SPEECH PRESENTATION
In the anterior, reported situation Stef talks to Mick.
In the posterior, reported situation Dawn talks to you and tells you what Stef said to Mick. As the posterior situation is current for you it is close, and the anterior one is more remote.
If we thought about the speech presentation in terms of a novel, Dawn would be a first person narrator, telling you, her narratee, what the character, Stef, said to Mick, the other Character in the story.
In the 1st-person novel, the narrator effectively reports to the narratee (posterior situation) what he or she heard one character say to another (anterior situation). So the reporting discourse is that between narrator and narratee (level 2 above) and the reported situation is that between character A and character B (level 3 above).In 3rd-person narration, because the narrator is not a character in the story, and is conventionally assumed to be omniscient, the effect is more like one where we 'look in' on the characters' conversation, as it unfolds, without the effect of report. The kind of narrator that a novelist chooses to use thus affects how we view the speech which is presented to us.
FIRST PERSON
Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable.
(The Adventures of HuckleBerry Finn)
THIRD PERSON
Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was.
(Harry Potter)
Below are four sentences. They all report the same conversation between two characters which a 1st-person narrator in a novel reports to us.Drag the sentences to what you think are the appropriate places on the scale below and then compare them with our ordering. Can you label any of the presentational forms (e.g. direct speech, indirect speech)?
She told him that she had not been there the day before.
She spoke severely to him
She pointed out his error.
'I wasn't here yesterday, you idiot,' she said.
The scale'Know most detail about what 'she' said'
'Know least detail about what 'she' said' / 1. 'I wasn't here yesterday, you idiot,' she said
2. She told him that she had not been there the day before.
3. She pointed out his error.
4. She spoke severely to him.
What we have here are just some of the ways in which speech can be reported in real life and the speech of characters can be presented in novels. Effectively, we have a varying mix of character and narrator.
· Direct Speech (DS) - thereported clause
o it connects to thereporteddiscourse situation, exactly what the character said and the words and grammatical structures used to say it.
o Main indicator: the quotation marks e.g. 'she said', which is normally called thereporting clausebecause it connects to thereportingdiscourse situation.
· 'I wasn't here yesterday, you idiot,' she said.
· Free Indirect Speech (IS) – between Direct Speech and Indirect Speech.
o We know what was said, but it is difficult to know whether the words used to say it belong to the character or the narrator.
o This kind of ambiguity is often very helpful for novelists in manipulating viewpoint relations
· She wasn’t there yesterday, the idiot!
· Indirect Speech (IS) - we know thepropositional contentof what the character said from the reported clause, but the words and structures used to report it belong to the narrator, just like those of the reporting clause, not the character.
· She told him that she had not been there the day before.
· Narrator's Representation of Speech Act (NRSA) - the words and structures belong to the narrator, and the only trace of the character is a summary of what she said, including an indication of the speech act used by the character.
o Unlike DS and IS, there is no reported clause at all.
· She pointed out his error
· Narrators's Representation of Voice (NV) - all we know is that the female character said something to the other character. We don't even know what speech act was used, let alone what was said or what words were used to say it.
· She spoke severely to him
· Narrators's Representation of Speech Act (NRA) – no speech presentation involved here. The narrator just tells us what happens in the fictional world of the story and so everything we are told comes straightforwardly from the narrator.
· She pushed him
For each sentence of the little story below, indicate which speech presentation category you think is involved.
IS =Indirect SpeechFIS =Free Indirect Speech
DS =Direct Speech / N =Narration
NV =Narrators's Representation of Voice
NRSA =Narrator's Representation of Speech Act
1. John told Mary, his fiancée the story of his upbringing. / NRSA
2. 'I lived in a pig sty until I was seven,' he said. / DS
3. He talked with a charming soft grunt. / NV
4. Then he rolled on his back on the floor. / N
5. Mary told him he ought to get up before her parents came back from the kitchen. / IS
6. And he really ought to stop that ridiculous snuffling too! / FIS
7. He damn well wasn't going to put up with personal jibes like that, he replied. / FIS
8. 'Either you love me for what I am or we're finished'. / DS
9. Mary apologised for her unreasonably swinist attitude. / NRSA
10. They lived happily ever after in a small bungalow near Damansara Damai. / N
The passage below is from a popular romance novel. Lais and Peach are two sisters who are alone on a cruise ship together, travelling from America to France. Peach is five years old. Lais, who is in her late teens, is meant to be looking after her. But she is more interested in having a good time dancing in the ballroom of the ship, and so is hastily putting Peach to bed in their cabin, before going back to the ballroom.
Using your Speech Presentation checksheet, for each sentence, or part of a sentence, note down the mode of speech presentation you think is used. The speech presentation modes you are looking for are DS, FIS, IS, NRSA and NV. (Note that you may find more than one category in some sentences.) Some sentences do not involve speech presentation at all, and you may find it helpful to label these with 'N' for Narration.Lais unlocked the cabin door and pushed her inside. ‘Come on then, into bed with you.’ She pulled off Peach’s pretty white dress hurriedly.
Peach sat on the edge of her bed sliding off the little red slippers. ‘What about my teeth?’ she asked, thinking of her mother.
‘In the morning,’ called Lais, already at the door.
‘But Lais. Where are you going?’ Peach sat up in bed anxiously. She still wore her vest and knickers and her socks. There was no sign of her nightie, or a drink of milk or anything. And where was Teddy?
Lais hesitated then hurried back across the room and hauled the teddy bear from beneath a pile of clothes. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Now go to sleep.’
(Elizabeth Adler, Peach)
The speech presentation in the passage is almost all in DS. This makes the presentation of the speech seem simple and straightforward, and helps to bring out the perfunctory way in which Lais is 'looking after' her younger sister (which is also seen in what she does, or rather does not do - she does not let Peach brush her teeth, does not give her a drink and does not find her nightie for her).
The one exception to the DS 'rule' in the passage is the use of FIS for Peach's question about the whereabouts of her teddy, something which is clearly important for her.
‘But Lais. Where are you going?’ Peach sat up in bed anxiously. She still wore her vest and knickers and her socks. There was no sign of her nightie, or a drink of milk or anything. And where was Teddy?
The distancing effect produced by the FIS form is presumably to help us see that Lais is not much interested in the question. But this 'local' strategy seems strangely at odds with the fact that elsewhere in the passage we are allowed to see inside the mind of the Peach, the five-year old. Indeed, until we read Lais's response at the end of the extract, we could be forgiven for thinking that 'And where was Teddy?' is a question that Peach asks silently to herself, rather than something which she says out loud. This speech/thought ambiguity does not seem to be for any useful purpose in the passage either. So, it looks as if this writer might not be quite in control of the discourse presentational forms she is using.
More analysis at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic9/11lolita.htm
Under narrator’s controlUnder character’s control / Narrator’s report of voice (NV)
He spoke to her.
Narrator’s report of speech acts (NRSA)
He asked her about her future plans.
Indirect speech (IS)
He asked her what she was planning to do the following year.
Free Indirect Speech (FIS)
He finally came to the point. What was she going to do next year?
Direct speech (DS)
HE asked: “So … what are you going to do next year?”
Free Direct Speech (FDS)
“So… what are you going to do next year>”
THOUGHT PRESENTATION
Kinds of Thought Presentation
Besides using narrators to present what their characters say, novelists can also use them to present what their characters think. The presentation of thought involves the same basic categories of presentation as the presentation of speech does, but the effects of these categories are sometimes rather different. This is essentially because, in real life, although when we present or report the speech of others we have normally heard the speech we report, we know that this can't possibly be the case for thought. Indeed, even when we present our own thoughts, there is an issue, because it is not at all clear how much verbalisation thought involves.
In 1st-person narrations we would normally expect the narrator only to present his or her own thoughts in the story about his or her past. Logically, 1st-person narrators can only have direct access to their own thoughts.
In 3rd-person narrations, on the other hand, where the convention is that the narrator is omniscient, it is common to get the thoughts of more than one character portrayed in the same story, perhaps at different points in the story.
[He wondered/thought/remembered …. (NRT) – ‘reporting’ clause and similar phenomena]
1. He wondered, “Does she still love me?” (Direct Thought - DT)
2. Did she still love him? (Free Indirect Thought - FIT)
3. He wondered if she still loved him. (Indirect Thought - IT)
4. He wondered about her love (Narrator’s Representation of Thought Act - NRTA)
5. He thought for a long time. (Narrator’s Presentation of Thinking - NT)
6. He felt utterly bereft. (Narration of Internal States - NI)
Speech presentationDirect speech (DS)
Free indirect speech (FIS)
Indirect speech (IS)
Narrators representation of speech act (NRSA)
Narrators representation of voice (NV) / Thought presentation
Direct thought (DT)
Free indirect thought (FIT)
Indirect thought (IT)
Narrators representation of thought act (NRTA)
Narrators representation of thought (NT)
Below are five instances of thought presentation. Place the sentences in what you think are the appropriate places on the scale below:
‘What will I do for the rest of my bloody life?’ she asked herself
She asked herself what she would do for the rest of her life.
She thought for a long time
She carefully considered her future
What would she do for the rest of her bloody life?
The scale'Know most detail about what 'she' thought'
'Know least detail about what 'she' thought' / 1. ‘What will I do for the rest of my bloody life?’ she asked herself (DT).
2. What would she do for the rest of her bloody life? (FIT)
3. She asked herself what she would do for the rest of her life. (IT)
4. She carefully considered her future. (NRTA)
5. She thought for a long time. (NT)
1. ‘What will I do for the rest of my bloody life?’ she asked herself (DT)
'This is an example of the apparently rather conscious, soliloquy-like, kind of thought. It seems deliberate and coherent.
2. She asked herself what she would do for the rest of her life. (IT)
We are given the propositional content of the thought, but through the narrator's words and structures, not the characters. So we are given the information in a distanced, filtered, way. IT tends to have an even greater distancing effect than IS.
3. She thought for a long time. (NT)
This kind of presentation of thought is at the extreme 'narrator end' of the thought presentation scale. All we know is that the character thought something, but nothing else. And so although we know she was thinking, we are distanced maximally from those thoughts. We don't know the topic of her thoughts, or what she thought about that topic, let alone what form those thoughts took.
4. She carefully considered her future. (NRTA)
If we compare this example with the NT and IT examples, we can see that in terms of effect it falls between the two. We are distanced more than for IT but less than for NT. We know the kind of thinking involved and the topic of those thoughts, but no more.
5. She was very angry indeed (N)
This is clearly a sentence of narration, but unlike narrator sentences like 'She put her dress on.' we have a narrator statement about the 'inner reality' of some character - her emotional response to something - rather than what we might call 'outer reality'.