This chapter delves into the phenomenon of the so-called mixed style, a distinctive feature found in certain literary compositions of the twelfth century. While focusing primarily on the renowned collection of four supplicatory poems known as Ptochoprodromika, it also examines instances of blending lower and higher language registers in the Grottaferrata version of the Digenis Akritis poem and in the Verses from Prison penned by Michael Glykas. The objective of this study is to re-evaluate existing scholarly viewpoints regarding the principles and functions underlying the shifts between language registers in these works, adopting a narratological perspective. In other words, by analysing the employed types of voice, such as direct speech, narration and metanarration, the chapter seeks to determine whether we can identify more specific principles governing the changes in language levels, beyond the general distinction between ‘more popular’ and ‘more learned’. It endeavours to demonstrate that the selection between lower and higher registers is intricately linked to the narrative distance of the speaking voice from the events being recounted.

Building on the description of the perfect in Unit 9, this unit introduces students to the pluperfect tense. It is formed from the auxiliary verb haber (now in the imperfect) and the past participle. Usage is similar to English, describing the relationship between earlier events and subsequent ones. It is frequently used for describing things that had happened and the circumstances in which they happened, as, for example, in someone’s life story. Students now have the full range of past tenses at their command, and the unit explores and revises the ways in which the past tenses relate to one another and are used in different combinations. Additional expressions of time support this work. The adjustments that need to be made in moving from direct to reported speech, often associated with the use of the pluperfect, are explained and practised through a number of exercises.

Building on the description of the perfect in Unit 9, this unit introduces students to the pluperfect tense. It is formed from the auxiliary verb haber (now in the imperfect) and the past participle. Usage is similar to English, describing the relationship between earlier events and subsequent ones. It is frequently used for describing things that had happened and the circumstances in which they happened, as, for example, in someone’s life story. Students now have the full range of past tenses at their command, and the unit explores and revises the ways in which the past tenses relate to one another and are used in different combinations. Additional expressions of time support this work. The adjustments that need to be made in moving from direct to reported speech, often associated with the use of the pluperfect, are explained and practised through a number of exercises.

Chapter 6 is concerned with the different multimodal formats of reported clauses in the 1978–1988 and 2003–2013 data sets: direct, indirect and 'in between' speech. It is discussed how these formats have changed with respect to their forms and distribution over turn types and speaker roles, and shown that speakers from both periods are strikingly conservative in the contextualisation of the quotations, with indirect and ‘literalised’ direct speech representing the two dominating practices. While indirect speech is most frequent in both data sets, the 2003–2013 sample shows a rise of ‘literalised’ direct speech across turn types and speaker roles. It is argued that this development is indicative of a general tendency to authentication and authorisation in reported speech, which is achieved through the visual manipulation of (original) documents, and the use of the verbal formula (AND) I QUOTE. The latter also serves to perform mixed quotations, a practice not found in 1978–1988. It is concluded that the comparison between the 1978–1988 and 2003–2013 points to a general tendency towards greater credibility enhancement, and a more interpersonal style in quotations.

This chapter provides a longitudinal analysis of progression in a sample of EAL students newly arrived in the United Kingdom, highlighting the development of competence in different features of English language use in speaking and writing. In addition, we discuss evidence of change in the students’ experience of social integration as revealed in two sets of interviews with EAL students of different ages and national backgrounds and we consider how the students’ reported experience of social integration impacted on their linguistic and academic performance in the school over the two-year period following arrival. The chapter closes with an examination of the use of direct speech in English as a discursive framework in which they were able to dramatise their social experiences and to self-identify in the new environment.

The prevalence of direct speech in Homeric epic plays a key role in fostering audience engagement with the poems. The speeches in the Homeric epics include some features that closely resemble those found in ordinary spoken speeches and conversations, and others that are evidently stylized for the artistic medium of oral poetry.

Throughout this book, I have disassembled the book of Revelation line by line in search of the principles that underlie its organization. The Epilogue is the moment to reassemble it and verify the model of reading. The result is positive, and it is concluded that the narrative form of Rev 1.9–22.16 is analogous to the short story form as it has developed since the nineteenth century. The principal argument put forward in this book is that one of the singular characteristics of this form is its emphasis on the reader or listener. Revelation also coincides with the short story form in that it features a wide range of characters whose adventures are woven into a plot charged with successive waves of tension and relief that lead eventually to a happy ending. Lastly, there are similarities in the techniques employed: flexibility in the use of space–time coordinates and the intensive use of descriptive adjectives that simultaneously sway the emotions of the reader/listener and provide clues as to the goodness or wickedness of the characters portrayed.

This chapeter offers close readings of two complex embedded speeches in order to show the sophisticated manipulation of voice to play with time, space, and identity.

This chapter demonstrates how Pindar’s and Aeschylus’ unusual, yet shared, approach to embedded speech (oratio recta) reflects a common interest in performance as reenactment. It is argued that their distinctive mode of duplicating voices through the “meta-language” of embedded speech stands as an emblem of choral mimesis more broadly.