What would you do if you could narrate your wonder years?: Interactional pragmatics of voice-over narration

This paper investigates the participant structure and interactional dynamics of voice-over film narration. First, the voice-over narrator is defined in the light of previous literature on film, narration and the pragmatics of fiction. Second, interactional pragmatic concepts are applied to explore how the extradiegetic narrator's turns are structured and positioned in the context of the diegetic characters' exchanges. The postulates emerge from a systematic analysis of The Wonder Years, a series revolving around the discourse of an extradiegetic homodiegetic voice-over narrator reporting on the diegetic world, in which his younger self lives and from which he is spatio-temporally removed. This positioning of the narrator generates compelling interactional patterns shaped by participant statuses and turn configurations. The focus of the study is on the production end (the narrator's speaker role compositions encompassing the diegetic and extradiegetic selves), the reception end (the narrator's seemingly addressing diegetic characters or viewers through verbally breaking the fourth wall), and the voice-over narrator's “diegetic quasi-participant” status. The findings reveal the voice-over narrator's role in shaping the ultimate form of interactions on two fictional communication levels and provide a platform for further inquiries into the pragmatics of film narration.