Abstract
In this chapter, I discuss subtle differences between direct and indirect reports, to conclude that they are mainly a matter of degree, although there are non-negligible syntactic differences, as direct reports admit interjections, while indirect reports, allegedly, do not (I provide a sketch of an explanation why interjections, if they were uttered in indirect reports, could not count as quoted segments of mixed indirect reports). I discuss the issue of opacity and I claim that in direct reports, especially those of the strict type, opacity is a result of interpreting the report verbatim; opacity is a pragmatic phenomenon in indirect reports. I discuss transformations like eliminations and expansions. I discuss differences on the basis of the interpretation of pronominals, and the possibility of using the report as a summary. I also discuss implicit indirect reports.
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Notes
- 1.
With some exceptions, such as Saka (2005) and Keith Allan (p.c.), who reiterates what he expressed in Allan 2016a and Allan 2016b. Allan has not been able to find any significant difference between direct and indirect reports. He also thinks that indirect reports could admit interjections as parts of mixed-quoted segments. Also see Coulmas (1986, 5), who says “What appears to be simply the alternative to direct discourse is thus a complex assembly of ways of reporting another’s speech or certain aspects thereof (…) that make indirect speech a versatile mode of speech reporting ranging from faithfully adapting the linguistic form of the reported utterance to the deictic centre of the report situation to a summarizing paraphrase of an utterance irrespective of its linguistic form”.
- 2.
Although unsatisfactory, the transformation in an indirect report has the advantage of helping the hearers identify the referent, while the pronoun ‘you’ clearly is not of much help, given that anyone at all could be addressed by the second person pronominal ‘you’.
- 3.
Another example similar to ‘He said Goodbye’, is the Italian utterance ‘Gli ho detto vaffanculo’ (I said to him Go to hell), which although it looks like a direct report (apparently quoting the words said) need not be a direct report, as the hearer imagines that the speaker may have proffered different words (a longer utterance, possibly). This looks like a summary. Another way of summing up the situation would be: ‘L’ho mandato affanculo’. Although this does not make reference to any words or utterances, it sums up the situation when we make clear to someone else that we no longer want to have intercourse with them. This is clearly a summary of what was said and of the (perlocutionary) effects of what was said.
- 4.
When I re-read this part of the chapter, I realized there is an ambiguity (if no colon is inserted), as one does not know whether a direct or an indirect report is issued. Davidson was probably right in his intuition that opacity in indirect reports comes from a structure like: Mum said that: Mary must have a bath. I assume that, in oral speech, there are ways to distinguish between the direct report structure and the indirect report structure, as with quotation there must be a pause. We wonder whether the pause is a pronominal in disguise (an implicit pronominal like ‘that’) followed by a colon. This issue cannot be settled here, but surely there is something in the Davidsonian intuition and what matters most is that some pragmatics is needed to resolve the ambiguity indirect report/direct report in some cases, even if, unless we interpret quotation as strict or pure (involving quotation marks and an expression which is literally quoted), there would be no need to resolve such an ambiguity, because there would be trivial differences between direct and indirect reports. As far as I know the only obstacles that stand in the way of a conflation between direct and indirect reports is (a) that sometimes quotation must be interpreted as strict quotation (Mary said exactly that:…) and that direct quotation, but not indirect quotation, does admit the insertion of discourse markers; but, of course, this obstacle can be overcome if one admits mixed quotation in indirect reports: He said that oh yes he was happy to accept the professorship. At least in spoken utterances, scholars have envisaged the possibility of mixed quotation in indirect reports (or mixed indirect reports), and thus a small step forward would possibly be to admit that discourse markers and interjections can appear in indirect reports too (He said that, Oh làlà, he was finally in love). (Of course a non-negligible problem is to attribute the interjection to a speaker or to another, given that the indirect report conflates the reporter and the reported speakers’ voices). This problem will be discussed later and I will say that considerations on explicatures can explain why interjections seem not to appear in indirect reports (or are considered illicit there).
- 5.
I distinctly remember deleting those parts which I deemed to be irrelevant from my academic quotations (using (…) to mark the deletion transformation). Of course, in the written mode of communication one can signal slots, where the inverse transformation can be effected, but in the oral mode of communication it is not possible to insert such empty slots and thus the hearer is not encouraged to reconstruct the deleted part.
- 6.
- 7.
I changed the situation, the participants and many details, so that the people in question could not recognize themselves. The event actually happened long time ago and in a completely different place.
- 8.
Again, see Cappelen and Lepore (1997), which is where the discussion originates from.
- 9.
The social practice of indirect reporting presumably involves constraints such as the following:
Do not (indirectly) report the literal meaning of an utterance if you know that the utterance had a non-literal meaning (according to the speaker’s intentions) unless you know that the hearer has clues allowing her to reconstruct the intended meaning.
- 10.
An example could be the following:
Mary thought she was happy. Oh làlà, the love of her life had arrived.
- 11.
I was surprised to read that Alessandra Giorgi (p.c.) finds that under the appropriate intonation (5) could be found acceptable. I must register her different opinion.
- 12.
See Holt (2016) for indirect reports that precede direct reports (to provide circumstantial information). Something similar could happen with indirect reports.
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Capone, A. (2016). On the (Complicated) Relationship Between Direct and Indirect Reports. In: The Pragmatics of Indirect Reports . Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41078-4_3
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