“Fiction, Non-Factuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure”, 1980-08-01 (; similar):
Fiction is commonly viewed as imaginative discourse, or as discourse concerning an alternate possible world. The problem with such definitions is that they cannot distinguish fiction from counterfactual statements, or from the reports of dreams, wishes and fantasies which occur in the context of natural discourse.
This paper attempts to capture the difference, as well as the similarities, between fiction and other language uses involving statements about non-existing worlds by comparing their respective behavior in the light of an interpretive principle which will be referred to as the “principle of minimal departure”.
This principle states that whenever we interpret a message concerning an alternate world, we re-construe this world as being the closest possible to the reality we know. In the non-factuals of natural discourse the referents of the pronouns I and you are re-construed as retaining the personality of the actual speaker as fully as possible, but in fiction they are immune to the principle of minimal departure.