Constructions of speech and thought representation

A lot of what humans communicate about concerns cognitive contents of various kinds produced by others or themselves: speech, thought, writing, emotional states, attitudes, hopes, and the like. Languages have developed specialized ways to structure the representation of such contents, especially in various dedicated forms of speech and thought representation. Represented content can also include embodied behavior, such as gesture, whether in cospeech gesture or in sign language. What is represented need not actually have been previously produced: represented contents can be future, hypothetical or nonexistent, and forms of so-called fictive interaction can be used in which the model of face-to-face interaction is used to talk about a variety of other meaning types. Speech and thought representation presupposes the existence of two speech events-a current and a represented one-and each comes with a speaker, defined linguistically in terms of their central deictic coordinates, I-here-now. The interplay of deictic features and different forms of structural integration can define specific types of construction, showing different degrees of access to the embedded mental space of the represented speaker's speech or thought, such as direct, indirect, and free indirect speech or thought. Social media forms of direct speech or thought merit separate investigation, as do subjective uses of reporting clauses such as I think, which form a distinct construction type, using a subset of the grammar of speech and thought representation for different purposes. This article is categorized under: Linguistics > Cognitive Linguistics > Linguistic Theory Linguistics > Language in Mind and Brain.status: publishe

(Non-)quoting and subjectivity in online discourse

This paper investigates a broad range of quotation practices in social media discourse. Many of these involve so-called non-quotative uses, in which the frame of a conversation or interaction is used fictively to portray and respond to existing attitudes and patterns of behaviour, rather than to actually quote any one specific utterance. Cases considered include Internet memes and tweets incorporating recognizably ‘quotative’ markers such as said no one ever, be like, quotation marks or other known quotation-marking devices, such as source indications preceded by a dash, as well as exchange patterns in which alternating speakers are introduced by means of (pro)nouns followed by colons. The analysis also extends to the many and varied uses of quote tweeting, in which a Twitter user retweets another user’s tweet while simultaneously adding a comment to it. This comment can take many different forms, including further (non-)quotation and more recently also visuals. Collectively the examples surveyed and analysed suggest online discourse reuses and innovates forms of quotation to express subjective responses in both humorous and more politically engaged contexts.Cette contribution étudie un large éventail de pratiques citatives dans le discours des médias sociaux. Un nombre important parmi ces pratiques relèvent de l’usage dit “non-citatif”, où le cadre d’une conversation ou d’un échange est utilisé afin d’évoquer et de répondre à des points de vue ou comportements, plutôt que de citer réellement l’un ou l’autre énoncé. Parmi les cas traités sont les mèmes Internet et tweets qui contiennent des quotatifs bien évidents comme said no one ever, be like, les guillemets, ou d’autres marqueurs de citations, telle que l’indication de source précédée par un tiret, ainsi que des structures d’interaction dans lesquelles les locuteurs alternants sont introduits par des (pro)noms et suivis par les deux points. L’analyse s’étend également vers le domaine du quote tweeting, quand un utilisateur sur la plateforme Twitter cite le tweet d’un autre utilisateur en y apposant en même temps un commentaire. Ce commentaire peut prendre différentes formes, y compris de nouvelles instances de (non-)citation et, depuis peu, également des éléments visuels. Ensemble les exemples répertoriés et analysés montrent comment le discours en ligne ré-utilise et crée des formes de citation afin de formuler des réponses subjectives dans des contextes autant humoristiques que plus engagés politiquement