DISPENSE LINGUA INGLESE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, Lecture notes of English Language

Download DISPENSE LINGUA INGLESE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS and more Lecture notes English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Speech and thought presentation Based on Leech and Short’s study in “Style in Fiction” (1981) Analysis of Joyce’s short story “Eveline” (1914) Francesca Bellante Maria Vagheggini Wang Hui Zhao Weichen Introduction Speech and thought presentation can be a problematic area of investigation, especially when it comes to discourses which can’t be fitted into traditional categories [ =direct/indirect speech/thought]. Three main areas of discourse analysis are newspaper reporting, use of citations in academic discourse and study of literature, which is the one we are going to focus on. fig. 1 5.1 Linguistics and Media Topics: Chicago Manual of Style Author-date The Chicago author-date system requires parenthetical references to citation sources in the text consisting of the author’s surname, the year of publication and the page number(s). The reference can be parenthetical in part or completely, depending on how much source information is incorporated into the surrounding text. The components are (Surname year, page number{[s]): Author Surname(s) Incorporated Into the Surrounding Text Jones argues that this is a good system, and states, ‘I always use The Chicago Manual of Style when documenting my sources’ (1986, 234). Author Surname(s) and Date of Publication in your Sentence In 1986, Jones argued that this was a good system, stating, ‘I always use The Clucago Manual of Style when documenting my sources’ (234). Neither Author Surname(s) nor Date of Publication in your Sentence One famous linguist remarked that he ‘always use[d] The Chicago Manual of Style when documenting [his] sources’ (Jones 1986, 234). Study of literature Main categories: - Narrative Report of Speech/Thought Act (NRSA/NRTA) - Indirect Speech/Thought (IS/IT) - Free Indirect Speech/Thought (FIS/FIT) - Direct Speech/Thought (DS/DT) - Free Direct Speech/Thought (FDS/FDT) Areas of discourse analysis Narratorial “Interference” When a novelist reports the occurrence of some act or speech act we are apparently seeing the event entirely from his perspective. But as we move along the cline of speech presentation from the more bound to the more free end, his interference seems to become less and less noticeable until he apparently leaves the characters to talk entirely on their own. (Leech and Short 1981) DS/IS The essential semantic difference between direct and indirect speech is that when one uses direct speech to report what someone has said one quotes the words used verbatim, whereas in indirect report one expresses what was said in one’s own words [DS] Her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to have anything to say to him. —I know these sailor chaps, he said. [IS] He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. (Leech and Short 1981, 255) Converting DS -> IS Inverted commas, which mark quotation as syntactically independent of the reporting verb “said”, are removed, making the reported speech dependent on the reporting verb. That dependence can be marked explicitly by the introduction of a subordinating conjunction (e.g. “he said that…”) The first- and second-person pronouns change to third-person The tense of verbs undergo ‘backshift’, as do time adverbs (e.g. “Now I see” -> “then he saw”) ‘Close’ deictic adverbs (e.g. “here”) change to more remote (e.g. “there”) (Leech and Short 1981, 256) Converting DS -> IS The effect of these changes is to remove all those features which are directly related to the embedded speech situation only and to subordinate the reported speech to the verb of saying. N.B. There can be occasions in conversations (though these are relatively rare in the novel) where some of the extra linguistic referents will be the same for both the primary and the secondary speech situations. The relevant deictic can then remain unchanged. E.g. “What did Carlo say?” “Carlo said that he will come here tomorrow.” (Leech and Short 1981, 256) Narrative Report of Speech Acts (NRSA) The possibility of a form which is more indirect than indirect speech is realised in sentences that merely report that a speech act (or number of speech acts) has occurred, but where the narrator does not have to commit himself entirely to giving the sense of what was said. He held her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying something about the passage over and over again. [NRSA] -> there’s no clear information about “the passage”. (Leech and Short 1981, 259-260) Free Indirect Speech (FIS) As its name implies, FIS is normally thought of as a freer version of an ostensibly indirect form. Its most typical manifestation is one where, unlike IS, the reporting clause is omitted, but where the tense and pronoun selection are those associated with IS. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. [FIS] -> no reporting clause. (Leech and Short 1981, 260-261) Presentation of thought A writer who decides to let us know the thoughts of a character at all, even by the mere use of thought act reporting, is inviting us to see things from that character’s point of view. As with speech presentation, the crucial factor is the semantic status of the type of thought presentation used, and the categories may be differentiated by one or more of a group of formal features. (Leech and Short 1981, 271) Presentation of thought The fact that she is questioning her decision must make us suspect that she is going to reverse it, and even here, near the beginning of the story, she seems to find more reasons for staying than for going. Throughout the story, other hints mount: Her father was becoming old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very nice. [FIT] Conclusion In conclusion, we want to emphasise how wide is the range of options to chose from to present speeches and thoughts. “Like a hall of mirrors, each mirror capable of replicating the image in another, a discourse can embody narrators within narrations, reflectors within reflections, and so on ad infinitum.” (Leech and Short 1981, 279) In practical terms, this means that an author can potentially present the same subject from infinite viewpoints. Bibliography James Joyce. 1914. “Eveline” in Dubliners. Geoff Thompson. 1996. Voices in the Text: Discourse Perspectives on Language Reports. University of Liverpool. Leech and Short. 1981. “Speech and thought presentation” in Style in fiction. Lancaster University.