LINGUIST List 13.4

Fri Jan 4 2002

Review: Collins (2001), Reanimated Voices

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  • Mounir Triki, Re: Review of Reanimated Voices

    Message 1: Re: Review of Reanimated Voices

     Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 10:27:54 -0800 (PST)
    From: Mounir Triki <mtriki2001yahoo.com>
    Subject: Re: Review of Reanimated Voices


    Review of Collins, Daniel E. (2001) Reanimated Voices: Speech Reporting in a Historical-Pragmatic Perspective. John Benjamins Publishing Company, hardback ISBN: 1- 58811-023-0, xxii+347pp, $114.00, Pragmatics and Beyond NS 85.

    Reviewed by Mounir Triki, English Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Sfax, Tunisia.

    This review was triggered partly by its posting on the Linguist List on the list of books available for review and partly by an announcement of Tue, 09 Oct 2001 by Jessica Balaschak <promotionbenjamins.com> of John Benjamins Publishing classifying the book under their publications in Functional Linguistics and cogently summarizing its contents as follows: 'Reanimated Voices addresses three activities: reporters evoking speech events; interpreters (re)constituting those speech events; and historical pragmaticians eavesdropping in time on the reporters and interpreters. Can one reconstruct aspects of pragmatic competence on the basis of written texts only? Reanimated Voices answers this in the affirmative. It offers a methodology for historical-pragmatic reconstruction to explain the synchronic patterns of variation in premodern writings. Reanimated Voices examines the distribution of reporting strategies in a corpus of medieval Russian texts. Forms preferred in specific recurring contexts are matched with the need(s) served by those contexts - a fit reflecting collective intentionality. Occasional &quot;residual forms&quot; -strategies that appear in contexts where others predominate- also reflect cooperative behavior; they index utterances departing from the prototype or unusual configurations of participants. Thus Reanimated Voices explores reporting as an activity of rational agents coordinating interpretation in accordance with cultural and institutional notions of relevance. The book contains a preface, nine chapters, followed by detailed notes, a comprehensive bibliography, useful indexes and a list of other publications in the same series. First, the title uses an intensive medical care metaphor 'reanimated' that is evocative of the presence of death. The past participial form 'ed' suggests that this process of bringing back into life has successfully been undertaken. With only written texts as a guide, Collins asks in his conclusion, can one really reconstruct aspects of pragmatic competence and so reanimate, as it were, the silenced voices of pre-modern writers? (p.285) The optimistic wording of the title, together with the framework heralded by the subtitle Speech-reporting in a historical pragmatic perspective, suggest that whole project is feasible. The central theoretical framework, the research objectives and methodology are outlined in the preface and the first chapter. Chapters Two to Eight are devoted to data analysis. The conclusion recapitulates the major claims and findings. Operating within a conception of Style as choice, Collins rightly ascribes the multiplicity of alternatives to express the same propositional content to the pragmatic concept of intention. The author sets out to recover the factors that motivated the choice of some reporting strategies at the expense of other equally possible forms. By downplaying, without totally denying, the importance of syntactic considerations, the author unequivocally subscribes to a pragmatic perspective. This is done crucially through the process of matching forms to functions (but see the Proteous Principle below). A number of safeguards account for the feasibility of this enterprise, namely the recurrent institutional rather than personal nature of intentions, their context-sensitivity and non-arbitrariness, and their catering for the needs of the intended audience. Prototypical forms, as well as the residue of significant deviations from them, are all purposive. Chapter One is a real treaties on the Pragmatics of Reporting. Justifying the selection of the Reported Speech as a field of investigation, the author invokes its universality and its metapragmatic function as it epitomises the functioning of language in particular contexts as seen from particular points of view. RS is anchored in the two pragmatic factors of intention (a term carefully defined so as to account for even subconscious orientations) and perception. Reports are constructs; i.e. they are mediated by mental representations both at the production and reception poles and only obliquely relate to the represented speech event. They are inherently mediated by and subordinated to the will and illocutionary goals of the enframing discourse producer. This mediation informs both the form and content of what is to be reported. This approach to reporting is what he calls, following Geertz (1973), a 'thick description' of reporting. Collins then enumerates the series of choices that are likely to be made by the reporter (not an exhaustive list, by any means, but a very useful one). These include: subjective heteroglossia (foregrounding the act of reporting) as opposed to objective heteroglossia (unacknowledged reporting), choice of the reporting strategy, paradigmatic and syntagmatic selection and positioning of the tag, and the choice of the reporting mode. Formal differences iconically stand for functional ones, each having a distinct perspective on the scene of linguistic action (for a detailed discussion of these choices, c.f. the Underlying Mechanism of Speech and Thought Presentation in Triki, 1989, 1991, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001, forthcominga, forthcoming b; Triki and Bahloul 2001). Operating within a pragmatic framework, Collins felicitously levels many counter-arguments at what he calls 'nonpragmatic reductionist approaches' to Reported Speech. In his view, the discussion of formal distinctions should be only a preliminary to explaining the functional differences among strategies. RS is a category of discourse analysis rather than syntax (requiring reference to the larger discourse). The varieties of RS present a continuum with indeterminate boundaries between the individual types and with many instances of deliberate slippage from one form to another, a phenomenon quite common universally. In the same vein, Triki and Bahloul (2001) statistically demonstrate that the frequency of authentic occurrences not observing the SOT rules in a representative corpus of American newspapers and magazines is significantly higher than that of the occurrences observing those rules. They therefore argue that the phenomenon of reporting is much more complex than could be explained by pure structural rules. There must be other important discursive and pragmatic factors at work. Reporting is construed as an act of mediation involving a confrontation of two selves, namely the reporting self and the reported self. The speaker's perception of the reported person's deictic anchorage as viewed against his/hers and of the reported person's modal investment as against his/hers will be taken to be among the most important considerations. This selection necessarily reveals the reporter's value judgements and his/her rhetorical strategies. No reporting is innocent or value-free. 'Objective' reporting is simply an impression consciously given out by speakers as part of their self image building rhetorical strategy. Reporting is a discourse act in its own right seeking to influence targeted addressees one way or another. By means of reporting and smuggling evaluation, the speaker hopes to achieve certain social ends that could be reconstructed from the very act of reporting. Thus, the reporter's discursive strategy is an over-riding factor which accounts for all sorts of apparent 'abnormalities' in reporting. Animated by a deep rooted quest for methodological rigour, the author devotes large sections of his book to outlining a method for historical-pragmatic analysis. This would consist in working on a reasonably large and representative corpus (though reasonableness is too difficult to define), matching strategies to functions, and a capacity for empathetic reading by paying due attention to the contextual aspects of historical texts and the reading conventions of the text-kind that furnishes the corpus. The analyst's task would then lie in determining which kinds of represented speech events or situations predominate in each section (the prototype), how this prototype is typically represented (the preferred reporting strategy), and accounting for problematic cases of deviations from these norms. However, the writer is quick to warn that conventionality does not preclude purposiveness and intentionality.

    Chapter Two attempts to delineate the distinctive features of what the author calls 'the text-kind' of trial transcripts of a given period well defined both synchronically and diachronically. The major divisions outlined in this chapter, namely the incipit, the trial record, the judicial referral record and the verdict provide the basis for more detailed discussion in the other chapters. While rightly emphasizing the largely oral basis of this type of document, the author has not devoted enough attention to fine-tuning the definition of the concept of 'text kind', especially when compared to the competing concepts of 'genre' and 'text-type'. The analysis proper of the data starts with Chapter Three which deals with the standard reporting strategies adopted in testimonies. Yet, this chapter is so rich with interesting narratorial insights, namely his masterful discussion of the various discourse functions of Direct Speech, that it is no longer clear whether the author uses the literary pragmatic toolkit primarily to read his data or uses his data essentially as evidence for his narratological insights. What is most commendable in the author's treatment of these discourse functions is the Relevance Theoretic framework that it adopts, though not admittedly so. Fundamental socio-pragmatic concepts are invoked, such as Goffman's (1981) notion of 'footing', Green's (1989) concept of 'intentionality' and 'purposiveness', Rimmon-Kenan's (1983) discussion of '(in)felicity', Fludernik's (1993) concept of 'typicality' and Grice's (1975) maxims. This wealth of theory hinges round the concept of Relevance. This is most apparent when the author takes to task the proponents of the verbatimness or mimesis claim. At least ten counterarguments are put forward. The criterion that is at work is not faithfulness to some initial/antecedent discourse but the relevance attributed by the reporter to the cited details of this initial discourse, if it does exist at all (indeed, it need not exist). A number of problems emerge in defining what counts as the same. Similarity, Collins argues, is both ideologically and culturally defined ('preliterate and mixed-orality cultures have different understanding of what constitutes sameness' p. 55). It is also genre-specific, that is governed by the institutional norms of functionality. Trial transcripts naturally undergo a great deal of editing that eliminates and filters out irrelevant aspects of initial discourses to be reported. However, what Collins does not spell out critically enough here is the suspicion, well documented in Critical Discourse Analytic accounts of the language of the media (Jones and Jones 1999; Parenti 1993) for instance, that this filtering is not solely determined by the urge for adequation to type but is also a function of the ideological drives of the reporter. Two major arguments give credit to Collins' account. First, his acknowledgement of the superior intention of the reporter as an over-riding factor responsible for deciding what and how much information to select and the narratorial mode of reporting it. This point was systematically argued by (Triki, 1989, 1991, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001, forthcominga, forthcoming b; Triki and Bahloul 2001) to the effect that the various levels of embedding entail a functional hierarchy of centres in the genesis of the narrative. A power relationship exists between them. They are to be seen in terms of superiority versus inferiority, control versus subservience. This in turn entails a whole spectrum of degrees of interference exercised by the superior (super-ordinate) centre on the liberty of expression of the subordinate centre leading thus to tension. The second point is his right emphasis on the theatrical and game-like nature of the whole process of reporting. According to this view, all reporting techniques are make-belief strategies going through the motion of giving calculated impressions of deference to the interpreter or interference by the reporter. All strategies, whether they are speaker-based or hearer-based, are calculated moves that are part and parcel of what Caffi and Janney (1994) call emotive or strategic involvement. Triki (forthcomingc) presents a generalisation of this argument into a hypothesis about all human interaction that he labels the 'Tricky Hypothesis' to the effect that language use is a form of social acting. The pun on the term 'social acting' capitalises on its three most important meanings. First, acting is theatrically defined as the art of creating and giving impressions. Second, acting could be construed in the sense of conforming to canonised social or discursive norms where speakers and hearers are called upon to participate in a coded game which has its rituals. Finally, acting is defined in terms of acting on people, that is, affecting their lives and beliefs. In terms of the Tricky Hypothesis, each meaning of acting borrows the tools of the other meanings of the word. Acting on people (sense 3) involves going through certain motions (sense 1) according to pre-established rituals (sense 2). If Chapter Three has dealt with the standard strategies of reporting, it stands to reason that their residual forms should be discussed in Chapter Four. Collins bases his argument on the felicitous assumption that opting for nonstandard strategies is iconic of pragmatic difference. In other words, deviations from the prototypical forms are pragmatically motivated and not random. For instance, the use of participial clauses in his data is attributed to backgrounding as well as other pragmatic reasons. On the other hand, Free Direct Speech functions primarily as a cohesion strategy. As for the category of Fused Reported Speech, it has 'a streamlining effect which makes it suitable for conveying presupposed or otherwise backgrounded reports' (p. 122) creating thus a glossing-over effect that speeds up the tempo of the narrative. The underlying mechanisms for Narrative Reports of Speech Acts and Free Indirect Speech are brilliantly discussed and found to be respectively speaker-based and hearer-based. The evidence provided by Collins' data shows that FIS was functionally used in non-literary contexts well before the rise of the modern novel. (cf Triki 2001, for a similar discussion of the underlying mechanism accounting for the distinctive features of Free Direct Discourse, Free Indirect Discourse, Narratorial Description/Report, and the Stream of Consciousness Technique). Above all, this chapter has brought three pragmatically interesting insights: First, Haiman's (1983) causal link between linguistic separateness and the conceptual independence of the object or event which it represents. Second, his adoption of Sternberg's (1982) Proteous Principle when accounting for the apparent paradox of blatant mismatches between form and function, rightly highlights the crucial importance of context. Third, word frequency is brilliantly linked to the pace and economy of narrative passages. All these points could have found ample theoretical anchorage in French Enunciative Linguistics (Rotget and LaPaire and the Guillaumian tradition reviewed in Triki 1989 and Triki forthcomingb).

    Chapter Five tackles the question framework. True to his line of thought, Collins links the judges' statements to the limitations imposed by their social role as moderators and by the conventions of the text-kind. Unfortunately, apart from the occasional reference to the 'framing function' of the judges' discourse and other equally interesting points, this chapter does not live up to the high expectations set by the previous chapters (it is as limited in its scope as Chapter Two). It would have been well enriched if it had given some account of the pragmatic literature on turn-taking (Mey 2000).

    The same remark holds for Chapter Six which deals with the reporting strategies from judicial-referral hearings. The author was quick to provide the historical background whereby, in a further step in the legal process, trial judges referred the suits to judges of higher instance. The typical discourse structure of judicial-referral records is presented and four of its categories are enumerated, namely, verification, dialogue, testimony, and preliminary reports made by the trial judges. What goes to Collins' credit is his right insistence on the inextricable link between the choice of reporting strategies (which he calls context-based preferences) and 'the participants' divers roles and changing alignment in the speech event', p.180). The study of his data has led the author to the conclusion that "there was a certain tension between the need to condense background information, which is characteristic of trial transcripts as a text-kind, and the need to expound new information at a level of detail commensurate with its potential importance for the verdict" (p.201). The diachronic insight detecting a shift in his data from direct to indirect styles (p.191) is another welcome contribution of Collins'. (cf Triki 2000 for comparable cases of tension where summarising one's or other people's ideas is construed as a motivated act of interpretation pragmatically serving the rhetorical purposes of the summariser engaged in his/her own discourse within which the summary is embedded). This discussion is further fine-tuned in the analysis of layered reports in Chapter Seven. Whilst acknowledging the institutionalized restrictions imposed by the text-kind where the need for clarity militates against layering of reports, especially since this layering tends to occur "in evaluative contexts with the represented reporters controlling the interpretation" (p.211), the author cogently emphasizes the contextual diversity enveloping additional layers of speech. He lists "several reasons why presupposition and backgrounding favor strategies such as subordination and indirectness" (p.227), including the notions of grounding, cohesion, the complexity of deictic configurations, and emotive nuances. Subtle shades of meaning stemming from the positioning of the tag are cleverly explored (cf Triki and Bahloul 2001 for a fine-tuned discussion of this strategy). Collins' treatment of reports as cases of heteroglossia is very interesting. However, the chapter on layering does not take up enough insights from those that he argues so well in the introduction and recapitulates adroitly in the conclusion. What is at stake is the Discourse Structure (Short 1996) of the reporting process: who is represented as reporting what to whom about whom in which context and for what purposes? Layering means that we have many SELVES competing for expression (this is the essence of heteroglossia) (Triki, 1989, 1991, 1998a, 1998b, 2000, 2001, forthcominga, forthcoming b; Triki and Bahloul 2001). SELF is realised in narrative in the form of a Deictic Centre, a Perceptual or Sentient Centre, a Cognitive or Ideological Centre or any combination of these centres. Reporting is an exercise of some degree of intervention by the reporter in the speech and thought of the represented persons (including the reporter's own self as part of the reported story). Measuring this degree of intervention is a complex process since, if we take the three previously mentioned centres as constitutive of SELF and the act of reporting as necessarily bringing about some confrontation of these SELVES, then the various possibilities for the interaction between the I-sayer and the 'not-I' could be classified along the following cline ranging from total distinction to total overlap: total alienation total overlap - -------------------------------------------------------------------> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 D=D D=D D=D D=D D=D D=D D=D D=D P=P P=P P=P P=P P=P P=P P=P P=P C=C C=C C=C C=C C=C C=C C=C C=C (borrowed from Triki, 1989 and also cited in Triki 2000) The complexity stems from the various possibilities potentially emanating from this confrontation. Total or partial or nil overlap can be obtained at all, some or none of any of these parameters. What adds to the complexity of this process is the fact that deictic mediation (at the levels of person, place and time) can be partial, that is limited to one or two of these co-ordinates. Similarly, at the level of perception, not all the five senses are necessarily equally relevant all the time in the narrator's report. Indeed, sometimes, the narrator can choose to remain silent at all about perception. The same is true for cognitive/ideological mediation which can be partial. The more complex the layering, the more Selves compete for expression, the more complex the reporting process gets. A typology of narratives should be based on all these possibilities emanating from this basic mechanism. Chapter Eight turns to the various modalities of reporting the verdict, which the author sets apart from the patterns found elsewhere in the documents. These norms consist in a concise third-person, past-tense narrative devoted exclusively to actions. In terms of footing, the author notes the prominence of the judges in the verdict. They are no longer moderators but decision makers and their voice is the only perspective presented in a maximally integrated/mediated form, hence the preference for NRSAs. Moreover, the author reiterates a number of fundamental positions defended throughout the book. For instance, the positioning of the tags is discussed in detail, particularly the pragmatic effects of intercalated verba dicendi. The reporter's interference is an inevitable consequence of reporting. The difference between showing deference to the interpreter or assuming full responsibility for the report is a question of degree of interference, which is part and parcel of the reporter's strategy.

    The concluding chapter is, perhaps, the most succinct and cogent chapter in the whole book as it provides, over and above a summary of the major findings, a good insight into the methodology of Pragmaphilology. First, summarising the main functions of the reporting strategies in his corpus, Collins distinguishes compact from diffuse types as follows: 'Reporting strategies may be classified as relatively compact in proportion as they blend in with the surrounding nonreported discourse, and as relatively diffuse in proportion as they stand out from it' (p.288). This scalar approach is very helpful for any typology of narratives. Because of this scale, instances of 'slippage' from one reporting strategy to another are also very interesting. When the speaker's orientation towards an accommodation of or neglect of the needs of the interpreter are taken into consideration, compact reporting could be construed as speaker-based whilst diffuse reporting is more hearer-based. The determining factor (the overarching phenomenon) is the degree of effort ascribed to the interpreter (the degree of speaker control or deference to the interpreter). Turning to some methodological implications of this research, Collins makes a number of claims: 1 The justified need to pay attention to residual forms for analysing variations, hence paying attention to fine-grained details of context and genre. 2 The usefulness of the concept of prototypes in Speech and Thought Representation whereby a rigorous analysis of the observable formal properties of discourse strategies is anchored in the needs of speech genres and text-kinds. 3 Conventions tend to be functionally motivated, hence the social locus of intentionality. 4 Purposiveness informs 'unmarked' as well as 'marked' patterns 5 Literary techniques have their basis in ordinary language. 6 Diachronic findings need to be based on nuanced synchronic investigation of contextual factors. Notwithstanding some minor problems such as the occasional lack of balance between chapters (especially chapters two, five and six as opposed to the other heavy-weight chapters), the rather technical and forbidding use of terminology, the absence of a helpful list of abbreviations of technical terms or of a glossary of terminology, in addition to some typos, the book remains largely a first-class piece of scholarship revealing a great deal of erudition. It is simply indispensable to any academic programme teaching literary pragmatics. References Bergler, S. (1991) 'The Semantics of Collocational Patterns for Reporting Verbs', in Proceedings of the Fifth European Conference of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Berlin: Germany Bergler, S. (1993) 'Semantic Dimensions in the Field of Reporting Verbs', in Making Sense of Words: Proceedings of the Ninth AnnualConference of the UW Center for the New OED and Text Research, Oxford: U.K. Bockting, I. (1994) 'Mind style as an interdisciplinary approach to characterisation in Faulkner', Language & Literature 3: 157-74 Caffi and Janny (1994) 'The Pragmatics of Emotive Communication', Journal of Pragmatics Fairclough, N. (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language, London and New York: Longman Fleischman, S. (1990) Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction, Austin: University of Texas Press/London: Routlege, Chapman & Hall Fleischman, S. (1991) 'Verb tense and Point of View in Narrative', in (eds) S.Fleischman and L. R. Waugh, Discourse Pragmatics and the Verb, London: Routledge Fleischman, S. (1995) 'la place de la grammaire dans la structuration des evenements dans le recit: le cas des 'achievements'', Mod�les Linguistiques, 16:2, pp. 123-143 Fludernik, M. (1993) The Fictions of Language & the Languages of Fiction, London: Routledge Fowler, R. (1995[1986]) Linguistic Criticism, Oxford University Press Geertz, C. (1973) 'Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture', in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 3-30, New York: Basic Books Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Goodell, E. W. (1987) 'Integrating Theory with Practice: An alternative Appraoch to Reported Speech in English,' TESOL Quarterly, 21:2, 305-325 Green, Georgia (1989), Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Grice, H. P. (1975). 'Logic and Conversation.' In P. Cole & J.L. Morgan (eds.), Syntax and Semantics (vol. 3) Speech Acts, New York/London: Academic Press, 41-58 Haiman, J. (1983) 'Iconic and economic motivation', Language 59: 781-819 Johnstone, B. (1987) 'He says ... so I said': Verb Tense Alternation and Narrative Depictions of Authority in American English', Linguistics, 21:1 Joly, A. (1980) 'Sur l'acte d'�nonciation a propos d'un fragment de discours int�rieur', Travaux de Linguistique, 7 Jones, M. & E. Jones (1999) Mass Media, London: MacMillan Kiefer, F. (1994) � Modality � in (ed.) Asher, The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Volume 5, Oxford :Pergamon Press, pp. 2515-2520 Klein-Andreu, F. (1991) 'Losing Ground: A Discourse- Pragmatic Solution to the History of -ra in Spanish', in (eds) S. Fleischman and L. R. Waugh, Discourse Pragmatics and the Verb, London: Routledge Margolin, U. (1984) 'Narrative and Indexicality: a Tentative Framework', Journal of Literary Semantics, 13:3 Mey, J. (2000) When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics, Mouton de Gruyter Montgomery, M., A. Durant, N. Fabb, T. Furniss and S. Mills (2000) Ways of Reading: Advanced reading skills for students of English literature, London: Routlege Parenti, M. (1993) Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, New York: St. Martin's Press Scollon, R. (1998) Mediated Discourse as Social Interaction: A Study of News Discourse, London and New York: Longman Short, M. (1996) Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose, London: Longman Short, M. (1994) 'Mind Style', in (ed.) R. Asher, The Encyclopaedia of Language and Linguistics, London: Pergamon, 2504-5 Short, M. (1988) 'Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press', in (ed.) W. van Peer, The taming of the Text, New York: Routledge, 61-81 Simpson, P. (1993) Language, Ideology and Point of View, London:Routledge Sperber, D., and Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Sternberg, M. (1982) 'Proteus in quotation-land: Mimesis and the forms of reported discourse', Poetics Today, 3: 107-56 Triki, M. (forthcominga) 'Unveiling the Representations of Class in Literary Discourse', to appear in the proceedings of the Symposium on the Representations of Class in Literature, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Sousse Triki, M. (forthcomingb) 'How to Diagnose the Subjective Dose in Literary Prose', to appear in the proceedings of the Symposium on Frontiers, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Kairouan Triki, M. (forthcomingc) 'The 'Tricky Hypothesis': Reading Through Clinton's Persuasive Strategies' to appear in (ed.) M. Triki, Pragmatic Perspectives on Persuasion, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Sfax and the Research Team on Critical Linguistics, Sfax Triki, M. (2001) ' How to Professionalise Literary Translation: The Pragmatics of Speech and Thought Presentation in Narrative ', Academic Research, 1:1 Triki, M. (2000) ' Speech and Thought Presentation as a Persuasive Technique: The Case of Summaries ', Annales de l'IBLV:3 Triki, M. (1998a) 'How does a Poem Perform ?, Lettres de Kairouan, 4, pp. 15-35 Triki, M. (1998b) ' The Linguistics of Literary Pedagogy ', Mawarid, 3, pp. 47-73 Triki, M. (1991). 'The Representation of SELF in narrative, Journal of Literary Semantics, 20:2, pp. 78-96 Triki, M. (1989) Linguistic and Perceptual Subjectivity: Towards a Typology of Narrative Voice, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Essex University, UK Triki, M.& M. Bahloul (2001) 'The Reported Speech Revisited: A Question Of Self And Expression', Academic Research, 1: 2 Trognon, A. and J. Larrue (1994) Pragmatique du discours politique, Paris : Armand Colin Wilson, A. & G.N. Leech (1993) 'Automatic Content Analysis and the Stylistic Analysis of Prose Literature', Revue Informatique et Statistique Dans les Sciences Humaines 29:219-234 Wilson, J. (1990) Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    About the Reviewer: Dr. Mounir Triki is Associate Professor of Literary Pragmatics. He is currently Chairman of the English Department, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Sfax, Tunisia.