Philosophical Inquiry into Fictional Discourse

Philosophical inquiry into fictional discourse examines the nature, structure and communicative power of language when speakers and audiences engage with non-literal or invented scenarios. It addresses how authors create and readers inhabit fictional worlds, the status of fictional entities and the criteria by which statements within a fiction can be evaluated as true, false or indeterminate. Central debates contrast the pretense view, which treats fictional statements as merely pretend acts devoid of genuine illocutionary force, with the make-believe view, which holds that they invite audiences to imagine and treat content “as if” it were true within the fiction. Research spans semantic theories of fictional truth, pragmatic accounts of how unstated content is conveyed, speech-act approaches to authorial creation, and moral or aesthetic dimensions of engagement with violence, ethics and cultural norms. Recent work also explores interactive media, the cognitive value of fiction and the ways in which moral intuitions are shaped by narrative conventions. This field remains highly interdisciplinary, drawing on linguistics, pragmatics, aesthetics and cognitive science to map the mechanisms by which fiction exerts its conceptual and emotional effects.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

Philosophical Inquiry into Fictional Discourse publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in philosophical inquiry into fictional discourse across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Fictional Discourse: Language used to create or describe events, characters or worlds that are imagined rather than real.

Pretense View: Theory that fictional statements are mere make-believe and lack genuine communicative force.

Make-Believe View: Theory that fictional discourse prescribes imaginative engagement, granting statements a provisional form of truth within the fiction.

Illocutionary Force: The communicative power or intent behind an utterance (e.g., assertion, command, declaration).

Conversational Implicature: Information conveyed indirectly through context and shared assumptions rather than explicit assertion.

Interactive Fiction: A narrative form allowing audience choices to shape multiple possible storylines and truth-conditions.

References

1. Crossing the Fictional Line: Moral Graveness, the Gamer’s Dilemma, and the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Philosophy & Technology (2023).
2. Implicating fictional truth. Philosophical Studies (2023).
3. Truth in interactive fiction. Synthese (2022).
4. Co-Producing Art’s Cognitive Value. The British Journal of Aesthetics (2024).