A Thematic Study Of Direct Speech In Chinese Narrative Texts

Reported speech is a very common phenomenon in human language,so far a lot of related research have appeared.However,due to the richness and complexity of reported speech,there are still many problems worthy of further study.This paper,based on the actual corpus,uses the methods of mutual verification of form and meaning,structural description and functional analysis,sentence analysis and discourse investigation to analyze several problems related to direct reported speech in Chinese narrative texts,such as the usage of direct reported talk and direct reported thought,the means of identifying the boundary of direct reported speech without quotation marks,and the structural features and pragmatic functions of"láile yíijù(????)+direct reported speech"and"shu?lele yíijù(????)+direct reported speech".The main conclusions are as follows:According to the semantic content,the reporting clause of direct reported speech can be divided into three main types,namely,the description of speech behavior,the description of Sound situation and the description of accompanying behavior.In the literary narrative corpus,direct reported speech is the fictitious story characters' utterances quoted by the author.They are not to provide evidence for a certain conclusion or point of view,but to increase the scene of the story and make the narrative rhythm more compact.There are many similarities in the structure between direct reported talk and direct reported thought,but there are also some differences.The function of direct reported thought is mainly to describe what the characters think,reflect the narrator's omniscient perspective and express the strong feelings of the characters in the story.In the written text,people can rely on a variety of means to identify the starting and ending boundaries of direct reported speech.In addition to quotation marks and line segmentation,people can also use other means to identify the boundary of direct reported speech.These means include speech verbs,punctuation marks,personal pronouns,vocative expression and ask-answer sequences.These means do not work in isolation.In actual corpus,they are often used at the same time to mark the boundary of direct reported speech."Láile yíijù(????)"is a new quotative in modern Chinese.It can not only lead the reported speech but also convey the narrator's mirative stance.Before"láile yíijù(????)+direct reported speech",there are often modifying elements indicating plot shift and emergency;after the direct reported speech,there are often elements expressing the listener's emotional feedback.All of these are adapted to the expression function of mirative stance.The mirative stance function of"láile yíijù"is closely related to the subjectivity of"lái(?)".This function has gradually emerged in contemporary Chinese in recent decades.There are various types of modifying restrictive elements in the front of"shu?lele yíijù(????)+direct reported speech",and the speech subject of the reporting clause can only be a living person;the adverbs"jiù(?)"and"biàn(?)"are often used in the subsequent clauses,and the event behavior represented by the adverbs usually has a close temporal relationship with the preceding saying event;"shu?lele yíijù(????)+direct reported speech"and its subsequent small sentences often appear at the end of a text describing an event.From a functional point of view,"shu?lele yíijù(????)+direct reported speech"is often used to highlight the small features of discourse and express the speaker/author's subjective evaluation of the speaker's speech behavior.