Recipient design in reported speech : How reporters manage the entry into and progress through reported interaction

Abstract

This paper examines two aspects of reported speech that reveal some of the complexity and structure that speakers use to design comprehensible reports. Firstly, the ways that reporters mark the entry into reported speech is investigated with an examination of the formulaic sequence‘I said to him I said’, and variations thereof, which serve as both an orientation to the elements of the reported world, specifically the speaker listener roles, and as an alert of an imminent switch in mode from here-and-now speech to reported speech. The use of turninitial discourse markers is another resource that may be used to clearly demarcate the boundary between the two modes. Secondly, when reporting a sequence of utterances that constituted a conversational exchange in the reported world, the reporter mainly reports short turns, often breaking up longer turns into separate shorter reports. The strategy seems to orient to the need to serve up reports in manageable chunks and constantly remind recipients of the report as to which of the participants in the reported interaction is actually producing the turn being reported and also to maintain the awareness that the report is ongoing and the reporter has not reverted to here-and-now speech.