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Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages
Edited by Annika Hübl and Markus Steinbach
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 247] 2018
► pp. 207–222

Reporting vs. pretending. Degrees of identification in role play and reported speech

| University of Oslo

In both role play and reported speech, the actual speaker purports to present the speech of someone else. I analyse and compare the different perspectives that are involved in role play utterances and direct and indirect speech reports. I argue for a conceptual distinction between role play utterances and speech reports and discuss three criteria to distinguish them: (a) metalinguistic marking, (b) communicative intention, and (c) embodiment. Based on this analysis, I propose a hierarchy of identification with the other person, in which role play exhibits the highest degree of identification and indirect speech the lowest.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Perspective
    • 2.1Two notions of perspective
    • 2.2Perspectives in role play
    • 2.3Perspectives in direct and indirect speech
  • 3.Differences between role play utterances and speech reports
    • 3.1Metalinguistic marking
    • 3.2Communicative intention
    • 3.3Embodiment
  • 4.Hierarchy of identification
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 May 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/la.247.09kod
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