The Historical Present and Discourse Factors

The goal of this paper is to account for how the pragmatic as well as grammatical effects of the so-called ‘historical’ present tense in English are produced. The study begins with a brief consideration of some key aspects of the explanations found in the literature. We find that some traditional approaches to the phenomenon have failed to account for its exact nature, primarily because their focus tended to be on a sentence-level approach to a fact that should be considered on a narrative level. We also critically consider some recent approaches claiming that the semantic/discourse effects of the historical present tense are triggered by the tense shifts between the past and the present tense. We propose that the historical present tense is actually a variant of the instantaneous present tense, a running commentary-like device capable of a vivid eye-witness account of the events. It also supports the idea that the phenomenon is most likely to occur in the part of a narrative where the subjective involvement of the narrator is prominent. We suggest, as a conclusion, that the effects of the historical present can best be captured by assuming that they arise when the narrator is emotionally involved in the reporting of an incidence with the use of a dynamic verbs in the present tense. The study is therefore a repudiation of both the traditional views that the historical present is used only because some pseudo-psychological reasons are involved and the approaches that mechanically connect the effects of the phenomenon to tense shifts.