over the narrative
over the narrative
>
| Literary
Stylistics: Workshop Notes no. 19 |
The most elementary concepts in speech and thought presentation are those of direct and indirect speech. Although you should know how to distinguish between direct and indirect speech, it may be useful to go over some of the salient points of comparison between them as they exist in fictional narratives. We will also be viewing them in relation to the Hallidayan grammatical framework which we have been studying. It may be noted as a preliminary that a feature which both direct and indirect speech share is the reporting clause.
Some of the salient points of comparison between direct and indirect speech in fictional narratives are given in the table below.
| (A) | (B) | (C) | |
| Direct speech: | Indirect speech: | Indirect speech: | |
| Use of | Character's discourse in 1st & 3rd person narratives | Narrator's discourse in 3rd person narratives | Character's discourse in 3rd person narratives |
| 1. Inverted Commas |
Used. | Not used. | Not used. |
| 2. Parataxis / Hypotaxis | Secondary clause is paratactically linked to the primary clause. | Secondary clause is hypotactically linked to the primary clause, and the subordinating conjunction, whether ellipted or realised, initiates the dependent clause. | Same as B2. |
| 3. Pronouns | Use of 1st person & 2nd person pronouns to refer to personages existing in the discourse situation. | 1st & 2nd person pronouns converted to 3rd person pronouns. | a) 1st person
narratives: 1st person pronouns used by the narrator to refer to
himself. b) 1st & 3rd person narratives -- reported speech embedded within direct speech in character’s discourse: |
| 4. Tense | Use of present tense to describe circumstances or entities existing within the discourse situation. | Change of present tense verbs to their past tense equivalents. | Present tense may be used if the original speech is in the immediate past of the act of reporting, and if the circumstances or entities stated or described in the original speech still exist. Otherwise, the past tense is generally used, especially in relation to the reporting verb in the main clause. |
| 5. Time Adverbials |
When referring to events which are proximate to the act of speaking, relevant time adverbials like now, today, yesterday, may be used. | Time adverbials mentioned in 5A, are converted to then, on that day / the day before, the day after etc. | Time adverbials are used according to the currency or proximity of the reported event in relation to the act of speech or narration; i.e. either 5A or 5B may be relevant. |
| 6. Demon- stratives: Near or Remote |
The ‘near’ demonstratives this, these, and here are used to refer to entities or situations existing during the speech event. | The ‘near’ demonstratives are converted to ‘remote’ demonstratives: that, those, there. | The ‘near’ demonstratives continue to be used if the entities or situations existing during the original speech event still remain. Otherwise, the demonstratives are converted to their ‘remote’ counterparts. Again, either 6A or 6B may be relevant. |
Features analysed in
|
In addition to direct and indirect speech (DS & IS), the following are also important in the analysis of speech presentation: Narrative Report of Action (NRA), Narrative Report of Speech Act(s) (NRSA), Free Indirect Speech (FIS), and Free Direct Speech (FDS).
NRA is used to describe the
physical action of characters, excluding their speech acts.
NRSA refers either to the
speech acts of characters, excluding the content of their
speech, or, to the speech acts of characters plus a vague or
general description of what has been said, using a circumstantial
adjunct instead of a reported clause (as in FIS and
DS).
FIS and FDS
operate when the narrator has less control over the speech
of the characters than in IS and DS.
In relation to the degree of control that the narrator has over the character's speech, it may be useful to view the concepts we have studied in terms of what has been described as the narrator's cline of interference (see chapter 10 of Leech & Short):
| narrator has the
most control over the narrative |
narrator has the
least control over the narrative |
| > |
|
| NRA → NRSA → IS → FIS → DS → FDS | |
It may help us to view the concept of FIS from a clearer perspective if we view it as a half-way house between IS and DS. In other words, FIS incorporates features found in both columns (A) and (B); for example,
The crucial element in FDS which distinguishes it from both DS and FIS is usually the missing reporting clause. In fact, DS minus the reporting clause (at least as far as Leech and Short's definition of FDS is concerned), is FDS. But FDS can also occur without the inverted commas to indicate that it is the speech of a character. In this case, distinguishing FDS from FIS may be quite tricky, as certain examples of FIS also do not have the reporting clause. In this case, we should adopt the following procedure:
if none of the features indicated in the previous paragraph is converted to their corresponding 'indirect' counterparts, then we are dealing with FDS (this occurs even if the reporting clause is present), but if one or some of the above features are converted to their 'indirect' counterparts, then we are dealing with FIS.
Thought presentation should not present us with any new
major difficulty in comparison with speech presentation, as
thought presentation does not confront us with a completely new
set of rules. In terms of terminology, all the categories of
thought presentation are derived by changing the S in speech
presentation to T: i.e. NRTA, IT, FIT, DT, and FDT. The cline
of the narrator's interference is also similar, i.e., the
narrator has most control in NRTA and least control in FDT. But
the 'norm' for thought presentation is different. In speech
presentation, DS is the norm, whereas in thought presentation, it
is IT.
Extract from
Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
Extract from Woolf's Mrs
Dalloway
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EL3221. Last revised: 15 May 2017
© Ismail S. Talib 1997-2017.