TASK
1 English lessons
Definition:
The report of one
speaker or writer on the words said, written, or thought by someone else.
In traditional grammar, reported speech is
generally used as a synonym for indirect speech (in which the original
speaker's thoughts are conveyed without using the speaker's exact words) as
opposed to direct speech (in which the original speaker's words are quoted
verbatim). However, some linguists have challenged the validity of this
distinction.
Observations:
"Reported speech
is not just a particular grammatical form or transformation, as some grammar
books might suggest. We have to realise that reported speech represents in fact
a kind of translation, a transposition that necessarily takes into account two
different cognitive perspectives: the point of view of the person whose
utterance is being reported, and that of a speaker who is actually reporting that
utterance."
(Teresa Dobrzyńska, "Rendering Metaphor
in Reported Speech," in Relative Points of View: Linguistic Representation
of Culture, ed. by Magda Stroińska. Berghahn Books, 2001)
"[Erving]
Goffman's work has proven foundational in the investigation of reported speech
itself. While Goffman is not in his own work concerned with the analysis of
actual instances of interaction (for a critique, see Schlegoff, 1988), it
provides a framework for researchers concerned with investigating reported speech
in its most basic environment of occurrence: ordinary conversation."
(Rebecca Clift and Elizabeth Holt,
Introduction. Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2007)
"I wish to
question the conventional American literal conception of 'reported speech' and
claim instead that uttering dialogue in conversation is as much a creative act
as is the creation of dialogue in fiction and drama. . . .
"The casting of thoughts and speech in
dialogue creates particular scenes and characters--and . . . it is the
particular that moves readers by establishing and building on a sense of
identification between speaker or writer and hearer or reader. As teachers of
creative writing exhort neophyte writers, the accurate representation of the particular
communicates universality, whereas direct attempts to represent universality
often communicate nothing."
(Deborah Tannen, Talking Voices: Repetition,
Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse, 2nd ed. Cambridge Univ.
Press, 2007)
"[R]eported speech
occupies a prominent position in our use of language in the context of the law.
Much of what is said in this context has to do with rendering people's sayings:
we report the words that accompany other people's doings in order to put the
latter in the correct perspective. As a consequence, much of our judiciary
system, both in the theory and in the practice of law, turns around the ability
to prove or disprove the correctness of a verbal account of a situation. The
problem is how to summarize that account, from the initial police report to the
final imposed sentence, in legally binding terms, so that it can go 'on the
record,' that is to say, be reported in its definitive, forever immutable form
as part of a 'case' in the books."
(Jacob Mey, When Voices Clash: A Study in
Literary Pragmatics. Walter de Gruyter, 1998)
How
do you repeat what has been said by others
If
we report what another person has said, saya usually do not use the speaker’s
exact words (direct speech), but reported (indirect) speech. Therefore, i need
to learn how to transform direct speech into reported speech. The structure is
a little different depending on whether
want to transform a statement, question or request.
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