Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 32:3 (2022) ► pp.381–402

Metapragmatics in indirect reports

The degree of reflexivity

ORCID logo | Shahrood University of Technology
| Shahrood University of Technology
This study attempts to describe how metapragmatic devices can exert change in indirect reporting. This was achieved through the analysis of naturally occurring indirect reports during interaction. Specifically, indirect reports were extracted from a series of expert talks (≈800 minutes) broadcast by Iranian national TV. The analysis of these expert talks showed cases of communicative ‘know-hows’, where Persian speakers reflectively managed the dialogue in terms of their interpretation of the original utterance. Accordingly, Persian speakers negotiated the degree of reflexivity by changing the verb of saying and by adhering to specific syntactic markers. Thus, contrary to previous research, the present study revealed that Persian indirect reports can benefit from some syntactic markers to show that speakers do not perfectly adhere to the pragmatic force of the original speaker’s utterance. By contrast, Persian speakers use classes of markers, or contextualisation clues (Gumperz 1982), to show their control over the utterances. These markers are generally used to indicate politeness, uncertainty, and summarisation in Persian indirect reports. Such markers can distinguish indirect reports in Persian from those of other languages such as English.
Keywords: contextual clues, indirect reports, metapragmatics, reflexivity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Persian indirect reports
  • 4.Method
  • 5.The metalinguistic function of reported speech
    • 5.1Fully reflexive indirect reports
    • 5.2Degenerately reflexive indirect reports
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 24 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.21004.mor
References (38)
References
Anton, Corey. 1998. “‘About Talk’: The Category of Talk-reflexive Words.” Semiotica 1211: 193–212. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blackwell, Sarah E. 2016. “Porque in Spanish Oral Narratives: Semantic Porque, (Meta)Pragmatic Porque or Both?” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 615–652. Heidelberg, Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blakemore, Diane. 1994. “Evidence and Modality.” In The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, ed. by R. Asher, and J. Simpson, 1183–1186. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Borg, Emma. 2012. Pursuing Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caffi, Claudia. 2009. “Metapragmatics.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (2nd ed.), ed. by Jacob L. Mey, 625–630. Amsterdam: Elsevier, Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Capone, Alessandro. 2010. “The Social Practice of Indirect Reports.” Journal of Pragmatics 421: 377–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2013. “Consequences of the Pragmatics of ‘De Se’.” In Attitudes ‘De Se’: Linguistics, Epistemology and Metaphysics, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and N. Feit, 209–244. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
. 2016. The Pragmatics of Indirect Reports: Socio-philosophical Considerations. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
. 2018. “On the Social Praxis of Indirect Reporting.” In Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, ed. by Alessandro Capone, M. Garcia-Carpintero, and A. Falzone, 3–20. Heidelberg, Springer.Google Scholar
. 2019. Pragmatics and philosophy: Connections and ramifications. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Capone, Alessandro, and Mohammad A. Salmani Nodoushan. 2014. “On Indirect Reports and Language Games: Evidence from Persian.” Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio 8(2): 26–42.Google Scholar
Cavell, Stanley. 1988. “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture.” Inquiry 31(3): 253–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L., and Johanna Nichols. 1986. “Evidentiality in English Conversation and Academic Writing.” In Evidentiality: The Linguistic Coding of Epistemology, ed. by W. Chafe, and J. Nichols, 261–272. New Jersey: Ablex.Google Scholar
DeAngelis, William James. 2007. Ludwig Wittgenstein-A Cultural Point of View: Philosophy in the Darkness of this Time. Cornwall: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. 2009. “Linguistic Anthropology.” In Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (2nd ed.), ed. by Jacob L. Mey, 519–533. Amsterdam, Elsevier.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John J. 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hübler, Axel, and Wolfram Bublitz. 2007. “Introducing Metapragmatics in Use.” In Metapragmatics in Use, ed. by W. Bublitz, and A. Hübler, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ifantidou, Elly. 2001. Evidentials and Relevance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Itakura, Hiroko. 2018. “Accuracy in Reported Speech: Evidence from Masculine and Feminine Japanese Language.” In Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages, ed. by Alessandro Capone, M. Garcia-Carpintero, and A. Falzone, 315–332. Heidelberg, Springer.Google Scholar
Ilie, Cornelia. 2016. “Metadiscursive Strategies in Dialogue: Legitimising Confrontational Rhetoric?” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Alessandro Capone, and Jacob L. Mey, 601–614. Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics.” In Style in Language, ed. by T. A. Sebeok, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Levinson, Stephan C. 1988. “Putting Linguistics on a Proper Footing: Explorations in Goffman’s Participation Framework.” In Goffman: Exploring the Interaction Order, ed. by P. Drew and, A. Wootton, 161–227. Polity Press: Oxford.Google Scholar
Lucy, John A. 1993a. “Reflexive Language and the Human Disciplines.” In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, ed. by J. A. Lucy, 9–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1993b. “Metapragmatic Presentationals: Reporting Speech with Quotatives in Yucatec Maya.” In Reflexive Language: Reported Speech and Metapragmatics, ed. by J. A. Lucy, 91–125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mey, Jacob L. 2001. Pragmatics: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Morady Moghaddam, Mostafa, and Alessandro Capone. 2020. “Metalanguage and Subjectivity in Indirect Reports.” Lingua, 2361: 102784. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Saka, Paul. 2017. “Blah, Blah, Blah: Quasi-quotation and Unquotation.” In The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation, ed. by P. Saka, and M. Johnson, 35–64. Heidelberg, Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salmani Nodoushan, Mohammad A. 2015. “The Secret Life of Slurs from the Perspective of Reported Speech.” Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio 9(2): 92–112.Google Scholar
2017. “Lexemes, Practs, and Those Who Have Yet to Decide.” Linguistik Online 811: 77–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018. “Which View of Indirect Reports Do Persian Data Corroborate?” International Review of Pragmatics 101: 76–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Cultural Conceptualisations and Language: Theoretical Framework and Applications (vol. 11). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Weigand, Edda. 2010. Dialogue: The Mixed Game. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Weizman, Elda, and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text-Understanding.” Journal of Literary Semantics 201: 18–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wettstein, Howard. 2016. “Speaking for Another.” In Indirect Reports and Pragmatics: Interdisciplinary Studies (vol. 51), ed. by Alessandro Capone, F. Kiefer, and F. L. Piparo, 405–434. Heidelberg: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wieland, Nellie. 2010. “Context Sensitivity and Indirect Reports.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 811: 40–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar