Reported speech, also known as
indirect 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, He said (that) he was coming is indirect speech. Indirect speech should
not be confused with indirect speech acts.
In grammar, indirect speech often
makes use of certain syntactic structures such as content clauses
("that" clauses, such as (that) he was coming), and sometimes
infinitive 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. 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".
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.
1. 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 tens
2. I
have painted the ceiling blue.
·
He said that he had painted the ceiling blue.
(change of person and tense)
3. 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)
4. 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)
5. Please
leave the room.
·
I asked them to leave the room. (use of
infinitive phrase)
6. I
am a traitor...
·
You believe me to be a traitor...[4] (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.
7. Ed
is a bore.
·
She said that Ed was/is a bore.[6] (optional
change of tense)
8. I
am coming over to watch television.
·
Benjamin said that he is/was coming over to
watch television.[7] (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.
