The central claim of this article is that everyday reality and fiction are not separated by any difference in ontological essence, but by a difference in chrono-topic configuration within a single shared normative topology: the Deontic-Expressive Field (DEF). The DEF is the locus where language, through the act of enunciation, institutes deontic powers — obligations, permissions, and entitlements — that bind speakers to one another and to the world. It is not a static structure but a living field, constituted and reconstituted through each communicative event. Within this field, Reality and Fiction begin as potentials of the same kind. Both demand Calibration against doxa — the background of shared social presumptions against which any utterance must be measured if it is to be intelligible. Both require Uptake by an addressee that either licenses the communicative act, granting it normative force, or fractures it, leaving it without purchase in the shared field. And both depend on Ratification — the stabilization of accountability that converts a provisional communicative event into an established social fact. The difference lies not in the architecture of these requirements but in whether and how they are fulfilled across the chrono-topic distance separating speaker and hearer.
Ionel P. POP (Wed,) studied this question.