Abstract
An indirect report can take the form of a story, and a story may take the form of an indirect report, beginning with ‘she/he said (that) …’ Both direct reports and indirect reports can contain instances of quotation/constructed dialogue, indeed whole passages of narrative may be related as if repeating the words of a previous telling. So there is really a three-way distinction to maintain between direct reports, indirect reports and constructed dialogue, with the indirect report mode midway between the other two. Because of the way they relate to tellers, indirect reports realize different speech acts than direct reports and constructed speech. In spite of obvious differences in truth value from a logical perspective and speech act status, it seems not to matter to the audience whether a story is prefaced as an indirect report or even as a retold narrative in the mode of constructed dialogue.
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Norrick, N.R. (2016). Indirect Reports, Quotation and Narrative. In: Capone, A., Kiefer, F., Lo Piparo, F. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21395-8_6
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