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"I rubbed the depilatory soap over my face and rinsed it with the trickle from the fresh-water tap." |
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In a sentence referring to the real world, one would feel fresh as a redundancy since usually faucets are freshwater faucets. So far as one suspects that this sentence is describing a fictional world, one understands that it is providing indirect information about a certain world where in the normal wash bowls the tap of fresh water is opposed to the tap of salt water (while in our world the opposition is cold-hot). Even though the story did not continue providing further information, the readers would be eager to infer that the story in question deals with an SF world where there is a shortage of fresh water. |
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However, until the novel gives further information, we are bound to think that both fresh and salt water are H20. In this sense it seems that fictional worlds are parasitical worlds because, if alternative properties are not spelled out, we take for granted the properties holding in the real world. |
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6. Requirements for Setting Up Small Worlds |
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In order to outline a fictional world in which many things must be taken for granted and many others must be accepted even though scarcely credible, a text seems to tell its Model Reader: "Trust me. Do not be too subtle and take what I tell you as if it were true." In this sense a fictional text has a performative nature: "A non-actualized possible state of affairs becomes a fictional existent by being authenticated in a felicitously uttered literary speech act" (Dolezel
*1988:237). Such an authentication assumes usually the form of an invitation to cooperate in setting up a conceivable world at the cost of a certain flexibility or superficiality. |
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There are differences between possible, credible, verisimilar, and conceivable worlds. Barbara Hall Partee (1988:118) suggests that conceivable worlds are not the same as possible worlds: some conceivable states of affairs may in fact be impossible, and some possible worlds may be beyond our powers of conception. Let us consider a series of cases: |
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(i) There are possible worlds that look verisimilar and credible, and we can conceive of them. For instance, I can conceive of a future world where this paper can be translated into Finnish, and I can conceive of a past world where Lord Trelawney and Doctor Livesey really sailed with Captain Smollett to find Treasure Island. |
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