Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T12:06:41.481Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A variable syntax of speech, gesture, and sound effect: Direct quotations in Spanish

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Richard Cameron
Richard Cameron
Affiliation:
The University of Illinois, Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A variationist account of how direct quotations are framed in spoken Spanish requires definition of the variable and the envelope of variation followed by investigation of linguistic, stylistic, and social constraints. The variable is defined as a set of three strategies for directly quoting the speech, gestures, and sound effects of people, animals, or things in the natural world, real or imagined, faithfully or not. These strategies involve verbs of direct report, a bare noun phrase (Y yo, “¡¿Ay qué hago?!” ‘And I, “Oh, what should I do?’), and freestanding quotation with no frame. Investigation of linguistic constraints finds influence both from within and above the sentence. These include clause type, person, number, animacy of speaker, quotation content, switch reference, and a “birds of a feather” effect. Data on stylistic constraints provide evidence for style as a function of attention to form. Social constraints reveal complicated, yet familiar influences of age, sex, and class, with teenagers showing parallels to Eckert's work on gender and variation. Evidence also emerges for both age grading and a change in progress.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , March 1998 , pp. 43 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcina Franch, Juan, & Manuel Blecua, José. (1975). Gramálica española. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel.Google Scholar
Banfield, Ann. (1982). Unspeakable sentences: Narration and representation in the language of fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bayley, Robert, & Pease-Alvarez, Lucinda. (1997). Null pronoun variation in Mexican-descent children's narrative discourse. Language Variation and Change 9:349–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baynham, Mike. (1996). Direct speech: What's it doing in non-narrative discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 25:61–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan. (1984). Language style as audience design. Language in Society 13:145–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blyth, Carl, Kecktenwald, Sigrid, & Wang, Jenny. (1990). I'm like, “Say what?!”: A new quotative in American oral narrative. American Speech 65:215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Charles (1992). “Since I am a woman, I will chastise my relatives”: Gender, reported speech, and the (re)production of social relations in Warao ritual wailing. American Ethnologist 19:337–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brucart, José M. (1987). La elisión sintáctica en español. Bellatterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Buck, Carl. (1915a). Words of speaking and saying in the Indo-European languages: First paper. American Journal of Philology 36:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buck, Carl. (1915b). Words of speaking and saying in the Indo-European languages: Second paper. American Journal of Philology 36:125–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Richard. (1992). Pronominal and null subject variation in Spanish: Constraints, dialects, and functional compensation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard. (1993). Ambiguous agreement, functional compensation, and nonspecific tú in the Spanish of San Juan, Puerto Rico and Madrid, Spain. Language Variation and Change 5:305–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Richard. (1995). The scope and limits of switch reference as a constraint on pronominal subject expression. Hispanic Linguistics 6/7:1–27.Google Scholar
Cameron, Richard. (1996). A community-based test of a linguistic hypothesis. Language in Society 25:61–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Richard. (1997). Accessibility theory in a variable syntax of Spanish. Journal of Pragmatics 28:29–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chambers, J. K. (1995). Sociolinguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert, & Gerrig, Richard. (1990). Quotations as demonstrations. Language 66:764–805.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulmas, Florian. (1986a). Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coulmas, Florian. (1986b). Reported speech: Some general issues. In Coulmas, Florian (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, Renaat, & Tanaka, Kazuhiko. (1996). Constraints on tense choice in reported speech. Studia Linguistica 50:283–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dines, Elizabeth. (1980). Variation in discourse—“and stuff like that.” Language in Society 9:13–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. (1989). The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change 1:245–267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ehrlich, Susan. (1990). Point of view: A linguistic analysis of literary style. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fasold, Ralph. (1990). The sociolinguistics of language. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ferrara, Kathleen, & Bell, Barbara. (1995). Sociolinguistic variation and discourse function of constructed dialogue introducers: The case of BE + LIKE. American Speech 70:265–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frege, Gottlob. (1980). On sense and meaning. In Geach, Peter & Black, Max (Eds.), Translations from the philosophical writings of Gottlob Frege (3rd ed.). Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield. 56–78.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. (1961). Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. (1979). Footing. Semiotica 25:1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory. (1990). The sociolinguistic types of language change. Diachronica 7:47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory, Horvath, Barbara, Vonwiller, Julia, Daisley, Elaine, & Rogers, Inge. (1986). An intonational change in progress in Australian English. Language in Society 15:23–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haberland, Hartmut. (1986). Reported speech in Danish. In Coulmas, Florian (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 219–253.Google Scholar
Harris, Zellig. (1952). Discourse analysis. Language 28:1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heritage, John. (1984). A change-of-state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In Atkinson, J. Maxwell & Heritage, John (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 299–345.Google Scholar
Herman, David. (1995). Universal grammar and narrative form. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Horvath, Barbara, & Sankoff, David. (1987). Delimiting the Sydney speech community. Language in Society 16:179–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson-Laird, Philip. (1983). Mental models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Barbara. (1987). “He says… so I said”: Verb tense alternation and narrative depictions of authority in American English. Linguistics 25:33–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendon, Adam. (1992). Some recent work from Italy on quotable gestures (emblems). Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 21:92–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuroda, S.-Y. (1973). Where epistemology, style, and grammar meet: A case study from Japanese. In Anderson, Stephen & Kiparsky, Paul (Eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 377–391.Google Scholar
Kvavik, Karen. (1986). Characteristics of direct and reported speech prosody: Evidence from Spanish. In Coulmas, Florian (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 333–360.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972a). Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1972b). Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1984). Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation. In Baugh, John & Sherzer, Joel (Eds.), Language in use: Readings in sociolinguistics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 28–52.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1990). The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2:205–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1996). When intuitions fail. In McNair, Lisa, Singer, Kora, Dobrin, Lise, & Aucoin, Michelle (Eds.), CLS 32: Papers from the parasession on theory and data in linguistics. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. 77–105.Google Scholar
Larson, Mildred. (1978). The functions of reported speech in discourse. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington.Google Scholar
Lavandera, Beatriz. (1984). Variación y significado. Buenos Aires: Librería Hachette.Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey, & Short, Michael. (1981). Style in fiction: A linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Li, Charles. (1986). Direct and indirect speech: A functional study. In Coulmas, Florian (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 29–45.Google Scholar
Lobeck, Anne. (1995). Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López Morales, Humberto. (1983). Estratificación social del español de San Juan de Puerto Rico. Ciudad Universitaria, México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Lucy, John. (1993a). Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucy, John. (1993b). Reflexive language and the human disciplines. In Lucy, John (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 9–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maldonado, Concepción (1991). Discurso directo y discurso indirecto. Madrid: Taurus Universitaria.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, William, Levy, Elena, & Tyler, Lorraine Komisarjevsky. (1982). Producing interpretable discourse: The establishment and maintenance of reference. In Jarvella, Robert & Klein, Wolfgang (Eds.), Speech, place, and action: Studies in deixis and related topics. New York: Wiley. 339–378.Google Scholar
Mathis, Terrie, & Yule, George. (1994). Zero quotatives. Discourse Processes 18:63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayes, Patricia. (1990). Quotation in spoken English. Studies in Language 14:325–363.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard, Senko. (1996). Multivoicedness in speech and thought representation: The case of self-quotation in Japanese. Journal of Pragmatics. 25:207–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medina-Rivera, Antonio. (1996). Discourse genre, type of situation, and topic of conversation in relation to phonological variables in Puerto Rican Spanish. In Arnold, Jennifer et al. (Eds.), Socio-linguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford, CA: CSLI. 209–222.Google Scholar
Moore, Robert. (1993). Performance form and the voices of characters in five versions of the Wasco Coyote cycle. In Lucy, John (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 213–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morales, Amparo, & Vaquero, Maria. (1990). El habla culta de San Juan: Materiales para su estudio. Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico.Google Scholar
Partee, Barbara. (1973). The syntax and semantics of quotation. In Anderson, Stephen & Kipar-sky, Paul (Eds.), A festschrift for Morris Halle. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 410–418.Google Scholar
Pascal, Roy. (1977). The dual voice: Free indirect speech and its functioning in the nineteenth-century European novel. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Pereira, Scherre, Maria, Marta, & Naro, Anthony. (1991), Marking in discourse: “Birds of a feather.” Language Variation and Change 3:23–32.Google Scholar
Pereira, Scherre, Maria, Marta, & Naro, Anthony. (1992). The serial effect on internal and external variables. Language Variation and Change 4:1–13.Google Scholar
Philips, Susan. (1986). Reported speech as evidence in an American trial. In Tannen, Deborah & Alatis, James. (Eds.), GURT '85. Languages and linguistics: The interdependence of theory, data, and application. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 154–170.Google Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan. (1986). VARBRUL: Version 2. 1. Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. (1977). Toward a speech act theory of literary discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Real Academia, Española. (1996). Esbozo de una nueva gramática de la lengua española. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.Google Scholar
Reyes, Graciela. (1984). Polifonía textual: La citación en el relato literario. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Reyes, Graciela. (1993). Los procedimientos de cita: Estilo directo y estilo indirecto. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar
Reyes, Graciela. (1994). Los procedimientos de cita: Citas encubiertas y ecos. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar
Roeck, Marijke De. (1994). A functional topology of speech reports. In Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth, Jakobsen, Lisbeth Falster, & Rasmussen, Lone Schack (Eds.), Function and expression in functional grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 331–351.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne, & Lange, Deborah. (1991). The use of like as a marker of reported speech and thought: A case of grammaticalization in progress. American Speech 66:227–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rumsey, Alan. (1990). Wording, meaning, and linguistic ideology. American Anthropologist 92:346–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanders, José, & Redeker, Gisela. (1996). Perspective and the representation of speech and thought in narrative discourse. In Fauconnier, Gilles & Sweetser, Eve (Eds.), Spaces, worlds, and grammar. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 290–317.Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto, & Parodi, Claudia. (1998). Evaluation and linguistic variable types in the Mexican Spanish setting: A speech community model. Language in Society 27:23–52.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. (1982). Subject expression and placement in Mexican-American Spanish. In Amastae, Jon & Elías-Olivares, Lucia (Eds.), Spanish in the United States: Sociolinguistic aspects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 93–120.Google Scholar
Silva-Corvalán, Carmen. (1989). Sociolingüística: Teoría y análisis. Madrid: Editorial Alhambra.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, & Wilson, Deirdre. (1995). Relevance: Communication and cognition (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. (1986). Introducing constructed dialogue in Greek and American conversational and literary narrative. In Coulmas, Florian (Ed.), Direct and indirect speech. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 311–332.Google Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. (1987). Repetition and variation as spontaneous formulaicity in conversation. Language 63:574–605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tannen, Deborah. (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. (1996). Voices in the text: Discourse perspectives on language reports. Applied Linguistics 17:501–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Urban, Greg. (1993). The represented functions of speech in Shokleng myth. In Lucy, John (Ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 241–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verdín Díaz, Guillermo. (1970). Introducción al estilo indirecto libre en espanol. Revista de Filología Española, Anejo XCI.Google Scholar
Vincent, Diane, & Dubois, Sylvie. (1996). A study of the use of reported speech in spoken language. In Arnold, Jennifer et al. (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford, CA: CSLI. 361–374.Google Scholar
Wald, Benji. (1987). Spanish–English grammatical contact in Los Angeles: The grammar of reported speech in the East Los Angeles contact vernacular. Linguistics 25:53–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waugh, Linda. (1995). Reported speech in journalistic discourse: The relation of function and text. Text 15:129–173.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. (1974). The semantics of direct and indirect discourse. Papers in Linguistics 7:267–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winsford, Donald. (1996). The problem of syntactic variation. In Arnold, Jennifer et al. (Eds.), Sociolinguistic variation: Data, theory, and analysis. Stanford, CA: CSLI. 177–192.Google Scholar
Young, Richard, & Bayley, Robert. (1996). Varbrul analysis for second language acquisition research. In Bayley, Robert & Preston, Dennis (Eds.), Second language acquisition and linguistic variation. Philadelphia: Benjamins. 253–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yule, George, & Mathis, Terrie. (1992). The role of staging and constructed dialogue in establishing speaker's topic. Linguistics 30:199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagona, Karen. (1988). Verb phrase syntax: A parametric study of English and Spanish. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zentella, Ana Celia. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar