SOURCE: "Lardner's Discourses of Power," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. XXII, No. 3, Summer, 1985, pp. 331-37.

In the following essay, Gilead investigates abusive language in Lardner's stories, noting its effects on both the narrator and reader.

Influenced by Michel Foucault's investigations of the manifold relations between discourse and power in given cultures,¹ recent literary critics and theorists have begun to examine the power strategies expressed or concealed in literary interpretation, and in narrative forms, themes, and styles. Jane P. Tompkins sums up a central idea shared by contemporary reader-response critics, who "assert that meaning is a consequence of being in a particular situation in the world. . . . " "When discourse is responsible for reality and not merely a reflection of it, then whose discourse prevails makes all the difference." Language is "the ultimate form of power."² The critical frameworks resulting from these or similar views yield questions such as the...