Soft Skill

Direct and Indirect

Voice
Dosen : Mrs. Noni

Nama : Atika Dewi Lestari

Npm : 11213476
Kelas : 1EA22

Jumat
5/2/2014
Direct
Definition : A report of the exact words used by a speaker or writer. Contrast
with indirect or reported speech. Direct speech is usually placed inside quotation
marks and accompanied by a reporting verb, signal phrase, or quotative frame.

Examples and Observations:

A South Carolina parrot was the sole witness to the death by neglect of a 98-
year-old woman. "Help me, Help me," said the parrot. "Ha ha ha!"
(reported in Harper's Magazine, February 2011)

I went in search of the good beer. Along the way, I caught an intriguing
snippet ofconversation in the sunroom:

So if I win at that table, Ill go on to the World Series, said the mom I know
as some kind of government contractor.

World Series? you ask.

Of Poker, she replied. I went last year.

Whoa.
(Petula Dvorak, "White House Correspondents Association Dinner Has
Nothing on Suburban Fete." The Washington Post, May 3, 2012)

"How old are you?" the man asked.

"The little boy, at the eternal question, looked at the man suspiciously for a
minute and then said, "Twenty-six. Eight hunnerd and forty eighty."

His mother lifted her head from the book. "Four," she said, smiling fondly at
the little boy.

"Is that so?" the man said politely to the little boy. "Twenty-six." He nodded his
head at the mother across the aisle. "Is that your mother?"

The little boy leaned forward to look and then said, "Yes, that's her."

"What's your name?" the man asked.

The little boy looked suspicious again. "Mr. Jesus," he said.

(Shirley Jackson, "The Witch." The Lottery and Other Stories. Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1949)
Direct Speech
"While direct speech purports to give a verbatim rendition of the words that were
spoken, indirect speech is more variable in claiming to represent a faithful report of
the content or content and form of the words that were spoken. It is important to
note, however, that the question of whether and how faithful a given speech report
actually is, is of a quite different order. Both direct and indirect speech
are stylistic devices for conveying messages. The former is used as if the words
being used were those of another, which are therefore pivoted to a deictic center
different from the speech situation of the report. Indirect speech, in contrast, has its
deictic center in the report situation and is variable with respect to the extent that
faithfulness to the linguistic form of what was said is being claimed."
(Florian Coulmas, "Reported Speech: Some General Issues." Direct and Indirect
Speech, ed. by F. Coulmas. Walter de Gruyter, 1986)

1. Direct Speech as Drama

When a speaking event is reported via direct speech forms, it is possible to

include many features that dramatize the way in which an utterance was
produced. The quotative framecan also include verbs which indicate the
speaker's manner of expression (e.g. cry, exclaim, gasp), voice quality
(e.g. mutter, scream, whisper), and type of emotion (e.g. giggle, laugh, sob). It
can also include adverbs (e.g. angrily, brightly, cautiously, hoarsely, quickly,
slowly) and descriptions of the reported speaker's style and tone of voice, as
illustrated in .

"I have some good news," she whispered in a mischievous way.

"What is it?" he snapped immediately.
"Can't you guess?" she giggled.
"Oh, no! Don't tell me you're pregnant" he wailed, with a whining nasal sound
in his voice.

The literary style of the examples in is associated with an older tradition. In

contemporary novels, there is often no indication, other than separate lines, of
which character is speaking, as the direct speech forms are presented like a
dramatic script, one after the other.
(George Yule, Explaining English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1998)
 John Grady studied the filly and he look at the man. That horse is lame, he
said.

Lame.

Yessir.

Shit, the man said.

The man walking the horse looked back over his shoulder.

Did you hear that, Louis? the man called to him.

Yeah. I heard it. You want to go on and just shoot her?

(Cormac McCarthy, Cities of the Plain. Alfred A. Knopf, 1998)

2. Like: Signaling Direct Speech in Conversation

An interesting new way of signalling direct speech has recently developed

among younger English speakers, and is spreading from the United States to
Britain. This occurs entirely in spoken conversation, rather than in writing, . . .
but here are some examples anyway. (It may help to imagine an American
teenager speaking these examples.)

- When I saw it, I was like [pause] "This is amazing!"

- . . . so all of a sudden, he was like [pause] "What are you doin' here?"
- From the first day she arrived, she was like [pause] "This is my house, not
yours."
- So I'm like "Well, sure" and she's like "I'm not so sure . . .."

. . . Though the construction is new and not yet standard, its meaning is very
clear. It seems to be used more often to report thoughts rather than actual
speech.
(James R. Hurford, Grammar: A Student's Guide. Cambridge University
Press, 1994)

3. Differences in Reported Speech

[E]ven in the days of audio and video recording, . . . there can be surprising
differences indirect quotations attributed to the same source. A simple
comparison of the same speech event covered in different newspapers can
illustrate the problem. When his country was not invited to a meeting of the
Commonwealth of Nations in 2003, the president of Zimbabwe, Robert
Mugabe, said the following in a televised speech, according to The New York
Times:
"If our sovereignty is what we have to lose to be re-admitted into the
Commonwealth," Mr. Mugabe was quoted as saying on Friday, "we will say
goodbye to the Commonwealth. And perhaps the time has now come to say
so." (Wines 2003)

And the following according to an Associated Press story in the Philadelphia

Inquirer.

"If our sovereignty is to be real, then we will say goodbye to the

Commonwealth, [sic; second quotation mark missing] Mugabe said in remarks
broadcast on state television. "Perhaps the time has come to say so." (Shaw
2003)

Did Mugabe produce both versions of these comments? If he gave only one,
which published version is accurate? Do the versions have different sources?
Are the differences in the exact wording significant or not?
(Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Style: The Uses of Language in Persuasion.
Oxford University Press, 2011)
Indirect
Indirect speech, also called reported speech or indirect discourse, is a
means of expressing the content of statements, questions or other utterances,
without quoting them explicitly as is done in direct speech. For example, He said "I'm
coming" is direct speech, whereas He said he was coming is indirect speech. Indirect
speech should not be confused with indirect speech acts.
In terms of grammar, indirect speech often makes use of
certain syntactic structures such as content clauses ("that" clauses, such as (that) he
was coming), and sometimesinfinitive phrases. References to questions in indirect
speech frequently take the form of interrogative content clauses, also called indirect
questions (such as whether he was coming).
In indirect speech certain grammatical categories are changed relative to the
words of the original sentence.[1] For example, person may change as a result of a
change of speaker or listener (as I changes to he in the example above). In some
languages, including English, the tense of verbs is often changed this is often
called sequence of tenses. Some languages have a change of mood: Latin switches
from indicative to the infinitive (for statements) or the subjunctive (for questions).
When written, indirect speech is not normally enclosed in quotation marks or
any similar typographical devices for indicating that a direct quotation is being made.
However such devices are sometimes used to indicate that the indirect speech is a
faithful quotation of someone's words (with additional devices such as square
brackets and ellipses to indicate deviations or omissions from those words), as in He
informed us that "after dinner [he] would like to make an announcement".

Changes In Form

In indirect speech, words generally have referents appropriate to the context

in which the act of reporting takes place, rather than that in which the speech act
being reported took place (or is conceived as taking place). The two acts often differ
in reference point (origo) the point in time and place and the person speaking
and also in the person being addressed and the linguistic context. Thus when a
sentence involves words or forms whose referents depend on these circumstances,
they are liable to change when the sentence is put into indirect speech. In particular
this commonly affects:

personal pronouns, such as I, you, he, we, and the corresponding verb forms
(in pro-drop languages the meaning of the pronoun may be conveyed solely by
verb inflection).
demonstratives, such as this and that.
phrases of relative time or place such as now, yesterday and here.
 There may also be a change of tense or other modifications to the form of the
verb, such as change of mood. These changes depend on the grammar of the
language in question some examples can be found in the following sections.
It should be noted that indirect speech need not refer to a speech act that has
actually taken place; it may concern future or hypothetical discourse; for example, If
you ask him why he's wearing that hat, he'll tell you to mind your own business. Also,
even when referring to a known completed speech act, the reporter may deviate
freely from the words that were actually used, provided the meaning is retained. This
contrasts with direct speech, where there is an expectation that the original words
will be reproduced exactly.

Example

Some examples of changes in form in indirect speech in English are given

below. See also Sequence of tenses, and Uses of English verb forms: Indirect
speech.
It is raining hard.
She says that it is raining hard. (no change)
She said that it was raining hard. (change of tense when the main verb is past
tense)
I have painted the ceiling blue.
He said that he had painted the ceiling blue. (change of person and tense)
I will come to your party tomorrow.
I said that I would come to his party the next day/the following day. (change
of tense, person and time expression)
How do people manage to live in this city?
I asked him how people managed to live in that city. (change of tense
and question syntax, and of demonstrative)
Please leave the room.
I asked them to leave the room. (use of infinitive phrase)
The tense changes illustrated above (also called backshifting), which occur
because the main verb ("said", "asked") is in the past tense, are not obligatory when
the situation described is still valid:[3][4][5]
Ed is a bore.
She said that Ed was/is a bore.[4] (optional change of tense)
I am coming over to watch television.
Benjamin said that he is/was coming over to watch television.[5] (change
of person, optional change of tense)
In these sentences the original tense can be used provided that it remains
equally valid at the time of the reporting of the statement (Ed is still considered a
bore; Benjamin is still expected to come over).