DIRECT REPORTING OF SPEECH AND THOUGHT
Direct (‘quoted’) speech is a common feature of everyday conversation, of fictional dialogue and, to a lesser extent, news and other genres. In direct speech, the reporting clause contains a verb of saying, while the reported clause contains what is said. The reporting clause may be placed initially, finally or medially. If it is placed medially, the quoted speech is discontinuous as in c.With a proper name, inversion of subject and verb is another option d. However, with a pronoun (said she), inversion is archaic.
(a) She said, ‘I’m a telly addict and I always have been’.
(b) ‘I’m a telly addict and I always have been,’ she said.
(c) ‘I’m a telly addict’, she said, ‘and I always have been.’
(d) ‘I’m a telly addict’, said Danielle, ‘and I always have been.’
As there is no linking or subordinating element in a between the reporting verb and the quoted speech, the structural relationship between them is indeterminate. In b, c and d the reporting clause is clearly parenthetical.
In spoken English, the reporting clause receives less prosodic prominence than what is reported, in whatever position it occurs. This reflects the fact that what is said is more important than the introductory clause of saying.
These two features – the mobility of the reporting clause and the importance of what is said – are sometimes interpreted as evidence that I think, he said, for example, in whatever position, are not main clauses at all, but are better analyzed as epistemic, evidential or evaluative parentheticals, while what is traditionally classed as the complement clause is in fact the main proposition.
A further view sees the relationship between the clauses as one of projection: the reporting clause ‘projects’ the projected clause as either a locution or an idea.
