The quote and beyond: defining boundaries of reported speech in conversational Russian

Abstract This article investigates ways in which direct reported speech is set apart from the current speaker’s own talk. Drawing on a corpus of conversational Russian materials, the article examines ways in which the onset and the offset of reported speech are marked in ordinary talk. The analysis shows that in most cases quotations are separated from other talk at their beginnings and ends through a variety of devices including grammatical framing, re-anchoring devices, and prosodic shifts for their onset and several repositioning devices and sequence organization practices for their offset. There are, however, ambiguous cases when a particular stretch of talk occurring after a quote is neither clearly separated from the quote nor clearly marked as being part of it. Such cases, referred to in this study as ‘fading out,’ appear to have specific interactional functions allowing the speaker to deal with several potential problems. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of studying linguistic phenomena on the basis of real conversational data and suggest that the different ways in which reported speech boundaries are demarcated (or not) provide participants with a set of tools they can employ for a variety of interactional purposes.

[1]  Richard Buttny,et al.  Putting Prior Talk Into Context: Reported Speech and the Reporting Context , 1998 .

[2]  J. M. Atkinson.  Structures of Social Action: Contents , 1985 .

[3]  M. Goodwin.  He-Said-She-Said: Talk As Social Organization Among Black Children , 1993 .

[4]  V. Voloshinov.  Marxism and the philosophy of language , 1973 .

[5]  B. G. Hewitt,et al.  Speech reporting in the Caucasus , 1986 .

[6]  Pamela A. Downing,et al.  Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics , 1995 .

[7]  J. O H.  Metapragmatic Presentationals : Reporting Speech with Quotatives in Yucatec Maya , 2022 .

[8]  E. Couper-Kuhlen.  English speech rhythm , 1993 .

[9]  Jürgen Streeck,et al.  Grammars, Words, and Embodied Meanings: On the Uses and Evolution of So and Like , 2002 .

[10]  Greg Myers,et al.  Functions of reported speech in group discussions. , 1999 .

[11]  Deborah Tannen,et al.  Introducing constructed dialogue in Greek and American conversational and literary narrative , 1986 .

[12]  E. Schegloff,et al.  A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation , 1974 .

[13]  Harvey Sacks,et al.  Lectures on Conversation , 1995 .

[14]  T. Mathis.  The Form and Function of Constructed Dialogue in Reported Discourse. , 1991 .

[15]  E. Holt,et al.  Reporting on talk: the use of direct reported speech in conversation , 1996 .

[16]  Lenore A. Grenoble,et al.  Deixis and Information Packaging in Russian Discourse , 1998 .

[17]  H. H. Clark,et al.  Quotations as Demonstrations. , 1990 .

[18]  J. Hart,et al.  On the anatomy of intonation , 1968 .

[19]  Richard Buttny,et al.  Demanding Respect: The Uses of Reported Speech in Discursive Constructions of Interracial Contact , 2000 .

[20]  Lawrence Schourup.  Quoting with Go 'Say' , 1982 .

[21]  Maya Hickmann,et al.  Reflexive language: The boundaries of reported speech in narrative discourse: some developmental aspects , 1993 .

[22]  Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen,et al.  Intonation and Clause Combining in Discourse: The Case of Because , 1996 .

[23]  Olga T. Yokoyama,et al.  Discourse and word order , 1986 .

[24]  J. Lucy.  Reflexive language: Metapragmatic presentationals: reporting speech with quotatives in Yucatec Maya , 1993 .

[25]  S. Romaine,et al.  The Use of like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought: A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress , 1991 .

[26]  Kathleen Ferrara,et al.  Sociolinguistic variation and discourse function of constructed dialogue introducers : the case of be + like , 1995 .

[27]  E. Goffman.  On face-work; an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. , 1955, Psychiatry.

[28]  E. Couper-Kuhlen.  Coherent voicing : On prosody in conversational reported speech , 1998 .

[29]  Richard Buttny.  Reported Speech in Talking Race on Campus , 1997 .

[30]  Ayọ Bamgboṣe.  Reported speech in Yoruba , 1986 .

[31]  P. Mayes.  Quotation in Spoken English , 1990 .

[32]  E. Schegloff,et al.  Opening up Closings , 1973 .

[33]  Ben G. Blount.  Language, Culture, and Society: A Book of Readings , 1974 .

[34]  P. Drew,et al.  Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings , 1995 .

[35]  I Hutchby,et al.  Interaction and grammar. , 1998 .

[36]  Tom Barney.  English Speech Rhythm: Form and Function in Everyday Verbal Interaction , 1994 .

[37]  Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen,et al.  QUOTE - UNQUOTE? : the role of prosody in the contextualization of reported speech sequences , 1999 .

[38]  E. Holt,et al.  Reporting and Reacting: Concurrent Responses to Reported Speech , 2000 .

[39]  C. Blyth,et al.  I'm like, "Say What?!": A New Quotative in American Oral Narrative , 1990 .

[40]  Barbara Johnstone,et al.  ‘He says ... so I said’: verb tense alternation and narrative depictions of authority in American English , 1987 .

[41]  P. Giglioli,et al.  Language and Social Context , 1974 .

[42]  J. Atkinson,et al.  A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement , 1985 .

[43]  Andrea Golato.  An innovative German quotative for reporting on embodied actions : Und ich so/und er so and I'm like/and he's like , 2000 .

[44]  Florian Coulmas,et al.  Direct and Indirect Speech , 1986 .

[45]  Susanne Günthner.  Polyphony and the 'layering of voices' in reported dialogues : An analysis of the use of prosodic devices in everyday reported speech , 1999 .

[46]  Teresa Meehan.  It's Like, 'What's Happening in the Evolution of Like?': A Theory of Grammaticalization , 1991 .

[47]  Andrei Popescu-Belis,et al.  What are discourse markers ? , 2003 .

[48]  Wolfram Bublitz,et al.  Coherence in spoken and written discourse : how to create it and how to describe it : selected papers from the International Workshop on Coherence, Augsburg, 24-27 April 1997 , 1999 .

[49]  D. Tannen.  Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse , 1989 .

[50]  Florian Coulmas,et al.  Reported speech: Some general issues , 1986 .

[51]  P. Drew,et al.  Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. , 1994 .