You and We Narratives: Homocommunication

The lecture will focus on homocommunicative narratives, with the examples taken from you and we narratives. Briefly, this term describes narratives in which at least one participant of the communicative situation on the discourse level of the narrative (narrator or narratee – singular or plural) are also protagonist(s) on the histoire/plot level of the narrative. The term echoes Genette's homodiegetic for first-person narratives. You and we narratives problematise homodiegesis and pose new theoretical problems. The lecture will, first, explain the Genettean and Stanzelean terminology for first-person narrative; second, it will introduce the term homocommunicative; third, it will use examples from you narrative and, fourth, from we narrative in order to explain the problems that arise with these types of texts and how the concept of ho-mocommunicativity may help to avoid the worst pitfalls of the classical narratological models. Finally, the paper will discuss what are the advantages and disadvantages of employing homocommunicative narrative in fiction.