Staging mental discursive processes and reactions: The construction of direct reported thought (DRT) in conversational storytelling

Abstract

This article approaches the construction of reported thought in everyday conversation by analysing instances of direct reported thought (DRT), taken from storytelling sequences. It is argued that DRT is used by narrators as a device to portray, in a dynamic sense, the ways in which they experience the story world in their mind, as discursive processes and reactions around an external event that clash with their expectations or initial perception of the situation. More specifically, the analysis shows that DRT is employed to stage a ‘first wrong thought’ (Jefferson 2004) that is shaped in a range of ways, as a process of worrying, deliberating, lamenting, and blaming or accusing someone in the situation, as well as shocked and indignant reactions that are constructed as exclamations and a process of reproaching and planning a future revenge action. (Direct reported thought, conversational storytelling, mental discursive processes, mental reactions, first wrong thought, silent shock, inner experience, direct reported speech)

Gender and expletives as discourse markers: Some uses of joder in young women’s interactions in Spanish and Galician

“…The participants are all female friends in their early 20s, mostly undergraduate students, middle class and speakers of Spanish and Galician. The selection of these conversations was made because they constitute naturally occurring talk among young women and because of my previous work on them to address different issues, such as the construction of femininities (Acuña, 2009(Acuña, , 2012(Acuña, , 2017a(Acuña, , 2017b, complaints (Acuña, 2011a), humour (Acuña, 2012) and storytelling in conversation (Acuña, 2020). In doing this previous work, I realised that joder generally played an important role in these interactions and that it was used in different ways, so I initiated an analysis focused on this form, observing each of its occurrences in the five interactions to assign it a communicative function.…”

“…In extract (5) joder is used in a segment of direct reported thought (DRT), previously analysed in Acuña (2020). Eva is telling a story about what happened one day when she was home alone, thinking sadly about the fact that her male friend had not phoned her, although he knew she had an exam the next day.…”