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3. Peculiar Use of Colloquial Constructions

Ellipsis. Break-in-the-Narrative

Questions-in-the narrative.

Represented speech

Uttered Represented Speech

Unuttered or Inner Represented Speech

4. Transferred Use of Structural Meaning

Rhetorical Questions. Litotes

Question-in-the- Narrative

Questions, being both structurally and semantically one of the types of sentences, are asked by one person and expected to be answered by another. This is the main, and the most characteristic property of the question, i.e. it exists as a syntactical unit of language to bear this particular function in communication. Essentially, questions belong to the spoken language and presuppose the presence of an interlocutor, that is, they are commonly encountered in dialogue. The questioner is presumed not to know the answer.

Question-in-the-narrative changes the real nature of a question and turns it into a stylistic device. A question in the narrative is asked and answered by one and the same person, usually the author.

It becomes akin to a parenthetical statement with strong emotional implications. Here are some cases of question-in-the-narrative taken from Byron's "Don Juan":

1) "For what is left the poet here}

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear."

2) "And starting, she awoke, and what to view?

Oh, Powers of Heaven. What dark eye meets she there?

‘Tis — 'tis her father's — fix'd upon the pair."

"Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years." (Dickens)

Represented Speech

There are three ways of reproducing actual speech: a) repetition of the exact utterance as it was spoken (direct speech), b) conversion of the exact utterance into the relater's mode of expression (indirect speech), and c) representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it has not really been spoken but is only represented in the author's words (represented speech).

There is also a device which conveys to the reader the unuttered or inner speech of the character, thus presenting his thoughts and feelings. This device is also termed represented speech. To distinguish between the two varieties of represented speech we call the representation of the actual utterance through the author's language uttered represented speech, and the representation of the thoughts and feelings of the character unuttered or inner represented speech.

The term direct speech came to be used in the belleslettres style in order to distinguish the words of the character from the author's words. Actually direct speech is a quotation. Therefore it is always introduced by a verb like say, utter, declare, reply, exclaim, shout, cry, yell, gasp, babble, chuckle, murmur, sigh, call, beg, implore, comfort, assure, protest, object, command, admit, and others. All these words help to indicate the intonation with which the sentence was actually uttered. Direct speech is always marked by inverted commas as any quotation is. Here is an example:

"You want your money back, I suppose," said George with a sneer.

"Of course I do — I always did, didn't 1?" says Dobbin. (W. M. Thackeray)

We have indirect speech when the actual words of a character, as it were, pass through the author's mouth in the course of his narrative and in this process undergo certain changes. The intonation of indirect speech is even and does not differ from the rest of the author's narrative. The graphical substitutes for the intonation give way to lexical units which describe the intonation pattern. Sometimes indirect speech takes the form of a precis in which only the main points of the actual utterance are given. Thus, for instance, in the following passage:

"Marshal asked the crowd to disperse and urged responsible diggers to prevent any disturbance which would prolong the tragic force of the rush for which the publication of inaccurate information was chiefly responsible." (Katherine Prichard)

It is probably due to this fact that in order to convey actual utterances of characters in emotive prose more adequately, a new way to represent direct speech came into being, that is, represented speech.

Represented speech is that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the peculiarities of the speaker's mode of expression.

Represented speech exists in two varieties: 1) uttered represented speech and 2) unuttered or inner represented speech.

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