Abstract
This chapter aims at discussing the logic of indirect reporting, focusing on Frege’s general semantic theory and Davidson’s Paratactic Theory. Moreover, this chapter talks about Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of ‘voice’ where indirect reports are considered as hybrid constructions. The epistemology of indirect reports reveals that there is always a conflict in the knowledge/belief dimension. Indirect reports embrace both knowledge and belief whereby the reporter can present his/her intuition during the report. On this account, when the reporting speaker trespasses on his/her knowledge base and resorts to his/her belief system (subjectivity is observed), a knowledge/belief conflict occurs. In this chapter, the process underlying indirect reports and the ‘photosynthetic model’ are elaborated. Seeing indirect reports as a process rather than an end product put emphasis on the refinery and coping processes where the reporter can change the illocutionary force of the utterance to create a specific implicature. Based on the ‘photosynthetic model’, it is argued that the sociocognitive features underlying the report can alter the force of the utterances, where indirect reports are influenced by different sociocognitive trajectories that make it very difficult to definitely predict what would be the end product and the consequence of indirect reporting. Finally, evidentiality, ‘de re/de dicto’ distinction, and ‘de se’ beliefs are dealt with. This chapter concludes that the practice of indirect reporting is a complicated process where the end product and the consequences are not completely predictable. Therefore, the practice of indirect reporting is highly under the influence of the peculiarities of the context (either social or cognitive, or both).
Ordinary language is a part of the human organism and no less complicated than it is. It is humanly impossible to get the logic of language out of it directly. Language disguises thought. And in just such a way that it is impossible to draw any conclusions from the external form of the costume, the disguise, about the form of the disguised thought; because the costume’s external form is made for purposes quite distinct from that of making known the form of the body. The implicit adjustments for understanding ordinary language are immensely complicated.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus, cited in Von Kutschera, 2012, p. 217)
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Notes
- 1.
In line with Wittgenstein (1997, Section 23), “language game” is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.
- 2.
Clift and Holt (2007) acknowledge the importance of philosophy in indirect reporting, referring to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of ‘polyphony’ as an instantiation of the idea of indirect reporting.
- 3.
Jakobson’s (1971) concept of ‘speech within speech’ also refers to the combination of voices.
- 4.
Bakhtin argues that “a hybrid construction is an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers, to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two ‘languages’, two semantic and axiological belief systems” (1981, p. 304).
- 5.
In line with Seymour (2016, p. 373), “the reporter chooses to represent the saying in the subjective perspective of the agent or from his own objective perspective.”
- 6.
In this regard, Austin (1962) distinguishes between locutionary and illocutionary acts. In ‘John said: p’, John performs the action (locutionary act) but in ‘John said that p’, John is being described as uttering something (illocutionary act). In this case, as reported by Davis (2016, p. 308), “[i]llocutionary saying is much like asserting, but asserting is stronger.”
- 7.
Considering indirect reports as speech acts, the reporter not only conveys someone else’s utterances but also ‘promises’ that the report is genuine and faithful.
- 8.
One should bear in mind that by ‘relevant’, I do not mean ‘effusiveness’. I simply want to show that the information can be negative or positive. However, this positivity or negativity has been the most relevant information regarding a sociocognitive filter.
- 9.
As reported by Nicholson (2016, p. 112), “[t]he philosophical perspective associated with learning practical knowledge and skills is known as Pragmatism.” The author continues that “Pragmatism comes from the Greek word pragma, meaning ‘action.’ Pragmatic is also defined as ‘practical.’ Three American philosophers (Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) conclude that education should focus on learning how to solve practical problems.”
- 10.
Not all species produce the same product in the process of photosynthesis. There are many varieties of anoxygenic photosynthesis observed among certain types of bacteria. These bacteria consume carbon dioxide but do not release oxygen.
- 11.
ZPD can be equalled with scaffolding, arguing that individuals can reach their true potential by the aid of the peers.
- 12.
Ifantidou (2001, p. 149) argues that these two are the same by stating that “the parentheticals we have been considering above, e.g. I think, we all agree, Bill says, have the same function as hearsay adverbials: they mark the proposition that falls within their scope as being interpretively rather than descriptively used.” The author further adds that “parentheticals such as Bill says, the newspaper reported yesterday, which we might call ‘hearsay parentheticals’, are exactly like hearsay adverbials in that they specifically indicate that the views being interpreted are not the speaker’s own” (Ifantidou, 2001, p. 149). Therefore, according to Ifantidou, the two sentences ‘John is, allegedly, a spy’ and ‘John is, you say, a spy’ are considered parallel to each other.
- 13.
The ‘out-of-court statement’ or ‘hearsay’ is not unlike what Capone (2016) argues as ‘samesaying’. Donald Davidson has been a strong influence on Capone’s in the development of the concept of samesaying (refer to Davidson [1968] for further study). The term ‘hearsay’ is at the heart of ‘samesaying’ since the latter refers to the fact that “the report and the speech to be reported have some broad content in common” (Capone, 2016, p. 24). Thus, in order to perform a ‘hearsay’ function, one of the samesayers (the reporting speaker) should use the words of someone else (the original speaker). In order to fully grasp the practice of ‘samesaying’, one should understand the ‘hearsay’ function.
- 14.
As reported by Ifantidou (2001, p. 201), the use of parentheticals “indicates that the views being interpreted are the speaker’s own.”
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Morady Moghaddam, M. (2019). Philosophical Considerations. In: The Praxis of Indirect Reports. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 21. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14269-8_3
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