Syntactic-narrative analysis of "Portrait of an Innocent: 1": A look at evidentiality, modality, and focus marking

Articles in Press

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Assistant professor of Persian language and literature, Shahid Beheshti university, Tehran, Iran

2 MA in Persian language and literature, Shahid Beheshti university, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Identifying the linguistic features of a story is a crucial step in its narratological analysis. This becomes especially important when examining the works of authors like Golshiri, who engage consciously with language and experiment with various linguistic techniques. By analyzing the language of the story "Portrait of an Innocent: 1", the present study seeks to answer the question: to what extent does the language of this story serve its narrative function? Although various researchers have critiqued Golshiri's works, linguistic analysis has been largely neglected in these studies. This is notable given that Golshiri considered the most practical way to critique a story to be through an examination of the author's use of language. The most significant narrative element in "Portrait of an Innocent: 1" is the homodiegetic narrator, who is also the focalized character. This study explores how unreliability, narrative breaks, contradictions, and subjective or fictitious interpretations frequently appear in the narrator’s speech, and how language plays a key role in conveying these features. The results show that Golshiri employs three major grammatical categories—evidentiality, modality, and focus marking—throughout the story. Examples of these categories are presented and analyzed in the article to demonstrate how they function in constructing an unreliable narrative voice, signaling narrative breaks, and shaping the contrastive identity of the narrator.

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Main Subjects

Literary Theory and Criticism

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 19 October 2025

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