ABSTRACT
In this chapter we shall be looking at the language of narrative; in particular we shall be investigating how words and sentences turn into stories. This last phrase echoes the title of Herbert Grabes’ classic essay ‘Wie aus Sätzen Personen werden’ (‘How Sentences Turn into People’, Grabes 1978). My prime concern in this chapter will not be how a narrative is constructed but rather the process by which, at the discourse level, elements susceptible to linguistic analysis serve to generate specific reader responses or even create the fictional world itself.
How sentences turn into fictional worlds
