'I don't know how it is best to put this thing down': Uncooperative narration in Ford Madox Ford's <i>The Good Soldier</i>

Chapman, Siobhan ORCID: 0000-0003-0658-0272 (2023) 'I don't know how it is best to put this thing down': Uncooperative narration in Ford Madox Ford's <i>The Good Soldier</i>. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, 32 (4). pp. 385-403.

Access the full-text of this item by clicking on the Open Access link.

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/09639470231183042

Abstract

<jats:p> This article offers a pragmatic stylistic analysis of Ford Madox Ford’s 1915 novel The Good Soldier, assessing the technical notion of ‘cooperation’ developed in Gricean theory as a means of explaining its distinctive narrative style. Critics have generally agreed this text offers a salient example of unreliable narration, but have differed significantly in how they judge the character of the narrator himself, and even in how they interpret the events of the novel. Grice characterises communicative exchanges as typically rational pieces of behaviour, in which a mutually accepted set of purposes guarantees that individual contributions are suitable and constructive, but he does also detail ways in which speakers may fail to fulfil these expectations. This article will analyse examples from the novel in which the relationship between narrator and reader might be characterised as uncooperative in specifically Gricean terms; the narrator faces a clash of conversational maxims, opts out of the maxims or violates them, rather than either adhering to them or flouting them for communicative effect. This suggests a way in which pragmatic literary stylistics might be able to offer a principled explanation of the idiosyncratic style of this canonical work of modernist fiction, and by extension of the effects of this style of narration on the reader. </jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Cooperative principle, Ford Madox Ford, Gricean pragmatics, pragmatic literary stylistics, The Good Soldier, unreliable narrator
Divisions:	Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of the Arts
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	19 Jun 2023 07:31
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2023 12:45
DOI:	10.1177/09639470231183042
Open Access URL:	https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/096394702...
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3171050