Introduction
"[Erving] Goffman's work has proven foundational in the investigation of reported speech itself. While Goffman is not in his own work concerned with the analysis of actual instances of interaction (for a critique, see Schlegoff, 1988), it provides a framework for researchers concerned with investigating reported speech in its most basic environment of occurrence: ordinary conversation. . . "Goffman . . . proposed that reported speech is a natural upshot of a more general phenomenon in interaction: shifts of 'footing,' defined as 'the alignment of an individual to a particular utterance . . .' ([Forms of Talk,] 1981: 227). Goffman is concerned to break down the roles of speaker and hearer into their constituent parts. . . . [O]ur ability to use reported speech stems from the fact that we can adopt different roles within the 'production format,' and it is one of the many ways in which we constantly change footing as we interact . . .."(Rebecca Clift and Elizabeth Holt, Introduction. Reporting Talk: Reported Speech in Interaction. Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Task
Warmer: Ask learners if they can remember the British English word for a few items of American vocabulary (or vice versa) that were presented previously. This will get learners thinking in English in a non-threatening way and to allow a little more time for late arrivals.
Procedure:
1. Display an image on the board with empty speech bubbles and ask your students to think about what the people could be saying. Then ask four students to come up and fill in the speech bubbles.
2. Explain to the students that all these speech acts happened yesterday and that they overheard them. Elicit reported speech by asking how they would tell someone what they had heard. Convert the first speech bubble as an example.
3. Students work in pairs to convert the rest of the boarded examples into reported speech. Elicit feedback without correction (but allow peer correction). At this stage you can observe how much your students already know.
4. On the board, illustrate how reported speech is structured differently following say and tell and correct the examples if necessary. Elicit the verbs whisper, warn, ask and threaten. Only go into greater depth of the rules if necessary.
5. Writes weak form of that in phonetic script on the board and check understanding of the schwa. Drill pronunciation of the examples with that on the board.
6. Explain to the students that they are all going to attend a cocktail party and that they are going to write down what they are going to say. Give students a minute or two to complete their sentences.
7. Invite learners into the middle of the room and ask them to mingle, saying to each other what is on their cards.
8. Invite learners to report on what each other said at the “party”. If there is time, students can speak in pairs first about what they heard and can remember. As a class go through each class member and report what they said, eliciting the correct reporting verb in each example. Check your students’ use and understanding of reporting verbs and correct (if necessary) form and pronunciation.
Follow up:
9. Start with one learner saying anything they like, the next learner says “he/she said that…” The next learner says: “He said, she told me that…” etc. round the whole class.
10. Brainstorm in pairs, what rules do you know?
Process
Vocabulary:
to report, reported speech, statement.
Fairytale, puppet, paraphrase, quote.
Reporting verbs: say, tell, add, admit, agree, complain, conclude, consider, convince, cry, explain, guess, inform, observe, persuade, promise, remind, repeat, roar, suggest, tell, think, say, scream, shout, whisper, yell.
Preparation:
"[R]eported speech occupies a prominent position in our use of language in the context of the law. Much of what is said in this context has to do with rendering people's sayings: we report the words that accompany other people's doings in order to put the latter in the correct perspective. As a consequence, much of our judiciary system, both in the theory and in the practice of law, turns around the ability to prove or disprove the correctness of a verbal account of a situation. The problem is how to summarize that account, from the initial police report to the final imposed sentence, in legally binding terms, so that it can go 'on the record,' that is to say, be reported in its definitive, forever immutable form as part of a 'case' in the books." (Jacob Mey, When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics. Walter de Gruyter, 1998)
For Activity 2, Reporting Verbs, make copies of the exercise below, or write the sentences on the board.
| “The food is terrible.” | He ________ that the food was terrible. |
| “I broke the window.” | She ________ that she had broken the window. |
| “I will never do it again.” | He ________ that he would never do it again. |
| “You did the right thing.” | She ________ that I had done the right thing. |
| “I’m very angry!” | He ________ that he was very angry. |
| “You should buy the pink sweater.” | She ________ me that I should buy the pink sweater. |
| “The movie will start at eight o’clock.” | He ________ me that the movie would start at eight o’clock. |
| “There are around 50 gumballs in the machine.” | She _____ that there were around 50 gumballs in the machine. |
For the extension activity, bring in puppets or invite students to bring puppets to school, or bring in materials for students to make their own puppets.
EXTENSION ACTIVITIES
With a partner, or in groups of three, students turn the movie Little Red Fairytale (L3U6L2) into a dialogue, changing the reported statements to direct speech. They should have three characters: Little Red, Little Red’s mother, and the wolf. Allow time to prepare and practice their skits, and then perform them for the class.
Alternatively, students may want to create their own puppet shows. Puppets are effective tools for facilitating dialogue among language learners. If you have puppets, bring some in or have students create their own with socks or brown paper bags. Ask students to share what they know about puppet shows and to discuss ones they have seen. You might show examples of puppet shows from the Internet. In pairs or small groups, have students write dialogue to create a puppet show of their own. They may want to adapt another familiar fairytale.
Evaluation
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream.” → Martin Luther King, Jr. said that he had a dream.
Julius Caesar said, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” → Julius Caesar said that he had come, he had seen, and he had conquered.
- For homework, assign students to research at least three other famous quotes, writing each one on a separate index card. Have students read their quotes, turning them into reported speech. Then ask other students what the original quotes were, and discuss what the speakers meant in context.
- Guess the Song. For homework, assign students to find a song they like and paraphrase it, reporting what the singer said. Have them report the “story” of the song to the class or a partner, and ask the class or their partners to guess the song.
Conclusion
- "Reported speech is not just a particular grammatical form or transformation, as some grammar books might suggest. We have to realise that reported speech represents in fact a kind of translation, a transposition that necessarily takes into account two different cognitive perspectives: the point of view of the person whose utterance is being reported, and that of a speaker who is actually reporting that utterance."