Abstract: Fiction in literature is the fiction in the sense of utterance performativity instead of that in the sense of representation. Authorized by cultural conventions, literature pronounces the construction of a fictional world as its primary action, and it exploits various strategies to highlight the constructive nature of utterance performativity and the illocutionary force of utterance. Thus, a new mode of intentional relationship can be constructed between people and utterance as the relationship of intersubjectivity, in which all the potentialities in people, utterances and words are summoned into the activities for constructing a fictional world. The paper concludes that, on the basis of this definition of literary fiction, more reasonable explanations may be found to some fundamental theoretical issues such as the difference between literary discourse and historical discourse, the relationship between the autonomy and the social critique of literature, and the power working in literary activities.

Key words: speech act, fiction in literature, intentional relationship, rhetoric strategy, cultural power