioned the relevance of
impression formation, which can be distinguished into category-based and
person-based, piecemeal impressions (see Section 3.1.3). Along these lines,
Gerrig (2010) examines readers’ cognitive processes when experiencing
characters in an attempt to enrich the narrow treatment of characters within
cognitive psychological models(for more discussions on cognitive
responses, see Bortolussi and Dixon 2003; Culpeper 2001; Schneider 2001).
Concerning both cognitive and affective responses, Dijkstra et al. (1994)
explore reader emotions and character emotions in relation to text
comprehension and find that reading speed is affected by character emotion
and suspense. Finally, as far as affective responses are concerned, Sklar
(2009) studies readers’ sympathy towards characters by focusing on the
development of sympathetic responses over the course of reading the story,
before and after the characters’ racial identity is disclosed. For more on
recipients’ responses to characters, see Smith (1995), Bortolussi and Dixon
(2003), and Eder et al. (2010).
Empathy is one of the possible responses which recipients can
experience when engaged with fictional characters. A critical distinction to
25
bear in mind is that empathy should not be conflated with identification

even though the two are commonly taken to be synonymous (Coplan 2004:
147). Instead of ‘identification’, which empathy scholars consider to be a
rather loose notion, Emmott and Sanford (2012: 211) use the term
‘autobiographical alignment’ to refer to the possibility that “a reader’s
ability to empathise is facilitated by sharing the characteristics of the
character”. The complex psychological phenomenon of empathy involves:
(i) understanding a situation from another person’s point of view, and (ii)
experiencing emotional states which are somewhat similar to those of the
other person, while (iii) being aware that the other person is the source of
those emotional states (Coplan 2004: 144). These three criteria should
suffice to distinguish empathy from other related phenomena such as
mindreading, sympathy or emotional contagion (for accounts of empathy
and its workings see de Waal 2009; Mellmann 2010; Baron-Cohen 2011; de
Vignemont and Jacob 2012; Gallagher 2012; Michael 2014).
Narrative empathy research is particularly central to the study of
empathy with characters. Narratologist Suzanne Keen (2013, paragraph 2)
defines narrative empathy as “the sharing of feeling and perspective-taking
induced by reading, viewing, hearing, or imagining narratives of another’s
situation and condition”. Within narrative empathy research, it is suggested
that particular textual features may foster readers’ empathy with characters
(see Keen’s 2006 theory of narrative empathy). Not surprisingly,
characterisation is among the storytelling devices which are supposed to
facilitate empathy. Keen (2006: 216) lists a range of characterisation
techniques which may lead to empathy with characters. Many of these
techniques have already been addressed in this chapter to explain their
potential for characterisation — reliance on types and roles in plot
trajectories (see 3.1.2); naming and indirect implication of traits (see 3.2.1);
quality of attributed speech and mode of representation of consciousness
(see 3.2.2). However, Keen (2006: 217) warns that empirical work remains
to be done in order to test the hypotheses of narrative theorists regarding the
empathy potential of the above characterisation strategies. Up to now,
empirical studies of narrative empathy are rather scarce. One study by
László and Smogyvári (2008) focuses on the relationship between narrative
empathy and both characters’ and readers’ national identity. One of the
authors of this chapter, Fernandez-Quintanilla, is currently undertaking an
empirical study of readers’ empathy with characters in socially engaged
literature (in preparation), which will be relevant to the study of character
reception.
6. Conclusion
In this chapter, whilst we have surveyed many different

contributions to characterisation, we have focused on a socio-cognitive
26
approach. This entailed a particular ontological stance: we discussed

representations of characters constructed in the minds of readers or the
audience during their interaction with linguistic, paralinguistic and visual
communicative phenomena. We argued that sometimes characterisation is
weighted towards inferencing based on prior knowledge or schemata, whilst
other times it is weighted towards piecemeal integration of character
information extracted from communicative phenomena. This process of
extraction is far from straightforward. We noted the important role of
correspondent inferences (inferences that character behaviours reflect
character dispositions), as well as the inferencing assumptions that attend
fictional data. The latter are, notably, that character behaviours are (1)
complete and finite, and (2) embedded within layers of discourse that
ultimately involve the author communicating with the reader or audience. At
various points, we articulated the interrelationship between characters and
actual people. In particular, we noted the importance of dramatic roles, and
how they are involved in characterisation. We devoted significant space to
characterisation cues, arguing that three dimensions are of particular
importance: narratorial control, self and other, and explicit and implicit. We
elaborated on narratorial filters, specifically, point of view, mind style and
speech and thought presentation, and discussed the role of character
indexing, illustrating our discussion with a discussion of characterisation
through speech acts. Addressing more recent research, we dwelt on inter-
character dynamics, an area that is underpinned by interpersonal pragmatics.
Finally, we considered the perception of character, and especially empathy.
It goes without saying that we have not presented an exhaustive review of
the field.
The fact that our chapter has not said much about the multimodal
analysis of fictional characters is consistent with its relative rarity in the
literature. This deficit may partly be caused by copyright problems with
publishing visuals, but could also reflect a general limitation of the stylistics
of drama. This field has its focus on the script, and thus primarily word-
based features, rather than visual and oral/aural features (see Richardson
2010 on the implications of this, and on how film studies does not offer a
ready-made solution).Still, we should remember McIntyre’s (2008) attempt
to integrate the stylistics of drama and multimodal analysis, and Kozloff’s
(2000) attempt to integrate film studies with elements of the dialogue. As far
as characterisation and multimodality are concerned, some frameworks at
least offer multimodal potential. Culpeper’s (2001: Ch. 4) list of
characterisation indexes goes well beyond word-based features to include a
range of prosodic and visual characteristics. Finally, on a positive note,
there is evidence that this situation is changing. Bednarek’s (2010: Ch. 7)
multimodal analysis of the characters in the TV drama-comedy Gilmore
Girls (Warner Brothers, 2000-2007) is a case in point (see also the
multimodal analysis in Landert, this volume, Ch. 18, Section 6).
27
Pragmatics, as we have demonstrated, lies at the heart of

characterisation. What is also clear is that much research remains to be
done. In particular, more empirical work on the perception of characters and
the role of emotions, notably empathy, is needed.
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Bionotes
Jonathan Culpeper is Professor of English Language and Linguistics in the

Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University,
UK. His work spans pragmatics, stylistics and the history of English, and his
major publications include Language and Characterisation in Plays and
Other Texts (2001, Longman), Early Modern English Dialogues: Spoken
Interaction as Writing (2010, CUP; co-authored with Merja Kytö), and
Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence (2011, CUP). He is
currently leading the Encyclopaedia of Shakespeare's Language project,
which will provide evidence-based and contextualised accounts of
Shakespeare’s language, insights into what Shakespeare’s language meant
to his contemporaries, and the linguistic thumbprints of characters, plays,
themes and more.
37
Carolina Fernandez-Quintanilla is currently finishing her PhD in

Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at
Lancaster University, where she works as Associate Lecturer. Her doctoral
research is an empirical contribution to the study of empathy with characters
(narrative empathy) from a linguistic-stylistic perspective. She is a member
of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA) and the International
Society for the Empirical Study of Literature (IGEL).
38

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This is the final pre-publication version of Culpeper, Jonathan, and Fernandez-Quintanilla, Carolina

Jonathan Culpeper and Carolina Fernandez-Quintanilla

Within stylistics, a field that overlaps to some extent with

2. Fundamentals of character and characterisation

2.1 The ontology of character

In their introduction to Characters in Fictional Worlds, a substantial,

1. Semiotic theories consider characters to be signs or structures of

In reading narrative texts, we imagine worlds inhabited by individuals who can

And following from this, we might note Margolin’s (1989) comment

It is difficult to deny that what we all do when we read a book, or

This is in tune with pragmatics, although the scope of pragmatics is

2.2 Inferring character

Character inferencing has only been discussed in a few studies, notably

In the perspective of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995),

between the author and the reader, and as such “communicates a

be found in various genres, including prose fiction (as in Daniel Defoe’s

3.1 Top-down information

3.1.1 Social schemata

In order to analyse and explain particular character inferences, the

Social role: e.g. kinship roles, occupational roles, relational roles

In Example (1), rich social role information (he belongs to the

3.1.2 Dramatic roles, plot and genre

1. The hero enters a social group.

Further illustration can be found in Wodak’s (2009) Proppian

and “young adult”, as well as “good” and “brave”. Female heroes in

3.1.3 Mixed models

self-involvement may play a role in determining the kind of processing

3.2 Bottom-up information

As we discussed in Section 3.1.3, recipients’ impressions of

that is, ways in which textual (linguistic or non-linguistic) cues shape

3.2.1 Types of characterisation cue

a) Degree of narratorial control

b) Self and other

c) Explicit and implicit

3.2.2 Narratorial filters

(2) They’re out there.

Some group of people (they) are currently located (present tense

The narrator is presenting the viewpoint of Europeans, since “the

disciplines, such as cognitive science, corpus linguistics and pragmatics,

(6) ‘We’ve admired it from the road,’ said Donald.

Jessica’s response at the very end of the extract, despite being

works. However, it is far from being a negative characterisation because

c) Narrative report of speech and thought

3.2.3 Character indexing in speech

example of the latter being grumpy behaviour caused by getting soaked by

social space. Focussing on the relationship between Dudley and Edgar,

4. Inter-character dynamics in the text world

Recently, the notion of interpersonal pragmatics has experienced a

(8) Charlie: Sir?

The Colonel’s conversational behaviour may come as something of a

character. We do find studies looking at specific kinds of social relationship,

5. The perception of characters

Now we turn our attention to the other end of the communicative

bear in mind is that empathy should not be conflated with identification

In this chapter, whilst we have surveyed many different

approach. This entailed a particular ontological stance: we discussed

Pragmatics, as we have demonstrated, lies at the heart of

List of fictional sources

Adams, Richard 1972 Watership Down. London: Rex Collings Ltd.

Star Trek films 1979-2016 Paramount Pictures.

Bousfield, Derek 2007 Never a truer word said in jest: A

Culpeper, Jonathan 2000 An approach to characterisation: The case of

Fernandez-Quintanilla, Carolina in preparation Language, Empathy