Cover not available

Article published In: Constructing and Negotiating Identity in Dialogue:
Edited by Răzvan Săftoiu
[Language and Dialogue 5:1] 2015
► pp. 62–89

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Knowing, Unknowing, Believing stances and characters’ dialogic identities in the Harry Potter books

 | University of Macerata, Italy
Published online: 23 June 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ld.5.1.04dor
In a previous paper (Philip et al. 2013) we presented the analysis of the main characters’ identities, as they emerge from the dialogues in Chapter 10 of the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, in relation to their Knowing, Unknowing, and Believing epistemic stances. The aim of the present study is to expand this analysis to all seven books of the same saga, in particular focusing on how Harry and Lord Voldemort negotiate, construct, and develop their identities and how they evolve in what they know, believe, and do not know through the dialogues in the seven books. This study also aims to compare this linguistic analysis to a literary one. The results show that the epistemic roles in the dialogues support the characters’ identities in the narrative.
References (43)
Algeo, John. 2001. “A Fancy for the Fantastic: Reflections on Names in Fantasy Literature.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 49 (4): 248–253. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anastasaki, Elena. 2007. “Harry Potter through the Looking-Glass: Wordplay and Language in the Works of Lewis Carroll and J. K. Rowling.” The Carrollian - The Lewis Carroll Journal 191: 19–31.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ascoli, Christina. 1978. “Some Pseudo-imperatives and their Communicative Function in English.” Folia Linguistica 12 (3-4): 405–416. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhattacharya, Saradindu. 2012. “Demons and Demos: Voldemort, Democracy and Celebrity Culture.” The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature 16 (1): 1–9. [URL].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blankenship, Kevin L., and Traci Y. Craig. 2006. “Rhetorical Question Use and Resistance to Persuasion: An Attitude Strength Analysis.” Journal of Language & Social Psychology 25 (2): 111–128. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007a. “Powerless Language Markers and the Correspondence Bias Attitude Confidence Mediates the Effects of Tag Questions on Attitude Attributions.” Journal of Language & Social Psychology 26 (1): 28–47. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007b. “Language and Persuasion: Tag Questions as Powerless Speech or as Interpreted in Context.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43 (1): 112–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bongelli, Ramona, Ilaria Riccioni, and Andrzej Zuczkowski. 2013. “Certain-Uncertain, True-False, Good-Evil in Italian Political Speeches.” In Multimodal communication in Political Speech. Shaping minds and Social and Social Action, ed. by Isabella Poggi, Francesca D’Errico, Laura Vincze, and Alessandro Vinciarelli, 164–180. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah, Fiona McAliden, and Kathy O’Leary. 1989. “Lakoff in Context: The Social and Linguistic Functions of Tag Questions.” In Women in their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language and Sex, ed. by Jennifer Coates, and Deborah Cameron, 74–93. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheng, Karen Kow Yip. 1995. “It is a Tag Question, Isn’t it?” The English Teacher 241: 1–12. [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crystal, David. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott. 1997. “Mirativity: The Grammatical Marking of Unexpected Information.” Linguistic Typology 11: 33–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “The Mirative and Evidentiality.” Journal of Pragmatics 331: 369–382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fernandes, Lincoln. 2006. “Translation of Names in Children’s Fantasy Literature: Bringing the Young Reader into Play.” New Voices in Translation Studies 21: 44–57.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Granger, John. 2007. Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader. Wayne, PA: Zossima.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. The Deathly Hallows Lectures. Allentown, PA: Zossima.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gupta, Suman. 2009. Re-reading Harry Potter (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Han, Chung-hye. 2002. “Interpreting Interrogatives as Rhetorical Questions.” Lingua 112 (3): 201–229. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heilman, Elizabeth E. (ed). 2009. Critical Perspectives on Harry Potter. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heinemann, Trine. 2008, “Questions of Accountability: Yes-no Interrogatives that are Unanswerable.” Discourse Studies 10 (1): 55–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John, and Geoffrey Raymond. 2005. “The Terms of Agreement: Indexing Epistemic Authority and Subordination in Talk-in-Interaction.” Social Psychology Quarterly 68 (1): 15–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heritage, John. 2011. “Territories of Knowledge, Territories of Experience: Emphatic Moments in Interaction.” In The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, ed. by Tanya Stivers, Lorenza Mondada, and Jakob Steensig, 159–183. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012a. “Epistemics in Action: Action Formation and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 1–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012b. “The Epistemic Engine: Sequence Organization and Territories of Knowledge.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 45 (1): 30–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jinjun, Wang. 2007. “Beyond Rhetorical Questions: Assertive Questions in Everyday Interaction.” Discourse Studies 9 (3): 416–418. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lazard, Gilbert. 1999. “Mirativity, Evidentiality, Mediativity, or Other?” Linguistic Typology 31: 91–109. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “On the Grammaticalization of Evidentiality.” Journal of Pragmatics 33 (3): 359–367. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mynott, Glen. 1999. “Harry Potter and the Public School Narrative.” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship 5 (1): 13–27. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peterson, Tyler. 2010. “Examining the Mirative and Nonliteral Uses of Evidentials.” In Evidence from Evidentials, Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 281, ed. by Tyler Peterson, and Uli Sauerland, 129–159. Vancouver: University of British Columbia.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Evidentiality and the Unprepared Mind. Paper presented at the ConSOLE XXI, January 9, Potsdam: University of Potsdam.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pharr, Mary. 2002. “In Medias Res - Harry Potter as Hero-in-Progress.” In The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon, ed. by Lana Whited, 55–66. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Philip, Gill. 2011. “Key Words, Pivotal Words and Leading Words in Harry Potter.” Paper read at Corpus Linguistics 2011 Birmingham, UK, 20-22 July 2011.
Philip, Gill, Ramona Bongelli, Carla Canestrari, Ilaria Riccioni, and Andrzej Zuczkowski. 2013. “Negotiating Narrative. Dialogic Dynamics of Known, Unknown and Believed in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Language and Dialogue 3 (1): 6–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riccioni, Ilaria, Ramona Bongelli, and Andrzej Zuczkowski. 2013. “The Communication of Certainty and Uncertainty in Italian Political Media Discourses.” In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 125–165. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rowling, Joanne Kathleen. 1997. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Karen M. 2003. “Harry Potter’s Schooldays: J.K. Rowling and the British Boarding School Novel.” In Reading Harry Potter: Critical Essays, ed. by Gisele Anatol, 69–88. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steege, David K. 2002. “Harry Potter, Tom Brown, and the British School Story: Lost in Transit?” In The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon, ed. by Lana Whited, 140–156. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Steveker, Lena. 2011. “ ‘Your Soul is Whole, and Completely Your Own, Harry’: The Heroic Self in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Series.” In Heroism in the Harry Potter Series, ed. by Katrin Berndt, and Lena Steveker, 69–84. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Whited, Lana A. (ed). 2002. The Ivory Tower and Harry Potter. Perspectives on a Literary Phenomenon. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zuczkowski, Andrzej, Ramona Bongelli, Laura Vincze, and Ilaria Riccioni. 2014. “Epistemic Stance: Knowing, Unknowing, Believing (KUB) Positions.” In Communicating Certainty and Uncertainty in Medical, Supportive and Scientific Contexts, ed. by Andrzej Zuczkowski, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni, and Carla Canestrari, 115–136. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Napoli, Vittorio
2023. “There is no doubt, you must be right!”. In Pragmatics and Translation [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 337], ► pp. 173 ff. DOI logo
Zuczkowski, Andrzej, Ramona Bongelli, Ilaria Riccioni, Massimiliano Valotto & Roberto Burro
2016. Writers’ Uncertainty in a Corpus of Scientific Biomedical Articles with a Diachronic Perspective. In Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics 2016 [Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, ], ► pp. 203 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2017. Epistemic Stance in Dialogue [Dialogue Studies, 29], DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue