신빙성 조작 서술 유형 연구

Abstract

Since Wayne C. Booth proposed the concept of the ‘un/reliable narrator’, various rhetorical studies and considerations have been conducted on the narrator’s credibility issue, but problems such as arbitrary use of related terms and bias in terms of reader acceptance have been pointed out as chronic obstacles. In an extension of the term ‘credibility manipulation narratives’, which were proposed to evoke the credibility issue as a narrative strategy from the writer’s point of view, advancing beyond existing discussions that argue the issue of credibility is related to the qualities of the narrator who perceives the events within the narrative, this paper classified it into ‘a disabled narrators’, ‘a confused narrator’, ‘a crafty narrator’, and ‘a playful narrators’. ‘A disabled narrators’ is an immature or cognitively impaired person, a type of narrator who observes and delivers only part of the event in the limitation of cognitive ability. This is a traditional and the most common type of credibility manipulation narratives, and readers can grasp more narrative information than the narrator, so they can recognize the distortion of the narrator’s statement and understand the overall narrative process. The intellectual ability required of readers is at the level of common sense, so it can be approached by an various class of readers. Unlike ‘a disabled narrator’, ‘a confused narrator’ has more than average intellectual ability, but it also adds to the reader’s confusion by repeating confusing statements because it is overwhelmed by the situation in the story. The reader must actively review the narrator’s statement and infer the truth of the incident, but the confusion is maintained until the end, and the reader’s understanding falls to a level similar to that of the narrator. ‘A crafty narrator’ is a narrator who intentionally unfolds a story by concealing or distorting facts, creating doubt in the reader from the beginning through their statements and reinforcing it as the narrative progresses, mainly appearing in crimes or mystery fictions, and showing a pattern in which the narrator monopolizes and manipulates information through a monologue of the first-person perspective. The reader must approach the truth by finding the lies and contradictions hidden in the narrator’s statement, but the narrator cleverly manipulates the information to confuse the reader. It is a type that can be interpreted in various ways depending on the reader’s intellectual ability and direction of perception. ‘A playful narrator’ proposes ‘games’ with the reader through an unreliable statement from the beginning of the story. The reader participates in the text in a pleasant rather than critical thinking as a result of the narrator’s continuous playful statements. This type presupposes the reader’s high intellectual ability and sense of humor, and aims for flexibility in interaction and interpretation with the reader beyond the existing discussion of credibility. The above four types have a consistent direction of the need for a more multifaceted and advanced narrator, and an actively intellectual reading.