The force of reportive narratives

Abstract

Narratives are a genre of speech such as speech acts. In the same way that speech acts have a semantic meaning (referential, propositional), and a pragmatic meaning (illocutionary force), narratives have referential and evaluative structures. The force or evaluative character of a narrative is conveyed by clauses with quotations. Reported speech is, therefore, the central cogwheel in narrative structure. In this article, narratives and reported speech are studied in their inter‐relations. Furthermore, quotations of speech events confer to narratives a theatrical aspect. However, narratives strongly resemble the process of history. The genre of speech narrative is, consequently, regarded as something in between theater and history. (Narrative; reported speech; speech acts; oral discourse.)