What can linguistics learn from indirect reports?

Grazia Basile

pp. 289-298

in: Alessandro Capone, Marco Carapezza, Franco Lo Piparo (eds), Further advances in pragmatics and philosophy II, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

This paper draws on Alessandro Capone's recent monograph (The Pragmatics of indirect reports. Socio-philosophical considerations. Springer Verlag, Cham, 2016) with a view to promoting debate on the importance of reporting and, in particular, of indirect reporting as a paradigmatic case of a language game revealing the entire subjectivity of a speaker, their illocutionary and perlocutionary intent. The framework for the study of indirect reporting is furnished by pragmatics – or, rather, by sociopragmatics – in that it is concerned with what happens within the social fact (as Saussure called it), where the practices of signifying come to life, including the practice of referring to what others have said.

Cited authors

de Saussure Ferdinand

Capone Alessandro