1 Introduction

Studies on the linguistic construal of time in narrative and viewpoint in narrative have largely developed into two separate areas of research, although both aspects seem closely related. This relation follows from the complex structure of narrative discourse which connects three time loci: the time locus of the narrated, the time locus of the narrator, and the time locus of the reader (Currie 2007). Temporal references can be linked to either one of these loci, with the result that different viewpoints are profiled and blended as the narrative unfolds in time. For instance, in an example such as (1) ^[1], a gradual shift is made from a present and general, objective viewpoint to a past and specific, subjective viewpoint.

The verb tense shifts from present faces to past perfect would have strangled and simple past went, signaling a viewpoint shift that is enhanced by temporal adverbs: whereas the adverb April 7 is still linked to an objectified time locus in the present, The next morning is linked to the subjectified time locus of news actor H in the past.

The goal of the present paper is to elucidate the interaction between time and viewpoint by examining newspaper narratives. News narratives are a hybrid journalistic genre in which storytelling techniques reporting upon real-world events can be found that are known from literary fiction, such as free indirect speech (Sanders 2010). Journalists are taught to enliven their reports by representing news sources’ experiences in quotes that keep a delicate balance between dramatic and authentic (Craig 2006), distributed over various types of speech and thought representation that are related to the newspaper’s public and aims (Semino and Short 2004).

The relevance of studying the relation between time and viewpoint in news narratives follows from three genre-specific characteristics. Each of these characteristics is related to the factual status of news narratives and might therefore be best explained by drawing a comparison with fictional narratives. The first genre-specific characteristic is related to the configuration of the ground. Both fictional narratives and nonfictional news narratives can be conceived of as communicative acts, presupposing a ground with a narrator and addressee as participants (Verhagen this issue). This ground is the deictic departure point of the narration; from this point, the story world is set up, distinctive from the outer discourse world that is, the context of the main communicator and addressee. In cognitive linguistics, this concept is also known under the label ‘mental space’ (Fauconnier 1985), or ‘text world’ (Werth 1999) while the more specific labels ‘story world’ and ‘narrative space’ are applied in literary semantics (Emmott 1997; Herman 2009, referring to Goodman 1978; Dancygier 2012). Within the story world, narrative characters are represented, each with their own deictic center (Zubin and Hewitt 1995). In fictional narratives, these deictic centers are imaginary for these stories create an imagined reality in an imagined time and place. Deixis in fiction is, in other words, “cut adrift from its physical moorings” (Zubin and Hewitt 1995: 130). In news narratives, by contrast, all deictic centers – both the ground and the deictic centers of the characters – are part of reality (see Stukker this issue). This means, as a second genre-specific characteristic, that the time line in news narratives runs from the narrated events that took place in the past into the here-and-now of the journalistic narrating, whereas the time line in fictional narratives is bounded by the time frame in which the narrative events take place. Third, whereas fictional narratives construct subjective viewpoints of imaginary characters, news narratives reconstruct viewpoints of real-world persons; and more specifically, their viewpoints at a past time relative to the ground.

The current study examines how the genre characteristics of news narratives affect the linguistic construal and cognitive representation of time and viewpoint. To that end, we employ a cognitive linguistic model of mental spaces and conceptual blending (Fauconnier 1985; Fauconnier and Turner 2002). We analyze Dutch news narratives on the use of tense and temporal deixis, concentrating on shifts between the News Space in which the past news events are represented and the Reality Space – the ground in which the journalist’s and the news readers’ here-and-now is the deictic center (Van Krieken et al. 2016; compare the present discourse space in Janzen this issue).

Our central point is that tense shifts and other indicators of time necessitate splitting up the Narrative Space in a kernel News Space and an Intermediate Space; the latter is a reconstructive device that is characteristic of news narratives but, we argue, may occur in other narrative genres in similar ways. Thus, in studying news narratives, we address more general issues regarding mental spaces in the representation and processing of narrative discourse, particularly the interaction between viewpoint spaces and the progression of time. From a theoretical point of view, this interaction may manifest in alternative ways (Sanders 1994). A first option is that several time spaces may be built into one viewpoint space such that time progresses within individual embedded viewpoint spaces. A second option is that time spaces may coincide with viewpoint spaces in a one-to-one relationship such that each embedded viewpoint space presupposes a new time space and vice versa. In this article, we empirically examine both options and offer as a third possibility that several viewpoint spaces may be built into one time space such that time progresses repeatedly through various parallel viewpoints, crucially involving an Intermediate Space that legitimizes the news narrative’s reconstruction and tellability.

2 Mental space representation of narrative time

Representation of time in narrative discourse is best understood in terms of mental spaces: conceptual domains that are established and linked to one another by linguistic expressions, creating “a network of spaces through which we move as discourse unfolds” (Sweetser and Fauconnier 1996: 11). Any story presupposes a virtual now-point, different from what counts as “here and now” in reality (Almeida 1995); these two here-and-now-points are anchored to two distinctive deictic centers within two distinctive spaces: The Narrative Space and the Reality Space. The Narrative Space is where the deictic center of the narrative characters is located. The Reality Space is where the deictic center of the reader is located. In processing fictional narratives, readers shift their deictic center to the narrative world such that temporal expressions (later, yesterday) are interpreted in relation to the narrative world’s here-and-now rather than the communicator and addressee’s here-and-now in the real world (Segal 1995). Readers are invited to interpret what is expressed in the past tense and perfect tense as past, relative to the narrative now-point, and to project their own deictic center onto this narrative now-point, moving it along with the character through narrative time. For instance, in Excerpt 2 (from a novel by Muriel Spark), readers are invited to represent the deictic center of character she and to create a cognitive representation of narrative time in which their deictic center in the Reality Space is projected on the character’s deictic center in the Narrative Space.

Tomorrow morning is not to be interpreted as “tomorrow morning” relative to the here-and-now in reality, but relative to the narrative now-point, for in fiction, the narrative time is limited to the Narrative Space; it is not connected to the Reality Space. Similarly, now does not refer to the reader’s “now”. Typical for narrative is the representation of characters’ consciousness (Cohn 1978; Emmott 1995). Fundamentally, each narrative character is a potential subject of consciousness, whose inner movements are ready for representation in a recursive story world (Sanders et al. 2012). Crucially, reference to now and the use of present tense invite readers to not only project their deictic center onto the narrative now-point, but to even blend it with this narrative now-point (Dancygier 2012), by vicariously sharing the deictic center with the subject of consciousness (Van Krieken et al. 2016).

Generally, though, both present and past tense in narrative fiction require readers to move their deictic center along with the character through virtual narrative time in the Narrative Space. Figure 1 below visualizes the basic space configuration in fictional narratives. The Reader (R), represented in the Reality Space, is projected on the Character’s deictic center (C) in the Narrative Space, which is indicated by an indented projection line. Priming (R’) indicates that a counterpart of the Reader’s deictic center is still represented in the original Reality Space, in a latent mode, while the Reader’s focus is transferred to the Narrative Space. Transfer through narrative time is depicted by the solid time line. The Narrative Space’s salience is depicted in black, while the reality Space which is not salient is depicted in gray.

Figure 1:

Basic space configuration in fictional narratives (depicts excerpt 2).

News narratives have a different space set-up because news narratives report upon events that have occurred in reality at a point in time prior to the present of narrator and reader. In contrast to fictional narratives, time representations in newspaper narratives thus have correlates in the real world that are mapped onto a time line running from the here-and-now of the narrative world in which the news events took place to later moments in time and finally to the here-and-now of the journalistic narrating in the present. The news events can be presented from different points in time, from both prospective and retrospective viewpoints closer to and further away from the events. Processing news narratives therefore requires readers to shift back and forth on this time line and to alternately align their viewpoint with the viewpoint of news actors in the Narrative Space and the viewpoint of the journalistic narrator in the Reality Space (Van Krieken et al. 2016). Presumably, readers take the linguistic cues offered by the journalist on how to represent the narrative news world and how to link temporal references to the various available deictic centers. However, there may be great differences in the actual time that the story is written and when it is read, putting the reader in yet another time-space. More importantly, readers may approach the news narrative with their own subjective knowledge and view of the news events and the journalistic approach, causing them to not, or not completely, align their deictic centers as presumed. Therefore, in the remainder of this article, we will restrict our interpretations to the journalistic narrator (in the figures indicated with J) and the news sources (indicated with S).

The goal of this study is to examine how the construal of and shifts between these spaces are linguistically encoded and, thus, how language guides the cognitive representation of time and viewpoint in news narratives. To this end, we used a collection of news narratives published between 1990 and 2015 in a variety of Dutch newspapers, each reporting on a murder case or an attempt at murder, because murder cases have a natural time line running from events occurring prior to the murder to events occurring after the murder, such as investigations and court hearings. ^[3] Typically, news narratives about murder cases involve the representation of multiple viewpoints, including the viewpoints of the suspect, victim, eyewitness, and authorities (Van Krieken and Sanders under review). These characteristics enable an investigation of the linguistic representation of and interaction between time and viewpoint in news narratives. All news narratives were analyzed on the use of tense and temporal adverbs. Specifically, we analyzed how these linguistic cues shape the configuration of spaces and how these relate to the various viewpoints represented at various moments in narrative time. The following sections will describe how news narratives may differ in their configuration of spaces, dependent on the use of tense and temporal adverbs. Each section provides an in-depth analysis of one of three main configuration types that we identified.

3 Narrative space and news space

In all news narratives, a Narrative Space is construed which embeds a News Space representing the newsworthy events. The Narrative Space is embedded in a Reality Space in which the journalistic narrator’s deictic center is located. The audience’s deictic center is projected onto this center. A crucial genre-specific characteristic of news narratives is that the narrative time line connects the News Narrative Space with the Reality Space. At first sight, this may not be obvious. For instance, Excerpt 3, an excerpt from a news narrative using past tense, could – without further context – be interpreted as an excerpt from a fictional narrative.

As in the fictional excerpt presented in the introduction, the journalistic narrator projects his deictic center from the Reality Space onto the Narrative Space, setting the time in the morning; subsequent temporal references such as then in (3b) and meanwhile in (3c) are to be construed from this point within the narrative, inviting readers to align with the journalist on the news source’s (S) deictic center and move forward and backward in time, respectively. Figure 2 visualizes the space configuration of Excerpt 3. As was explained in Section 2, the journalistic narrator’s deictic center is indicated with (J); the reader’s deictic center is, for reasons of clarity, not represented in the visualization but presumably – though not necessarily – aligned with the journalist’s deictic center.

Note that the use of the past perfect in (3c) enforces a movement backwards in conceptual time space (Irandoust 1999). This backward shift goes along with a shift in viewpoint: in (3a) and (3b), the viewpoint is located with the he-character, but in (3c) it shifts to the girl, who is presented as the subject of consciousness (Sanders et al. 2012) perceiving the screams. This shows that a single temporal interval can be narrated multiple times from multiple viewpoints, signaling the dynamic interaction between time and viewpoint in narrative discourse.

Figure 2:

Space configuration of excerpt 3.

4 Intermediate space

Typical for the news genre, the News Space is essentially a reconstruction by the journalistic narrator of news events which have relevance to the Reality Space. In more complex news narratives, this reconstruction may become obvious by alternating verb tense, as is shown in Excerpt 4 which is an excerpt from a news narrative set in the present tense.

The present tense in sentences (4a), (4b), (4c), (4e), (4h) and (4i) of this excerpt refers to the day the news event (murder) took place, cf. the fictional narrative in Excerpt 2. By contrast, the quotes by Johan in (4d) “I was in a daze”, (4f)–4(g) “Then I suddenly thought: …”, and (4k) “The neighbor had already heard me …”, are set in past tense time, projecting this news source’s narrative now-point back in time, not relative to the News Space, but relative to the Reality Space. Construal of these quotes in time presupposes another space, in which the quotes have been uttered, at a point in time between the news events and the here-and-now point in reality. This space we have previously identified as a Legitimizing Space (Van Krieken et al. 2016), since it may function to legitimize the – typically detailed – reconstruction of events in the News Space: it implicitly or explicitly refers to the retrieval or exchange of factual information as a basis for what the journalistic narrator represents in the News Space. However, since the function of this Space is not restricted to processes of legitimization, we adopt the more neutral label of Intermediate Space in the present study. This basic configuration of (news) narrative is depicted in Figure 3. Note that a source space is integrated as well, in which latent contents under the responsibility of the news sources are represented.

Figure 3:

Basic space configuration of news narratives.

When the Intermediate Space becomes salient, a change of viewpoint is established. In Excerpt 4, the quotations that are anchored in the Intermediate Space embed the viewpoint of news actor Johan. For example, sentence (4f) demonstrates how news actor Johan’s viewpoint is embedded in the Intermediate Space and how, from within this Space, he switches to his own past-viewpoint in the Narrative Space. The embedding of the direct thought in the direct speech coincides with a switch from past tense (“I suddenly thought”) to present tense (“I am dying…”). Hence, changes in tense signal changes in viewpoint. This construal is represented in Figure 4.

Figure 4:

Space configuration in sentences (4f) and (4g) of excerpt 4.

By literally representing a news actor’s thought or speech during the newsworthy events, present tense direct quotations decelerate the progression of narrative time such that the narration time concurs with the narrated time. As a result, readers are drawn closely to the dramatic events at the peak of the story: the moment Johan decides to murder his son. This peak is what Labov and Waletzky (1967) refer to as the critical event of the story, that is, the event that makes it worthwhile for the story to be told and thus legitimizes the telling of the story. The critical event is revealed in a quotation serving as an evaluation (Labov and Waletzky 1967) that expresses the inner considerations of news actors (here: Johan) and their experiences of the story events. Such evaluations enhance readers’ imagination of the newsworthy events and in particular how these events were experienced by the persons involved. This indicates that quotations such as (4g) legitimize the narrative reconstruction in two ways: first, by demonstrating the truthfulness of the narrative reconstruction and, second, by underscoring – through dramatization – the tellability of the events. Both the importance and complexity of this legitimization process explain why the progression of narrative time is temporarily stopped. In (4h) He rushes downstairs, the narrative time starts running again and accelerates as the story continues to describe the actions following Johan’s decision in a compressed manner (4i-4j) His son is standing in the living room. Johan stabs him multiple times with the knife.

In (4k) “The neighbor had already heard me, so it had to be done quickly,” he later says, the verb of perception hear combined with past perfect tense had heard steers conceptual movement through spaces (Irandoust 1999). Here, the direct quote signals that the news actor recalls his subjective past viewpoint during the news events, while the past perfect signals a shift even further back in time, to the point at which the news actor realizes that his neighbor must have noticed his first actions. The neighbor’s viewpoint at that specific moment in time is represented by the perceptual verb hear, a construction described as implicit viewpoint by a narrative subject of consciousness (Van Krieken et al. 2017). Implicit viewpoints guide readers into interpreting the described events from the viewpoint of this subject of consciousness rather than the narrator (Van Krieken 2018). In news narratives, news sources’ inner consciousness is often represented by such implicit viewpoints due to limitations in available space and strict demands of authenticity (Sanders and Redeker 1993). In this specific case, the embedding of a past perfect tense implicit viewpoint in a direct quotation results in a dense and complex representation of multiple viewpoints, each connected to a different time locus: the neighbor hearing news actor Johan contrasted with Johan realizing that the neighbor hears him and subsequently deciding that he must act quickly.

This complexity is further intensified by the temporal adverb later in the same sentence, which marks a shift to a point later in time, presumably an interrogation following the crime. In absence of more specific spatiotemporal markers, this interrogation is to be interpreted as an exchange of information between news actors, i.e. Johan and the authorities, and not an exchange of information between news actors, authorities and journalist. The quotation is therefore not anchored in the Intermediate Space, but part of the now extended Narrative Space and, correspondingly, its function is not so much to legitimize the reconstruction but rather to provide a vivid explanation of the sequence of events, thus underscoring their tellability. Thus, within a single sentence, a range of linguistic devices guides readers backwards and forwards through the part of the narrative time that falls within the stretched boundaries of the News Space. The tellability is further enhanced by, in terms of Labov and Waletzky (1967), an evaluation, i.e. a distinct subjective character of the direct quote. The modal verb in combination with a passive construction ‘had to be done quickly’ (Dutch moest snel gebeuren) underlines the subjective view of the narrative actor on his acts: they were necessary, and they happened. The deontic modal can be pointed out as another type of implicit viewpoint which activates the actor as subject of consciousness (Sanders and Spooren 1996). Figure 5 represents the simultaneous construal of implicit viewpoint back in time and temporal movement forward combined with another implicit viewpoint that enhances the subjectivity of the viewpoint in sentence (4k).

Figure 5:

Space configuration in sentence (4k).

It is important to note that adverbs that mark a transfer in time within a Space, such as later in (4k), seem to function iconically – later moves time forward – whereas adverbs signifying a transfer in time that corresponds to a transfer between two Spaces, such as yesterday in the next excerpt, seem to follow a different and atypical pattern. In Excerpt 5, yesterday does not signal a move backward in time as it would in a basic fictional construal, but forward, from the Narrative Space towards the Intermediate Space.

In sentences (5a)–(5e), readers, in order to achieve a plausible time line construal, should project their temporal viewpoint on the temporal viewpoint of news actor V. in the News Space in order to process the subsequent events as a progression of time, including a reference to a moment in past time with counterfactual events.

Yesterday in (5f) Yesterday in court, V. persisted: "I loved her", interrupts the news narrative time construal. This temporal marker refers to a time after the news events rather than before; specifically, it refers to the day before the real here-and-now journalistic narrating of events. Yesterday thus invites readers to project their viewpoint on the viewpoint of the journalist in the Reality Space. This interpretation is supported by the present tense in the subsequent utterance: He does not remember his fatal hammer-strokes and cannot explain them; which is a state of affairs further supporting his point and which is grounded in the Intermediate Space. Figures 6 and 7 below visualize the shift in viewpoint configuration.

Figure 6:

Space configuration in sentences (5a)–(5e).

Figure 7:

Space configuration in sentence (5f).

5 Quotative conditionals

Finally, in news narratives frequent quotative conditionals may represent implicit viewpoints of other sources, projecting on the epistemic condition of events in the News Space from an Intermediate Space at a later point in time. The following excerpt (6) illustrates this phenomenon.

Pragmatic inferencing from the news narrative genre will induce readers to interpret the present tense situation described in (6a) as valid at present, in the Reality Space; the deictic centers of both reader and news character are represented at the present now-point. Note that the first sentence could also be represented in the Narrative Space, which would also be the case if the narrative were fictional, but the news context disambiguates this potential representation: the circumstance that H. faces trial for murdering IS the real and newsworthy situation which justifies the journalistic narration altogether. Sentences (6b–6d), at first sight, seem to indicate a transfer to the News Space: He “would” (zou ‘is said to’) have strangled or smothered them on April 7. He “would” (zou ‘is said to’) have hit Claudia on the head with a bat first. Then he “would” (zou ‘is said to’) have driven their bodies to a nature reserve in Brabant and to have dug a grave there. The Dutch modal verb zou is set in past tense but is not construed from a point in the narrative past; rather, this so-called quotative conditional (Sanders and Redeker 1993) indicates a subjective epistemic modality and can therefore be described as a signal of epistemological deixis (Mushin 2000). Quotative conditionals in news narratives signal that some news source located in the Intermediate Space, somewhere between the News Space in the past (T=−2) and the Reality Space in the present (T=0) is indicated by the journalistic narrator as reporting (at T=−1) upon what happened in the News Space. Thus, in this Intermediate Space, a negotiation of truth takes place between the (in part implicit) viewpoints of journalist, reader, and source. Figure 8 visualizes the complex configuration of spaces in Excerpt 6.

Figure 8:

Space configuration in sentences (6b)–(6e).

Note that in sentences (6b)–(6d) of the excerpt, the Narrative Now-Point is located within the Intermediate space as signaled by the repeated use of quotative conditionals. In sentences (6e)–(6f) the Now-Point proceeds to move according to temporal references on the part of the time line anchored to the News Space (on April 7, then). Also note that the content of the indirect quote in (6) projects the source way back on the time line across the News Space, expanding time all the way back to 1991. What is said within this quote is attributed to the news source, and representing it presupposes an explanatory Source Space which is needed as a ground for understanding what happens in the News Space. This is visualized in Figure 9.

Figure 9:

Space configuration in sentence (6f).

Likewise, in sentence (5f) Yesterday in court, V. persisted: "I loved her", the content of news character V.’s direct quote (represented in the Source Space of Figure 7), refers to the time before the fatal news events (“I loved her”). These examples indicate that speech and thought representations of news sources anchored in the Intermediate Space have the potential to further widen the time scope of the Narrative Space.

Both in a quotative conditional (sentences 6b–6d) and an indirect quote (6f), the truth of the described event is uncertain; the difference is that indirect quotes explicitly refer the responsibility for the quoted content to a source (Van Krieken and Sanders 2018), while quotative conditionals express that events are only ‘said to be so’ by implicit reference to other, unnamed sources – a highly economical type of the aforementioned implicit viewpoint (Sanders and Redeker 1993) that requires simultaneous salience of multiple time spaces.

6 Conclusion

In news narratives, deictic adverbs (then, later) and tenses (past, present) index locations in one of the two basic spaces in the network – the News Space and the Reality Space – while some shifts represent another necessarily present space: the Intermediate Space, in which the news events are legitimately reconstructed. Furthermore, the analysis presented here shows that specific devices such as conditional verb forms (“would”) build optional spaces parallel to the journalistic narrator’s present, in which the trustworthiness of the narrated news events is negotiated. Thus, they stylishly express the unaccountability of news events without breaching the primary temporal line within the News Space. Time-traveling in news narratives happens both within and between these mandatory and optional spaces. Shifts from present to past tense (such as in Excerpt 4) and absolute adverbs such as yesterday (like in Excerpts 5 and 6) signal a viewpoint shift from the News Space to the Reality Space, moving the journalist’s deictic center closer to the present instead of further towards the past. These atypical time shifts breach assumptions of iconicity which would, in principle, make communicators assume that successively reported events occur successively in time, until a shift from present to past tense or an adverbial cue such as yesterday activates a new narrative time interval prior to the current time interval (Zwaan 1996). This principle does not seem to apply to news narratives. The mental spaces model helps to understand how readers cognitively process news narratives that do not allow for reliance on iconicity assumptions: they presumably align their viewpoint alternately with the viewpoint of the news actors in the News and Intermediate Spaces and the viewpoint of the journalistic narrator in the Reality Space.

The finding that iconicity principles do not apply to the genre of news narratives implies that a coherent representation of narrative time cannot be completely construed on-line. In news narratives, the actual time-line (i.e. the plot) must be assembled by the reader, not from an iconic progression, but by considering all the pieces together, with the use of prior knowledge and inferences and with the understanding that the entire time-line of events cannot be grasped until all the pieces are presented. Thus, analyzing mental space building in news narrative helps us to grasp the complexity of cognitive processing. Note, indeed, that the Narrative Space is not salient in either one of the representing figures in this study; it is a conceptual construct rather than a discourse representation.

The complexity found for news narratives may be found in other genres as well, although differences in the way the narrative is connected to the ground likely result in different degrees of complexity. Future studies contrasting fictional narratives with non-fictional narratives could test this assumption. Studies in this direction could furthermore illuminate the role of genre knowledge in readers’ travels through narrative time.

7 Discussion

The dynamic process of viewpoint alignment has consequences for the processing of time in news narratives, which requires readers to 1) construe a narrative time line connecting past newsworthy events with present consequences, and to 2) travel through narrative time by shifting their deictic center back and forth between here-and-now spaces of the constructed events; the courtroom or any other intermediate context, such as a press conference, a journalistic interview of witnesses, et cetera; and the journalistic present. Tense and temporal deixis guide this process by projecting news characters and events from the Reality Space alternately to the News Space and to the Intermediate Space. Thus, two types of time representation are found in Dutch news narratives:

1. Projection of Reality Space (T=0) on News Space (T=−2)

2. Projection of Reality Space (T=0) on Intermediate Space (T=−1)

We argue that both representation types function differently: the first (1) primarily enhances engagement with narrative and characters, and the latter (2) enhances the truthfulness of the narrative construction of the events that really happened. In both cases, the use of the present tense evokes space and viewpoint blending, further increasing the functional effect of the narrative. Put the other way around, the use of past tense prohibits such a blend (Verhagen this issue) and invites the public to represent the narrative time line in connection to some news character’s viewpoint, other than the journalistic narrator’s.

The analyses indicate that the progression of time in news narratives is construed and signaled by both temporal adverbs and tense. The function of temporal adverbs can be explained by the news genre’s focus on who did what and who knew what at which time, which amplifies the relevance of the epistemic status of the assertions made by sources and narrator. By contrast, shifts in tense may signal that the same time lapse may be repeated but from a different viewpoint, as illustrated in the analysis in Excerpt 3. In fact, one time lapse can be narrated multiple times, each time from a different viewpoint, so as to enable the public to see the news events through the eyes of several news sources, which in assemblage reconstruct the main line of events – the plot of the news story. This type of construal may be language-independent, for a previous analysis of an American news narrative illustrated how the past perfect was used to reconstruct various episodes of a complex news story with many people involved (Van Krieken et al. 2016). In this specific case – a news reconstruction of a school shoot-out – part of the narrative time first progressed through the viewpoints of people in classroom A and then it progressed yet again through the viewpoints of people in classroom B. In general terms, this indicates that there is no fixed type of interaction between time spaces and viewpoint spaces: several time spaces may be built into one viewpoint space, time spaces may coincide with viewpoint spaces in a one-to-one relationship, and several viewpoint spaces may be built into one time space such that time progresses repeatedly through various parallel viewpoints. All three interaction types may be possible across – and perhaps also within – narratives.

On a more reflective note, the results of the present study seem to indicate that ‘time’ in narrative discourse might best be conceptualized as ‘reconstructed experienced time’, i.e. time as the journalist’s present reconstruction of how and in which order the newsworthy events from the past were experienced (in the News Space) and relived (in the Intermediate Space) by the news actors. In this respect, the linguistic construal of time does not reflect objective time but seems to be inherently viewpointed, an argument that can be circumscribed as follows: Shifts in tense foreground either one of the inherently present spaces and signal activation of a specific deictic center. Temporal adverbs indicate time progression or regression from the activated deictic center within the salient space, while the active deictic center is available as subject of consciousness of the salient mental space from whose viewpoint the events are represented.

Although the time at which a journalist writes a news narrative does not coincide with the time at which the audience reads this narrative (see Nijk this issue), the use of absolute temporal adverbs implies a ground in which the viewpoints of journalist and reader are temporally aligned. The ground in news narratives can therefore be conceived of as an “anticipated ground”, construed by the journalist’s expectation that the audience reads the story on the day it is published in the newspaper. A recent study related delayed time references (such as yesterday in the narratives examined in the present study) to traditional straight news articles and showed a decrease in the share of this type of newspaper articles over the past 25 years (Tanikawa 2017). Our study shows that such delayed time references are characteristic of reconstructive news narratives as well, a genre that in fact appears to be becoming more prominent at the expense of traditional straight news articles. In this narrative genre, time references such as yesterday function to construe an anticipated ground so as to connect the news narrative to reality and legitimize the fictionalizing reconstruction of the newsworthy events. Similar to the use and function of tense (Stukker this issue), the use and function of temporal adverbials thus seems to be genre-dependent.

This study explains how tense and temporal deixis steer the cognitive representation of time and viewpoint in a way that appears typical to news narratives. It is by no means limited to this genre, though; for instance, in brand narratives, similar intermediate spaces are found (Sanders and Van Krieken 2018). Brand videos narrating customers’ stories may be interspersed with short “interviews” in which interaction between protagonist and film maker is represented show similar ways of time shifting. In that genre, intermediate spaces serve an elaborative function in which protagonists explain their motives and desires that drive their actions represented in the kernel story space. Intermediate spaces are not always temporally intermediate between kernel story space and reality space such as in news stories. Essentially, they are intermediate in that they negotiate and elaborate the tellability of the kernel story through intermediating in local, modal, interactive or some other sense.

To conclude, there is a need for studies on the linguistic construal of time and viewpoint both within and across various narrative genres in order to further advance our understanding of the functional and cognitive correlates of tense and deixis in discourse. Based on the qualitative findings of the present study, future research could employ quantitative analyses to study the linguistic marking of shifts between the various spaces construed by (news) narratives. A relevant question is whether shifts are in all cases linguistically marked or whether they can also be pragmatically inferred. Future studies addressing this question can reveal patterns in the manifestation of shifts between the various distinctive spaces as identified and elaborated in the present study and, as such, further elucidate the relation between language and cognition in the representation of time and viewpoint in narrative discourse.