Second person pov

[lobelia321]

Second person pov (you) is a strange beast.


Peculiarities of English 'you'
In English, 'you' is ambivalent: it can be singular or plural, it can be intimate ('thou') or formal. The word itself doesn't give anything away. Context is all.

In fanfic, I have only ever read the singular, intimate 'you'. But I have read more 'you's in fanfic than in published origfic. It's not unknown in literature but it's more common in slash (here are some reasons why I think that is the case).

In German (my native tongue), one would immediately be faced with dilemmas that don't exist in English. Do I use 'du' or 'Sie'? 'Du' is for friends and family and children; 'Sie' is for colleagues and superiors and teacher/student relationships and busdrivers, and then there are all sorts of permutations. I can't imagine anyone addressing a fanfic to a 'Sie'.


Deixis
Deixis refers to the utterance itself. Deictic words are words that make sense only within the context of an utterance. 'Dominic' is not a deictic word because it refers to a particular person or a particular fictional construct, no matter what the context. 'I' and 'you', 'here' and 'there', 'tomorrow' and 'yesterday' are all deictic words because they make no sense outside the context of a specific utterance. If I'm speaking to Dominic, the 'you' is Dominic and the 'I' is me. When he answers, the 'you' switches to me and the 'I' becomes him. I say 'here', and I mean my desk in Cambridge. You say 'here' and you mean something completely elsewhere.

Now I hadn't thought about this aspect of second person pov when I wrote my narratological analysis of fanfic. But it occurred to me this morning in t'reference library, and then I was reminded by reading azewewish's Epilogue which is written in second person pov. Perhaps an additional reason why second person is more prevalent in slash than it is in origfic is that it has this reciprocal, interactive possibility built into it. Because every 'you' could potentially flip around and become an 'I'. I noted this in my analysis, how easily I slipped into reading the 'you' as 'I', and now I'm starting to think that the deictic quality of the 'you' is responsible for that.

How weird and wonderful is language. Some words have definite and fixed signifieds, but some simply don't. I think Emile Benveniste first wrote about deictic words but I haven't read any -- has anyone else?

Comments

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

the whole tu/vous, du/sie thing is quite baffling for us english peeps trying to learn french or german... :)

off the top of my head, jay mcinerny's "bright lights big city" is the only novel written in second person that i can recall having read (although i'm sure i've come across others).

i actually found this to be annoyingly gimmicky at the time, so quite why i myself wrote a fair few fics in second person pov - who knows. not sure if i'd do that again, to be honest.

n.x :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I think it's not as gimmicky in fanfic because it's more common. (And you know why I think it is.)

And have you seen my Draco icon yet?

And do you think I'm completely abject now?

[novanumbernine.livejournal.com]

anything at all to do with harry potter is thankfully meaningless to me...

*shudders*

n.x ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it's best that it stay that way.

*pets you*

Because it *is* actually meaningless. Entirely.

[shalna.livejournal.com]

Second person in fiction just keep on puzzling me. I often like it but I can't say I understand why it is used. Your explanation is interesting. Second person kind of opens up a dialogue, a connection between 'you' and 'I'. It would seem that Benveniste agrees with you:

The essential characteristic of "I" and "you" is the possible interchange between them, "I" becoming "you" and vice versa. This is not possible between the third and any other person. The use of je entails an utterance involving a speaker and an utterance about the same speaker. Similarly, two characteristics mark off the use of the first and second persons: personalization and subjectivity.

Michael Issacharoff wrote this about Benveniste and deixis here (http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/emile_benveniste.html).

I'm quite fascinated by deixis and how it is a wider phenomenom than we'd think. I've mostly read Stephen C. Levinson about deixis. Here (http://www.google.fi/search?q=cache:pjLv7gCdkDgJ:www.mpi.nl/world/pub/handb-horn4.pdf+deixis+Levinson&hl=fi) is an article that seems interesting (I haven't properly read that one though).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you! Will click on links in a minute. I like the bit about personalisation and subjectivity because isn't that just what we're all looking for in fanfic / slash? Which is why I think the 'you' is more common in fanfic than it is in publfic (is that a word?).

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I just read the Issacharoff (a bit heavy on the old 'bold font', eh?) but very interesting. It feeds into musings about tenses as well, which I had some weeks ago.

[and_chocolate]

Generally, I loathe second person POV. That said, I recently wrote a story in second person as a present for a friend of mine because I knew that was what she wanted. *g* (Though it was non-traditional, I think, for a second-person fan story in that the viewpoint character was an original character.)

The second-person use of "you" usually grates on me--particuarly in fanfic--because the author is saying "you" but they don't mean me, they mean Orlando or Gale or whichever other actor/character they've put into the pairing. I don't like the feeling of being...forced, for lack of a better word...to cathect in a specific way. Even in the tightest third-person POV (or in first-person POV, for that matter), I have a freedom that's taken away from me by the author-dictated "you" of second person.

And wow, I hadn't really realized that was where my problem with second person was until I started writing this. I'm really enjoying these technical discussions about writing; thank you!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I am very interested to hear that you find yourself 'forced' by second person. It doesn't have that effect on me but I can see how it might. I was thinking why for me you and I are so close together; half the time I read a 'you'-fic as an 'I'-fic. But then 'I' doesn't have the same reciprocal function although, theoretically, it should because it's just as deictic as 'you'. But it doesn't *appeal* to the reader and outside the text in the same way. It's more contained within the narration.

From a writer's point of view, I liked gabbyhope's comment on her own 'you' fic: she had the feeling she was sitting on Dom's shoulder the whole time, egging him on to do naughty things to Billy. So from the writing point of view it can be empowering: you are my marionette, dance. Did you find that when you wrote yours or was it just a tedious exercise?

I've never written 'you' before, except in letter-writing situations, but yesterday I started to for the first time. It seemed right for the particular effect: I wanted a mystery character whose identity only dawns on the reader. I could have used 'I" but then suddenly *I* wanted that 'you' connection with my character.

[and_chocolate]

So from the writing point of view it can be empowering: you are my marionette, dance.

See, but...well, I was going to say that I find that to be the case with everything I write, regardless of POV, and then I realized that was a big fat lie. Actually, the characters are so not my marionettes. As a matter of fact, they can be damned stubborn buggers who refuse to do what I want them to do.

And there's an important point. I've found that a story always, always fails when I try to force the characters to do things they don't want to do. Usually I get blocked and just can't write further, but if I force it then I find readers tend to call me on the characters' behavior--as OOC or just plain "off" somehow.

Did you find that when you wrote yours or was it just a tedious exercise?

For me it was a little different, because the point of the exercise was that I was essentially telling vegetariansushi a story that included her -- or a rough simulacrum of her. It was kind of like phone sex or IM sex, actually; I was pitching the story directly to her, with her as the protagonist (in the guise of an original female character, so that it could be read and, I hope, enjoyed by a wider fannish audience), and so for me it was like whispering a fantasy into a lover's ear during sex.

And I suspect that was TMI. *g*

I don't think I could write a second-person POV story where the "you" was not an original character; it just feels too awkward to me. I don't translate that "you" into the "I" of first person at all, either in reading or in writing. I'm not sure if I have too much imagination, or not enough, but I apparently can only translate it into the "I" of me, Sinful Words. Which is all wrong when the author wants me to be thinking of myself as Gale Harold. *g*

Oooh. And there's another point. I don't want to be told what I feel or how I'm responding physically to a particular stimulus. A second-person POV story is telling me what I do and what I feel, and I resent that. I don't mind being taken along for the ride with a first-person narrator, or slipping into the flow of a third-person POV story, but I don't want the author to say: "It's in London when you see him again, and you feel your throat constrict. Even after all this time, even without the long blonde hair that has now been replaced by stubble, something in him always robbed you of breath."*

It's a) attempting to give me a relationship with someone that I don't actually have, and that feels awkward, and b) the physical and emotional responses are not ones I'd necessarily have.

*from Panoramic by Kyra Leon, which I actually liked quite a lot, despite it being written in second person. Which just goes to prove, I think, that there's an exception to every rule. *g*

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine anyone addressing a fanfic to a 'Sie'.

*snickers at the very thought* But it's true; there's a certain intimacy and foreknowledge inherent in fanfic that would probably preclude the use of a formal "you."

But as you and others have already said, it's that very intimacy that makes the use of 2nd person POV possible and relatively common in fanfic. (It's been years since I've read it, but I do believe that Ingeborg Bachmann's Das Dreissigste Jahr is written in 2nd person "Du." The whole feel of it is rather odd in any case, and the "Du" preordains a slightly condescending tone, like perhaps an older person giving a younger one unsolicited advice!)

Unlike some of the commenters above, I don't find the 2nd person coercive so much as stifling. Maybe part of that stems from the present tense that is almost always used with 2nd person. I always feel very caught in the moment, with no benefit of omniscience (as in the third person) or hindsight (as in the first person). And is there really such a thing as an unreliable narrator in the 2nd person? I suppose anything is possible, but I can't really conceive of how that could be managed. Must ponder further.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Now, of course, I feel impelled to write a 'Sie' fic except I can't because my German is so very, very rusty.

Maybe part of that stems from the present tense that is almost always used with 2nd person.
That is a very interesting point and absolutely true. A 'you' with past tense would feel very odd to me. *thinks about it* For me, part of the allure (and I'm writing it at the moment) is this present-ness, however; there are certain effects you can achieve, and it's also a neat way of keeping the identity of the character secret.

And is there really such a thing as an unreliable narrator in the 2nd person?
An intriguing question. I have no answer. *thinks*