As a form of
transcription
Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including:
Genetics
* Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...
, direct or quoted speech is spoken or written text that reports speech or thought in its original form phrased by the original speaker. In
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
, it is usually enclosed in
quotation mark
Quotation marks (also known as quotes, quote marks, speech marks, inverted commas, or talking marks) are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to set off direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an ...
s,
but it can be enclosed in
guillemet
Guillemets (, also , , ) are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons, and , used as quotation marks in a number of languages. In some of these languages "single" guillemets, and , are used for a quotation inside ano ...
s (« ») in some languages. The cited speaker either is mentioned in the tag (or attribution) or is implied.
Comparison between direct, indirect, and free indirect speech
* Quoted or direct speech:
:He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found since I came into this world?" he asked.
* Reported or normal
indirect speech
In linguistics, indirect speech (also reported speech or indirect discourse) is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence ''Jill said she was coming'' i ...
:
:He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into the world.
*
Free indirect speech
Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which uses some of the characteristics of third-person along with the essence of first-person direct speech; it is also referred to as free indirect discourse, free indirect style, or, in ...
:
:He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found since he came into this world?
A crucial semantic distinction between direct and indirect speech is that direct speech purports to report the exact words that were said or written, whereas indirect speech is a representation of speech in one's own words.
The distinction between indirect speech and free indirect speech is mostly one of style, hence free indirect speech is sometimes described as a free indirect style.
Notes
See also
*
Quotation marks in English
In English writing, quotation marks or inverted commas, also known informally as quotes, talking marks, speech marks, quote marks, quotemarks or speechmarks, are punctuation marks placed on either side of a word or phrase in order to identify ...
*
Third-person narrative
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...
References
{{reflist, refs=
[{{Cite book, pages=861–865, last1=Huddleston , first1=Rodney , authorlink1=Rodney Huddleston, last2= Pullum , first2= Geoffrey , authorlink2=Geoffrey Pullum, title=The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language , date=2002 , publisher=Cambridge University Press , location=Cambridge; New York , isbn=0-521-43146-8]
[{{Cite book, quote=Direct reported speech purports to give the actual wording of the original, whereas indirect reported speech gives only its content. ... ote:Some writers omit the 'reported' and simply talk of 'direct speech' and 'indirect speech', while others restrict the term 'reported speech' to the indirect type; we believe, however, that it is useful to have a term for covering both. Further alternative terms for direct and indirect reported speech are 'oratio recta' and 'oratio obliqua', respectively. , pages=1023–1030, last1=Huddleston , first1=Rodney , authorlink1=Rodney Huddleston, last2= Pullum , first2= Geoffrey , authorlink2=Geoffrey Pullum, title=The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language , date=2002 , publisher=Cambridge University Press , location=Cambridge; New York , isbn=0-521-43146-8]
[{{cite book, page]
34
101 , last1=Leech , first1=Geoffrey, title=A Glossary of English Grammar, url=https://archive.org/details/glossaryenglishg00leec , url-access=limited , year=2006 , publisher=Edinburgh University Press, isbn=978-0-7486-1729-6
Semantics
Semantic units
Syntactic entities