Quoted Speech

As a form of transcription, 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, it is usually enclosed in quotation marks, but it can be enclosed in guillemets (« ») 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:

: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:
: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
* Third-person narrative

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