Ling 131 - Topic 9 (session A)

The following extract is from a newspaper article about the publication in the United States, of a politically correct Bible by Oxford University Press.

Using your Speech Presentation checksheet, for each sentence, or part of a sentence, note down the mode of speech presentation you think is used. The speech presentation modes you are looking for are DS, FIS, IS, NRSA and NV. (Note that you may find more than one category in some sentences.) Some sentences do not involve speech presentation at all, and you may find it helpful to label these with 'N' for Narration.

You can compare your analyses with ours by clicking on each sentence in turn. We have labelled each part of the text with what we think is the relevant category by putting our analysis in square brackets immediately before the relevant part. We have added comments, where appropriate, after our analysis of each sentence.

Now note down why you think the author has made the choices he or she has decided upon - i.e. assess what effect(s) those choices have on you, the reader (e.g. in terms of manipulating your sympathies). Then compare your thoughts with ours.

Our commentary:

The DS of the headline, without any reporting clause to identify the speaker(s) is tactically useful for the writer of this article because of the ambiguity it creates. The reader of the article could understand the words as belonging to (i) the unhappy clergymen quoted in the article, (ii) the reporter himself, who, given the right-wing the newspaper he is writing for, is likely to agree with the upset clergymen, (iii) the views of the readers themselves (who the reporter can also be seen as representing) or (iv) an amalgam of two or more of the above. This ambiguity is clearly strategically very useful for the writer in persuasive terms. The DS form is also very helpful to the writer in bringing a vivid, eye-catching quality to the headline.

In the main body of the article, what we see is an interesting modulation of speech presentation forms. The article begins with NRSA, the summarising form, outlining the general unhappiness of the traditionalists, pulls the reader a bit closer to that viewpoint with the use of Indirect Speech and then finally quotes a named clergyman in the DS form. Hence the NRSA and IS forms act as an introduction to the DS forms. For those predisposed to have similar views to those the writer is propounding, the authority of the words of the clergymen strengthen the views indicated in the less direct, summarising forms at the beginning of the text.

More extended analyses

Task B - For God's sake stop rewriting our Bible

Our commentary:

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