Abstrakt

This study seeks to identify three different meanings of the term ‘point of view’ and it attempts to define a specific concept, i.e. point of view, focalization, and perspective, for each of them. It proposes that point of view should be understood in terms of ideological beliefs which can be assigned to any subject of a narrative text. Focalization is perceived as a specific discursive method of presenting a fictional world through a focal subject, which is constituted using the same distinctive features of language as a narrative subject, with the exception of the first grammatical person. The focal subject thus mediates the fictional world, although it cannot be a narrator. Finally, perspective should refer to a spatial layout of a fictional world from the position of the focus of depiction situated within the fictional world; it can also be identified using distinctive features of language.