Wierzbicka, Anna (1974). The semantics of direct and indirect discourse. Papers in Linguistics, 7, 267-307. DOI: 10.1080/08351817409370375
The claim that every utterance contains in its deep structure the component “I say to you” has been referred to as the performative hypothesis. I do not accept that every utterance contains the component “I say to you”, but I do adhere to a weaker version, i.e. I believe that every utterance contains in its deep structure the component “I say”. In this paper, I argue that, in light of the semantics of direct, indirect, and so-called free indirect discourse, it looks stronger and more resilient than ever. Direct discourse does underlie indirect discourse (a view questioned by some), but the relation between the two is not as straightforward as it appears: direct discourse is “show” as well as speech, indirect discourse is speech only. Moreover, it is an essential aspect of the meaning of both direct and indirect discourse (as well as of all the transitional forms between the two) that they involve an act of imagination. I suggest that “imagine” is an indispensable element in human thinking as well as in semantic analysis, in other words, it is a semantic primitive (alongside with “say”, “you”, “I” and ten others). An investigation of the semantics of different forms of reported speech seems to corroborate this hypothesis.
Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners
