10 - The dead in the service of the living

Summary

Introduction

In recent years there have been a number of studies of the use of reported speech in a variety of settings and discursive contexts: in everyday interaction (Tannen, 1986; Mayes, 1990; Holt, 1996); in courtroom interaction (Philips, 1986); in group discussions (Buttny, 1998; Myers, 1999; Buttny and Williams, 2000); in political discussion (Leudar, 1998) and in accounts of anomalous or paranormal experiences (Wooffitt, 1992). Many of these studies depart from the more linguistic and grammatical concerns with reported speech (for example, Coulmas, 1986; Li, 1986) and the exploration of its more psychological or cognitive aspects (Lehrer, 1989), and have instead begun to investigate more sociological questions which are raised when people incorporate another's utterances into ongoing encounters.

For example, Holt (1996) examined conversational instances of direct reported speech – in which the current speaker reproduces the words of another person in such a way as to suggest that this is what was actually said at the time. She reports a number of interactional functions of direct reported speech – for example, reported speech permits the speaker to demonstrate an assessment of the person whose talk is being reported in the way their words are reproduced. It allows the speaker to display what he or she considers to be, for example, the relevant attitudes, opinions, personality traits or general state of mind of the person whose talk they are reporting at the time it was originally produced.