Do worlds have (fourth) walls? A Text World Theory approach to direct address in<i>Fleabag</i>

This article examines direct address, or ‘breaking the fourth wall’, in BBC TV series Fleabag. It applies Text World Theory to telecinematic discourse for first time and, doing so, contributes developing cognitive approaches field of stylistics. Theory, originally a linguistic processing framework, is used examine how multimodal cues contribute creation imagined worlds. We three examples address Fleabag, featuring actor gaze alongside use second-person you alone . Our analysis highlights need account different deictic referents you, with pronoun able refer intra- and extradiegetically. also explore viewers’ ontological positioning because wall’ evokes an addressee who not spatiotemporally co-present text-world character. therefore propose concept split text-world, which assists accounting pull that viewers may feel during its experiential impact. suggests necessarily world-forming but can ontologically position viewer differently narrative contexts. While some instances Fleabag as Fleabag’s narratee confidant, there increasing play show’s second destabilisation this role, achieved through suggestion be more psychologically interior than they appear.