A Narrator in Denial: Pragmatics and Unreliability in Alan Bennett’s Television Monologue The Outside Dog

This paper presents a pragmatic and stylistic approach to unreliable narratives, offering a critical examination of Heyd’s [2006, 2011] contribution to the concepts of unreliability and intentionality. I suggest a simplification of Heyd’s pragmatic model of unreliability by merging her tripartite classification of unreliable narratives (intentional, semi-conscious, and unintentional) into two categories of unreliability (intentional and unintentional). Furthermore, I analyse current efforts to associate various forms of pragmatic deviations with distinct typologies of unreliable narrators, delineating the limits of pragmatics in categorising types of unreliable narrators based solely on intentionality. Finally, I present a pragmatic and stylistic analysis of Alan Bennett’s television monologue The Outside Dog, highlighting how textual cues and pragmatic analysis offer a crucial approach to comprehend and interpret narrative unreliability.