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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

 Topic 9 (session A) - Speech Presentation > What happens when speech is presented > Task C

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What happens when speech is presented
Varieties of speech presentation in the novel
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What happens when speech is presented

Task C - the complete set of ways of presenting speech

Below we present a rather fuller and slightly different version of the scale we began to examine in Task B. At the top of the scale we have a sentence (the most extreme form of Direct Speech, with no quotation marks and no narrator's reporting clause) in which only the speech of the character is represented. Then, as we come down the scale, the 'mix' of character and narrator gradually changes, so that at the other end we have the narrator 'on his or her own'. This bottom sentence is not a sentence of speech presentation at all, but a sentence of 'pure narration'. In even the most minimal representation of a character's speech there will still be a little bit of the character in there.text version of task A

You can click on each sentence in turn to learn more about the sentences and categories and the relations among them. Click on all of them to learn more about them before moving on to the next page (which will look at some interesting examples of these categories in novels and stories).

You can click on the sentences in any order that takes your fancy, but we would suggest that you start at the two extremes and gradually work in, leaving Free Indirect Speech (FIS) till last. We have not yet introduced this category, which turns out to be very important in the novel, and in any case, as it is a kind of blend of the DS and IS categories, it is best understood after you have looked at DS and IS.

 


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