XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

There are three ways of reproducing actual speech: a) repetition of the exact utterance as it was spoken (direct speech), b) con­version of the exact utterance into the relater's mode of expression (indirect speech), c) representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it has not really been spoken but is only represented in the author's words (represented speech).

There is a device which conveys to the reader the unuttered or inner speech of the character, presenting his thoughts and feelings. This device is termed represented speech. The representation of the actual utterance through the author's language is called uttered repre­sented speech, and the representation of the thoughts and feelings of the character -unuttered or inner represented speech.

The term direct speech is used to distinguish the words of the character from the author's words. Direct speech is a quotation. It is in­troduced by a verb like say, utter, declare, reply, exclaim, shout, cry, yell, gasp, babble, chuckle, murmur, sigh, call, beg, implore, comfort, assure, protest, object, command, admit. All these words help to indicate the intonation with which the sentence was actually uttered. Direct speech is always marked by inverted commas, as any quotation:

"You want your money back, I suppose," said George with a sneer "Of course I do—I always did, didn't I? - says Dobbin.

Direct speech is used in the publicistic style as a quotation. The introductory words in this case are usually the follow­ing: as... has it, according to....

It is used to depict a character through his speech.

We have indirect speech when the actual words of a character pass through the author's mouth in the course of his narrative and undergo certain changes. The intonation of indirect speech does not differ from the rest of the author's narrative.

"Marshal asked the crowd to disperse and urged responsible diggers to prevent any disturbance which would prolong the tragic force of the rush for which the publication of inaccurate information was chiefly responsible."

There are rules according to which direct speech can be converted into indirect. They indicate what changes must be introduced into the utterance due to change in the situation. Thus the sentence:

"Your mother wants you to go upstairs immediately" corresponds to "Tell him to come upstairs immediately."

When direct speech is converted into indirect, the author not interprets in his own way the manner in which the direct speech was uttered. Indirect speech does not reproduce the actual emotional colouring of the direct speech and may distort it unrecogniza­bly.

In order to convey the actual utterances of characters in emotive prose, a new way to re­present direct speech came into being— represented speech.

Represented speech is form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the pecu­liarities of the speaker's mode of expression.

Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech.

As has often been pointed out, language has two functions: the com­municative and the expressive. The communicative function serves to convey one's thoughts, volitions, emotions and orders to the mind of a second person. The expressive function serves to shape one's thoughts and emotions into language forms. This second function is believed to be the only way of materializing thoughts and emotions. Without language forms thought is not yet thought but only something being shaped as thought.

The thoughts and feelings going on in one's miad and reflecting some previous experience are called inner speech.

"4 Inasmuch as inner speech has no communicative function, it is very fragmentary, - incoherent, isolated, and consists of separate units which only hint at the content of the utterance but do not word it explicitly.

Inner speech is a psychological phenomenon. But when it is wrought into full utterance, it ceases to be inner speech, acquires a communicative function and becomes a phenomenon of language. The expressive function of language is suppressed by its communicative function, and the reader is presented with a complete language unit capable of carrying informa­tion. This device is called inner represented speech.

However, the language forms of inner represented speech bear a resemblance to the psychological phenomenon of inner speech. Inner represented speech retains the most characteristic features of inner speech. It is also fragmentary, but only to an extent which will not hinder the understanding of the communication.

Inner represented speech, unlike uttered represented speech, ex­presses feelings and thoughts of the character which were not materialized in spoken or written language by the character. That is why it abounds in exclamatory words and phrases, elliptical constructions, breaks, and other means of conveying feelings and psychological states. When a person is alone with his thoughts and feelings, he can give vent to those strong emotions. Which he usually keeps hidden. Here is an example from Galsworthy's "Man of Property":

"His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that—a wife and a hus­band being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down, and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking about all the time. It was hard, when a man worked hard as he did, making money for her—yes and with an ache in his heart— that she should sit there, looking—looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table."

The inner speech of Soames Forsyte is here introduced by two words describing his state of mind—irritated' and 'wondered'. The colloquial aspect of the language in which Soames's thoughts and feelings are expres­sed is obvious. He uses colloquial collocations: 'she had no business', 'what on earth', 'like that' and colloquial constructions: 'yes and with...' 'looking — looking as if ...', and the words used are common colloquial.

Unuttered or inner represented speech follows the same morphological pattern as uttered represented speech, by pattern shows variations which can be accounted for the fact is inner speech, not uttered speech. The tense forms are shifted to the past; the third per­son personal pronouns replace the first and second. The interrogative word-order is maintained as in direct speech. The fragmentary character of the utterance manifests itself in unfinished sentences, exclamations and in one-member sentences.

Here is another example:

"An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The odd—the very odd feeling those words brought back. Robin Hill—the house Bosinney had built for him and Irene—the house they had never lived in—the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there .now! H'm!" (Galsworthy).

This device is undoubtedly an excellent one to depict a character. It gives the writer an opportunity to show the inner springs which guide his character's actions and utterances. Being a combination of the au-.thor's speech and that of the character, inner represented speech, on the one hand, fully discloses the feelings and thoughts of the character, his world outlook, and, on the other hand, through efficient and sometimes hardly perceptible interpolations by the author himself, makes the de­sired impact on the reader.

In English and American literature this device has gained vogue in the works of the writers of the last two centuries — Jane Austen, Thackeray, Dickens, Charlotte and Ernily Bronte, Jack London, Gals-242 worthy, Dreiser, Somerset Maugham and others. Every writer has his own way of using represented speech. Careful linguistic analysis of indi­vidual peculiarities in using it will show its wide range of function and will expand the hitherto limited notions of its use.

Inner represented speech, unlike uttered represented speech, is usually introduced by verbs of mental perception, as think, meditate, feel, occur (an idea occurred to...), wonder, ask, tell oneself, understand and the like. For example:

"Over and over he was asking himself: would she receive him? would she recognize him? What should he say to her?"

"Why weren't things going well between them? He wondered."

Very frequently, however, inner represented speech thrusts itself into the narrative of the author without any introductory words and the shift from the author's speech to inner represented speech is more or less imperceptible. Sometimes the one into the other, sometimes there is a sudden clear-cut change in the mode of expression. Here are examples:

"Butler was sorry that he had called his youngest a baggage; but these children — God bless his soul — were a great annoyance. Why, in the name of all the saints, wasn't this house good enough for them?" (Dreiser)

The only indication of the transfer from the author's speech to inner represented speech is the semicolon which suggests a longish pause. The emotional tension of the inner represented speech is enhanced by the emphatic these (in 'these children'), by the exclamatory sentences 'God bless his soul' and 'in the name of all the saints'. This emotional charge gives an additional shade of meaning to the 'was sorry' in the au­thor's statement, viz. Butler was sorry, but he was also trying to justify himself for calling his daughter names.

And here is an example of a practically imperceptible shift:

"Then, too, in old Jolyon's mind was always the secret ache that the son of James—of James, whom he had always thought such a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son—!" (Galsworthy).

In this passage there are hardly any signs of shift except, per­haps, the repetition of the words 'of James'. Then comes what is half the author's narrative, half the thoughts of the character, the inner speech coming to the surface in 'poor thing' (a colloquialism) and the sudden break after 'his own son' and the mark of exclamation.

Inner represented speech remains the monopoly of the belles-lettres .style, and especially of emotive prose, a variety of it. There is hardly any likelihood of this device being used in other styles, due to its spe­cific function, which is to penetrate into the inner life of the personages of an imaginary world, which is the exclusive domain of belles-lettres.

References:

Galperin I.R. “Stylistics” (1981). 

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