Transcript Discourse analysis, lecture 5

Discourse analysis,
lecture 5
May 2012
Carina Jahani
[email protected]
Reported speech
Reported conversations tend not to be presented
like ordinary theme-line events in a narrative.
The speech orienter (“He said”, “Peter asked”) may
use unexpected verb forms or there may be other
devices for introducing direct speech.
The default encoding of participants may not be
followed when it refers to a speaker.
Forms of reported speech
• Direct speech: John told Peter : “I can see you”.
• Indirect speech: John told Peter that he could see him.
• Semi-direct speech (hybrid form)
– (no change in the pronoun referring to the direct speaker):
John told Peter that I can see him.
(Other possibilities)
• Logophoric pronoun (a special pronoun that
refers to the speaker
The case of Iranian languages
• Indirect report only affects the pronoun system, never the TAM-form of
the finite verb.
He said: I am coming tomorrow.
Pe: He said that he is coming tomorrow.
(He said that he was coming tomorrow.)
(Also perception verbs and mental verbs)
This morning when I woke up, I saw that is was snowing.
Pe: This morning when I woke up, I saw that it is snowing.
I thought that he would come, but he didn’t.
Pe: I thought that he will come but he didn’t.
Semi-direct speech in Balochi
Well the next day (lit. tomorrow) he went ,
because the king called him to shave MY (i.e. the
king’s) beard.
The first one said: Brother! This dog says: the
king is here, the king is with us (i.e. with the
theives, not with the dog, so the dog said “The
king is with you”)
Factors that may determine
the form of reporting
• Verbatim reporting
(the reported speech is to be understood as a direct
quote, the indirect not)
• Language specific constraints (syntactic)
(some languages allow only direct speech in certain
sentence types, indirect speech in others)
• Discourse related factors (find the default)
Prominence: for highlighting, backgrounding etc.
Status of participants
Non-real versus real events
Climax
Speech orienter
• Find the default
– presence/absence
– position
• Comment on deviations
• Repetition often a “slowing down” device
+/- clause linkage marker
The presence or absence of a conjunction may
have a discourse pragmatic function.
There could also be syntactic constraints.
Bal. “ke”
He said that he wanted that Ali should come
Closed conversations
A reported conversation with only two speakers.
Each speaker is the addressee of the previous
speech.
Special rules often apply in closed conversations
(participant reference and speech orienters).
Status of reported speech
• Often background material (the speech
orienter is foreground)
• Often non-developmental (doesn’t move the
story forward)
But it can possibly be foregrounded as well.
(see Levinsohn 7.5.4)
Tight-knit conversation versus
new direction
Tight knit conversation: a closed conversation
where the speakers continue on the same topic
as that of the previous speech.
New direction is often marked somehow
Reference to the speaker and
addressee in speech orienters
• noun, pronoun, enclitic pronoun, Ø
• find the default (often minimal, particularly in
closed conversations)
• Deviations e.g. for highlighting or in change of
direction
Status of speakers
• Can be marked in different ways
(See Levinsohn 7.9)
Interpretive use marker
• Marks that the speech is NOT describing what
was said on a particular occasion, but rather
represents an utterance or thought.