Chapter 8 - Reported Speech in Recurrent Courses of Action

Summary

Chapter 8 is concerned with the question of how a sharp increase in the use of reported speech, and the heightened prominence of the interaction between the LO and the PM in the 2003–2013 sample are related to the constitution of recurrent, patterned courses of action. The small sample of reported speech from 1978–1988 did not yield such courses of action where reported speech with SAY is relevant. This contrasts with the 2003–2013 sample, where two recurrent adversarial courses of action with a patterned use of reported speech were identified: enticing sequences and trading-quotes sequences. Here enticing sequences seem to be a more recent development. By contrast, there is early evidence for a precursor of trading-quotes sequences in the 1978–1988 sample