Reported Speech

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.