Language & Com~un~w~j~n, Vol. I, No. 2, pp. 153-159, 1987. Printed in Great Britain.

0271-5309187 $3.00 + a, Pergamon Journals Ltd.

FREE IND~~CT SPEECH IN A FETTE~D INSECURE SOCIETY

MALCOLM MCKENZIE

Between 31 March and 2 April 1986 an impo~ant meeting took place at the residence of the High Commissioner of Ghana in Harare. There au eight person delegation from NUSAS (the National Union of South African Students) met and had extensive discussions with a delegation from the ANC (the African National Congress). From the point of view of NUSAS, the purpose of the meeting was to put to the ANC delegation a host of questions about the organisation’s policies and strategies which had been collected from students at the NUSAS affiIiated campuses. The students, it appeared, were desperately keen to obtain concrete information about the nationalist movement which, after more than two decades of being banned, was beginning to shift in some white students’ minds from beast to, if not beauty, at least no longer bogey. After their return from Zimbabwe, therefore, the NUSAS eight engaged in detailed reportback sessions to their constituencies.

In addition to numerous talks and seminars, a booklet entitled MJSAS Talks to the ANC was published. This booklet ends with the following words (NUSAS, 1986, p. 32):

We believe that through the meeting with the African National Congress and the reportback of discussians to students, an important contribution has been made towards understanding the policies and direction of an organisation that is playing an increasing role in all of our lives.

No doubt many students will agree with the assessment contained in this concluding sentence: the reportbacks and particularly the booklet do make an important contribution, despite their limited audience, towards our understanding of the ANC. Over and above this explicit and intended contribution, however, the booklet is important in a less obvious way, Its significance on this level lies in the fact that the mode of speech representation adopted in much of the reporting of the discussions with the ANC is a subtle but perfectly legal way of coping with the ban within South Africa on direct quotation of the organisation. Near the beginning of the booklet this claim is made (NUSAS, 1986, p. 4):

The essense (sic) of discussions have (sic) not been changed in any way other than to fulfil legal requirements on the advice of lawyers.

Given the fact that the compilers of the booklet were legally obliged to rule out both Free Direct Speech (FDS) and Direct Speech (DS), how, we might ask, could this have been achieved? The answer is through the happy expedient of generously larding the expected Indirect Speech (IS) reporting of the discussions with Free Indirect Speech (FIS) representations of what the ANC had to say to the students. FIS possesses, it seems, a hitherto largely untapped potential as a journ~istic device under repressive regimes which ban the direct quotation of leading political opponents.

As its name suggests, FIS is a form of speech reporting which is ‘freer’ than standard IS. It occupies a position on the spectrum of speech representation types midway between DS and IS, the oratio recta and oratio obliqua of classical rhetoric. As we shall see, however, FIS is not a fixed halfway house between the two, but operates instead along ‘a continuum

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to Malcolm McKenzie, Maru a Pula School, Private Bag 0045, Gaborone, Botswana.

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154 MALCOLM MCKENZIE

or ‘cline’ between two defined extremes of direct and indirect speech’ (Jones, 1968, p. 164). Simplifying matters greatly, these two defined extremes can be characterised, I hope not too crassly, as follows: in DS the ipsissima verba are supposed to be faithfully reproduced, this verisimilitude being indicated by the use of inverted commas or quotation marks, whereas in IS only the propositional content is adhered to and not necessarily the exact

words or syntax of the original.

A related way of looking at the difference between DS and IS is in terms of ‘voice’. Whenever speech is represented two voices will be available to the reader or listener, those of the reporting agent and the reported speaker. These tend to be inversely proportional to one another: as the one is augmented so the other recedes, and the blend or ‘mix’ of the two is consequently capable of multiple shades. In DS the voice of the reported speaker will dominate, the contribution of the reporter’s voice being confined to modifications she or he might make to the ‘unmarked’ verbum dicendi ‘say’ or ‘said’. In IS, on the other hand, the voice of the reported speaker is subjugated to that of the reporter. Volosinov (1929, p. 29) has claimed that ‘analysis is the heart and soul of indirect discourse’, referring by ‘analysis’ to the analysing or interpreting function of the reporting agent. This licence to impose an interpretative filter upon the original utterance increases significantly the scope of the reporter’s voice.

It is the consideration of the intermingling of voices in speech representation that leads directly to FIS. The canonical form of FIS has been disputed ever since it was first identified

as a phenomenon by Tobler in 1887; what does seem not to have been at issue, however, is the claim that FIS allows a greater degree of vocal blending or polyvocality than any other speech representation form. Volosinov (1929, p. 144), for example, states categorically that:

. its specificurn is precisely a matter of both author and character speaking at the same time, a matter of a single linguistic construction within which the accents of two differently orientated voices are maintained.

Although referring here to the representation of speech in the ‘virtual’ domain of fiction, Volosinov’s comment applies equally to speech reporting where there is an existential original. These polyvocal possibilities, according to Guiraud (1971, pp. 85-86), are realized in FIS by a judicious combination of the grammatical and syntactical indicators of both IS and DS, thus producing a Janus form:

. the placing of tenses and pronouns in perspective is the mark of the indirect style that makes self- expression possible to the author; and “freedom” (i.e. absence of subordination) is the mark of the direct style that makes self-expression possible to the character to whom voice, vocabulary, and syntax have been partially restored.

A brief return to DS and IS should clarify Guiraud’s assertion. Consider the following

hypothetical DS sentence: (1) The ANC said: ‘We welcome South Africans coming here to talk to us as you (NUSAS) are doing

today.’

One possible IS rendition of this sentence would be: (2) The ANC said that they welcomed South Africans going there to talk to them as they PJUSAS)

were domg on that day.

These two sentences are examples of the ‘defined extremes’ mentioned earlier and, as such, they display the standard differences between DS and IS. These are seven in number:

(i) The quotation marks which indicate adherence to the exact words of the original utterance occur in DS but not in IS. In IS this omission has the important function of making the reported clause syntactically subordinate to the reporting clause, and so allowing the voice of the reporter to dominate.

FREE IND11; - - :pfr :H 155

(ii} The introduction of the subordinating conjunction ‘that’ makes this dependency relationship explicit.

(iii) First and second person pronouns in DS become third person pronouns in IS. (iv) Present tense verbs in DS are past tense in IS. (v) The deictic adverb ‘here’ is represented in IS by the more remote ‘there’. (vi) Time adverbs are changed similarly, with DS ‘today’ being matched by IS ‘on that

day’. (vii) The verb of movement is altered, and ‘going’ is substituted for ‘coming’.’

Returning to Guiraud, it is clear now that his account is only partial as he has nothing to say about the last three changes on the list and consequently fails to mention whether such changes should be incorporated in FIS. Leaving aside lacunae, however, even that which Guiraud asserts is flawed. Although the abstract example that he cites is clearly one possible version of FIS, it is by no means the on& one. FIS is a highly variegated mode of speech representation, and attempts to pin down its form are bound to find the object of definition too baroque for neat containment. The following, for instance, are all (but by no means the only) FIS renditions of our two ‘defined extremes’:

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

(7)

The ANC said they welcomed South Africans going there to talk to them as they (NUSAS) were doing on that day. The ANC said that they welcome South Africans going there to talk to them as they (NUSAS) were doing on that day. The ANC said they welcome South Africans going there to talk to them as they (NUSAS) were doing on that day. The ANC said that they welcome South Africans coming here to talk to them as they (NUSAS) were doing today. The ANC said that we welcome South Africans coming here to talk to us as you (NUSAS) are doing today.

Ignoring adverbial and verbal substitutions, (3) adheres to Guiraud’s conditions: pronouns and tenses are placed ‘in perspective’ but, at the same time, there is an ‘absence of subordination’ because the conjunction ‘that’ is suppressed. However, although (3) is clearly ‘freer’ than (2), it is only marginally so because the ‘absence of subordination’ is a limited absence. A move from IS to FIS can easily result from the freedom English has to dispense in indirect discourse with the subordinating conjunction ‘that’, a freedom that does not exist in French, for example, where the participle ‘que’ is mandatory, but such a move is very slight when the remaining grammatical and lexical markers of IS stay intact. It is not simply the ‘absence of subordination’, therefore, which signals a shift from IS towards DS. Sentence (4) retains its ‘that’, but occupies a similar place on the spectrum between IS and DS because the tense of the verb ‘welcome’ has not been backshifted. Because the reported voice is subjugated to the reporting voice in IS, the tense of the verb in the reported clause will tend to match the tense of the reporting verb. A break from this as in (4) indicates a form of FIS which is again slightly ‘freer’ than orthodox IS.’ As (5) combines the FIS components of both (3) and (4), it is further from straight IS than either of these sentences. Sentence (6) is closer still to DS: ‘welcome’ has not been backshifted, the verb expressing motion towards (‘coming’) remains unchanged, the deictic adverb ‘here’ is the same as in DS, and the temporal adverb ‘today’ also avoids being backshifted. By the time we reach (7) we are very close indeed to DS, the one difference between (7) and (1) being the introduction of the conjunction ‘that’ which, in the absence of any other subordinating signals, gestures only weakIy in the direction of IS. At this level of FIS ‘voice, vocabulary, and syntax’ have been more than ‘partially restored’ to the original utterance.

is6 MALCOLM MCKENZIE

To what extent, then, does FIS occur in NUSAS Talks to the ANC? Although relatively infrequent, the Guiraud variety does appear:

(8) Rut the ANC said they sought to challenge this, and did not see the white community as the exclusive domain of the Pretoria regime (p. 7).

(9) They said when the ANC was banned in 1960, the government made it very clear that it did not even recognise the right of black South Africans to use peaceful means to protest against apartheid, and non-violent resistance became futile in the face of savage and violent attacks from the government (p. If).

More common, and examples of this are numerous, is the type of FIS characterised by tense disjunction between the reporting and the reported clause:

(10)

(11)

02)

We were told3 that the Freedom Charter outlines the broad perspective of their national democratic revolution, and provides the broad basis for a new non-racial, democratic constitution (p. 5). The ANC said that it encourages the m~imum involvement of people in the process of intensifying peaple’s war, and encourages the independent acquisition of weapons, the manufacture of home made weapons (p. 12). They said that there is no fundamental disagreement between the two organisat~ons on the strategy and tactics of the struggle (p. 19).

At times, and again I have not quantified its exact frequency, the syntactical indicator of the first form is combined with the grammaticai marker of the second to create the kind of FIS illustrated in (5):

(13) The ANC said it supports all initiatives to unite South Africans in mass struggle against apartheid (P, 10).

(14) In explaining the turn to armed struggle, the ANC said they reject the assumption that the South African government has the right to stay in power by using violence and force, when it is not democratically elected by the people it rules, and has no legitimacy as a government (p. 11).

Two examples of even ‘freer’ FIS are the following: (15) This they said wil1 ultimateIy force the government to engage in genuine negotiation (p. 18). (16) The ANC will not allow this to happen, they said adding that there was no division between socialists

and nationahsts in the ANC (p. 20).

In (15) subordination is suppressed, the tense of the verb is not ba~kshift~ and, in addition, the opening word of the utterance foregrounds itself as sentential theme by maint~ni~g the DS deictic force of ‘this’ instead of IS ‘that’. The opening clause of (16) a~~ro~mates DS even more nearly: because of the absence of both subordination and tense ba~kshifting, it appears to be DS until the reader is brought up short by a reporting clause which has been held in abeyance. This exaggerated FIS status of the opening cfause is enhanced further by its difference from the final clause of the sentence, which is orthodox IS.

In both the last two examples, but to differing degrees, FIS is augmented by syntactical inversion. The unmarked syntactical order for speech representation places the reporting clause before the reported clause, and this in most cases makes clear from the outset the mode of speech representation being used (exceptions would be sentences like (4), (6) and (7), where FIS emerges after, and despite, the subordinating conjunction ‘that’). However, when the reporting clause is held back, and appears in either medial or end position, the reader’s task of processing the speech representation type is made considerably more complex and ambiguous. This psycholinguistic matter of how reader inferences are affected by a particular kind of inversion has received attention only in passing in the literature on speech representation (Leech and Short, 1981, p. 333; Jones, 1968, p. 170). It is my contention that what happens in such cases is a form of ‘psychotogicaI slipping’.

‘Slipping’ is a term of established provenance in the vocabulary of speech and thought representation, and refers to a move or ‘sfip’ from one mode of representation to another within the same sentence. As a stylistic device in Iiterary texts slipping has been used for centuries, and Schueike (1958) has unearthed a multitude of instances of it in the old

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Icelandic sagas. One example, which she translates in the foliowing way, illustrates slipping from IS to DS (Schuelke, 1958, p. 97):

(17) &mnd . . . said that Vestein had come out ‘and there is expectation of him hither’.

Although Schuelke concentrates exclusively on slipping between DS and IS, the phenomenon can easily occur from any one mode of speech representation to any other, as McHale (1978a, p. 155) has illustrated with numerous examples. In addition, then, to the blend of two distinct voices within a particular mode, slipping contributes an extra dimension of complexity by juxtaposing two modes within the same sentence. The result is that the reader is brought up short before the punctuation dictates this response. This suggests that the phenomenon of inversion should count as a kind of slipping, not on formal but on functional grounds. The following sentence, for example, appears to begin in FIS:

(18) South Africa’s future would be determined by South Africans, the ANC said (p. 21).

Yet, contrary to initial impressions, the reporting clause at the end of the sentence informs the reader that the FIS of the beginning is only apparent. Psychologically, then, the reader’s response in inversion can entail having to adjust focus in mid-sentence, which is exactly what happens in slipping. In short strings, which may be perceived by the reader from the outset as entire gestalts, this effect will be negligible, just as it will be when the reporting clause is parenthetically slipped in near the beginning of the sentence; the longer the reporting clause is witheld, however, the more marked the effect will become. This difference is illustrated by (19) and (20):

(19) The SACP, they said, is an independent organisation which represents the interests of the working class whereas the ANC is a broad movement for national liberation (p. 19).

(20) The Freedom Charter provides a framework which highlights key demands, such as the right to housing, the right to education and medical facilities, etc., they said (p. 23).

Although the formal indicators of FIS are the same in each case (enforced lack of subordination because of the non-initial position of the reporting clause and the absence of backshifting), (20) appears to be closer to DS than (19) because of the long concealment of the reporting clause. Such inversion occurs frequently in NUSAS Talks to the AMT. On one memorable occasion a reporting clause is tacked on in final position in a last ditch attempt to salvage for FIS a condensed string of interrogatives (these can occur in FIS but not in IS) which would otherwise definitely have been DS:

(21) How is it going to solve the poverty of millions, the housing shortage, inadequate education, etc., which apartheid has created, they asked? (p. 24).

Thus far I have concentrated exclusively on the grammatical and syntactical indicators of FIS at an intrasentential level. Whilst these are, as I have tried to show, undoubtedly important, and must surely constitute the most obvious level at which FIS functions, it is nevertheless necessary to remember that FIS can also operate at an intersentential or discoursal level. Of particular significance for the purposes of this article are those cases where the difference between straight narrative or diegetic report and the representation of speech in FIS is rendered problematic because their formal indicators are indistinguishable. When this occurs an appeal to discoursal context is the only way to disambiguate matters. Pascal (1977, pp. 35-36) quotes an illustrative example from Joseph Andrew when Parson Adams, having revealed his own scholarly and story-telling talents, asks his host for an erudite tale:

(22) Adams told him it was now in his power to return that favour; for his extraordinary goodness as well as that fund of literature he was master of, which he did not expect to find under such a roof, had raised in him more curiosity . . . .

Now the host has already revealed himself to be uneducated, the very opposite of a ‘master’ of ‘a fund of literature’ and thus it is not surprising that a number of eighteenth century

158 MALCOLM MCKENZIE

readers wrote to Fielding reprimanding him, as he himself put it in a footnote in the second edition of the novel, for having ‘made a blunder’. These readers had, of course, taken the second, and longer, section of the quoted sentence as uncomplicated narratorial report. The point, however, is that the words beginning ‘for his extraordinary . . .’ have to be read as FIS emanating from Parson Adams. There can be no formal motivation for such a reading, but context insists that the narrator is unlikely to have forgotten the information already supplied that the host is a rude, simple person, whereas Parson Adams in his capacity as unexpected guest being put up for the night is highly likely to want to flatter the man.4

Cases similar to this occur frequently in NUSAS Talks to the ANC. What happens is that the scope of the reporting verb becomes attenuated by sentence boundaries, and this can allow for a shift from IS to FIS as in (23), or from one mode of FIS to another which is closer to DS, as in (24):

(23) They said that the call highlighted the need to extend the struggle to all areas and not allow it to be restricted to the townships. White South Africans cannot be allowed to live their lives oblivious to what is happening (p. 13).

(24) We were told that the Freedom Charter outlines the broad perspective of their national democratic revolution, and provides the broad basis for a new non-racial, democratic constitution. The ANC programme broadly envisages the seizing of power by the majority of South Africans, the destruction of the apartheid state, and the establishment of a people’s democracy (p. 5).

In the interests of accurate analysis I have separated out and assessed discretely a number of different indicators of FIS. The nature of discourse inevitably tends, however, to blend these markers in the document in question. My final sample, therefore, is a composite one:

(25) The ANC stated that many of the members of the SACP are also members of the ANC. This does not mean that they are SACP representatives in the ANC, they are present as South African patriots. Communists in the ANC abide by ANC discipline, we were told (p. 19).

In the first sentence a limited form of FIS occurs because the tense of the verb in the reported clause is not backshifted. This becomes full blown FIS in the second sentence, context suggesting the kind of attenuation described above. The effect is sustained through most of the final sentence until the inversion of the last three words reveals a more restricted form of FIS than the reader has been led to expect.

Early Continental discussions of style indirect libre and Erlebte Rede, the French and German terms respectively for FIS, were divided as to whether the phenomenon existed outside literature. This division still persists: Banfield (1982, p. 225) implies strongly that FIS occurs only in fictional language, whereas McHale (197813, pp. 282-284) has convincingly demonstrated that, although it is clearly ‘characteristic of the fictional’, FIS is by no means exclusive to this domain. As I have shown, NUSAS Talks to the ANC settles this dispute once and for all, except for those deluded few who persist in relegating all thought of talking to the ANC to the realm of the fictional. In addition, those who welcome such talks as precursors to the future fact of open negotiation will be grateful for this device that is ‘characteristic of the fictional’. For it is through FIS that the voice of the ANC can, and will, be legally presented and heard within South Africa.

NOTES

‘For a similar catalogue, and one from which this taxonomy is derived, see Style in Fiction (Leech and Short, 1981, p. 319).

‘1 am aware that there has been and still is considerable debate about this claim. Some theorists argue that the retention of the present tense in cases like this does not indicate FIS but occurs as a result of a completely different

FREE INDIRECT SPEECH 159

set of discoursal imperatives. A recent account, for example, and one written from a usefully applied perspective, claims ‘. . that the present tense occurs in a reported speech clause embedded under a past tense verb if the situation described there is of current relevance to the speaker’ (Riddle, 1986, p. 274). This argues for the legitimate use of the historical present in embedded IS clauses and would, it must be admitted, account for the use of the present in (lo), (11) and (12). It does not, however, explain the choice of ‘highlighted’ in the first sentence of (23), nor the decision to mix tenses in the embedded clause in this example (NUSAS, 1986, p. 7):

They said that South Africa belongs to all who live in it. black and white and that white South Africans were welcomed into their ranks.

As there are many similar examples in NUSAS Talks to the ANC, my approach appears to possess greater explanatory power, at least in this particular context.

3This particular passive formulation of the reporting clause is used extensively in NCJSAS Talks to the ANC. Apart from its overt value in abetting stylistic variation, it possesses the less obvious value of deleting the agency of the ANC and thus not continually drawing attention to the source of the FIS.

?he confusion experienced by some of Fielding’s contemporaries is evidence of the fact that readers have become more sophisticated in their ability to spot FIS; it would be surprising indeed if a modern reader were to make a similar interpretative error.

REFERENCES

BANFIELD, A. 1982 Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston.

GUIRAUD, P. 1971 Modern linguistics looks at rhetoric: free indirect style. In Strelka, J. (Ed.), Patterns of Literary Style, pp. 77-89. Pennsylvania State University Press.

JONES, C. 1968 Varieties of speech presentation in Conrad’s ‘The Secret Agent’. Lingua 20, 162-176.

LEECH, G. N. and SHORT, M. H. 1981 Style in Fiction. Longman, New York.

MCHALE, B. G. 1978a Stylistic registers and free indirect discourse in the fiction of John dos Passos with particular reference to ‘Manhattan Transfer’ and the ‘U.S.A.’ trilogy. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Oxford.

MCHALE, B. G. 1978b Free indirect discourse: a survey of recent accounts. Poetics and Theory of Literature 3, 249-287. NUSAS 1986 NUSAS Talks to the ANC. NUSAS, Cape Town.

PASCAL, R. 1977 The Dual Voice: Free Indirect Speech and its Functioning in the Nineteenth-Century European Novel. Manchester University Press.

RIDDLE, E. 1986 The meaning and discourse function of the past tense in English. Tesol Quurterly 20,267-286.

SCHUELKE, G. L. 1958 ‘Slipping’ in indirect discourse. Americun Speech XXXIII, 90-98.

VOLOSINOV, V. N. 1929 Murxism and the Philosophy of Language. Seminar Press, New York (1973).