we introduced the Narrators Report of Voice (NV) as a new cate- gory of speech

presentation to be added to Leech and Shorts (1981) model. We pointed out that
NV captures minimal reports of speech, con- sisting either of simple references to
the fact that someone spoke or of general references to speech events involving
utterances from large numbers of people.

When the writer decides to make the reader aware of the characters thought,
he/she wants him\her to see things from the characters points of view. Thus,
presenting a characters thought is a presentation of that characters point of
view (Leech and Short, 1981:337-40).
Thoughts of the character of any fictions with the help of different techniques.
According to Leech and Short (1981), there are five linguistic techniques
available for the narrator to present his/ her characters' thoughts through.
Formally speaking, the presentation of speech and thought in narrative texts are
very similar. However, it should be remembered that the presentation of thought is
an artifice. This is related to the fact that nobody can ever see inside the minds of
other people. In spite of this fact, the presentation of thought is necessary to clarify
the motivation of the characters actions and attitudes (Leech and Short, 1981:337).

the narrators presence is less obvious, so that, with DS, we have the impression
that we have unmediated access to the characters own voices. Because it is always
possible, in principle at least, to reproduce verbatim the words that somebody
uttered on a particular occasion, DS can be regarded, Leech and Short argue, as the
norm for speech presentation, the default way of representing speech (see also
Halliday 1994: 254).
With only two occurrences, DT is an infrequent category of thought presentation in
our extract. The same applies to the SW&TP corpus, where, by coincidence, the
proportion of DT out of all instances of thought presentation in the fiction section
is the same as in the extract (8 per cent). Semino and Short (2004: 118ff.) argue
that DT is proportionately less frequent that DS because of the potential artificiality

involved in providing an apparently word-by-word representation of a private

phenomenon such as thought (see also Cohn 1978: 76). Indeed, in the fiction
section of the corpus, DT tends to be used for highly conscious, potentially
articulate thought, which sometimes amounts to a silent dialogue with oneself or
others (Leech and Short 1981: 342-44; Cohn 1978: 80; Fludernik 1993: 77-8). This
is clearly the case with Marthas suppressed question.
This may be due to the fact that, strictly speaking, quotation marks are more
appropriate in the case of speech presentation, where a physical, perceptible event
can, in principle, be reproduced word-by-word in writing. With thought
presentation, the event in question is private and not necessarily verbal in form, so
that the use of quotation marks may be generally felt to be inappropriate and rather
artificial (see Leech and Short 1981: and Short and Semino: 119).

DIRECT SPEECH
The most frequent form of speech presentation in the extract is direct speech (DS).
Sentence 37 (Didnt you recognize me? he asked.) is a prototypical example,
which displays all the typical characteristics of DS listed in figure 1.
Because the words that are presented via DS reported stretches are typically
appropriate to the deictic orientation and verbal repertoire of the original speaker,
DS is conventionally associated with the faithful, verbatim reproduction of an
original utterance. In recent years, this conventional association has been shown to
be problematic in many discourse contexts, and particularly informal spoken
interaction (Fludernik 1993, Sternberg 1982a, 1982b; Slembrouck 1992, Tannen
1989).
FDS captures those cases of direct speech presentation where either the quotation
marks or the reporting clause, or both, are absent (e.g. sentences 6-7 and 22 in the
extract). However, our corpus-based study confirmed the view suggested in Short
(1988) that FDS is best regarded as a variant of DS, rather than a separate category
of speech presentation (Short and Semino: 88-97, 194-97; see also Short 1996:
300-4).

FREE IS

The free indirect forms of presentation (and particularly free indirect thought) have
received more scholarly attention than any other SW&TP phenomena (Banfield
1982, Fludernik 1993, McHale 1978, Pascal 1977).
DT
With only two occurrences, DT is an infrequent category of thought presentation in
our extract. The same applies to the SW&TP corpus, where, by coincidence, the
proportion of DT out of all instances of thought presentation in the fiction section
is the same as in the extract (8 per cent). Semino and Short (2004: 118ff.) argue
that DT is proportionately less frequent that DS because of the potential artificiality
involved in providing an apparently word-by-word representation of a private
phenomenon such as thought (see also Cohn 1978: 76). Indeed, in the fiction
section of the corpus, DT tends to be used for highly conscious, potentially
articulate thought, which sometimes amounts to a silent dialogue with oneself or
others (Leech and Short 1981: 342-44; Cohn 1978: 80; Fludernik 1993: 77-8).

Leech and Short (1981: 344) describe indirect thought (IT) as the norm or baseline
for the presentation of thought. This, they argue, is because the use of the indirect
forms in general is associated with the presentation of content rather than form or
wording. Hence, the direct form is proto- typical for the presentation of speech,
since speech is directly accessible to others via the sense of hearing. In contrast,
the thoughts of others cannot be directly perceived, so that, as Leech and Short put
it:
[. . .] a mode which only commits the writer to the content of what was thought is
much more acceptable as a norm. Thoughts, in general, are not verbally
formulated, and so cannot be reported verbatim. (Leech and Short 1981: 345)
LEECH ND SHORT MODEL
The Leech and Short model was the rst to distinguish systematically between the
presentation of speech and the presentation of thought in the novel. It also

suggested, as some other scholars did (e.g. Cohn 1978 and McHale 1978; see also
Fludernik 1993: 2834), that the discourse presentation scales are not an
assemblage of hard-edged, dis- crete categories, but continua, rather like that seen
in the colour spec- trum. The speech and thought presentation scales had the same
categories and in the same order along the scales, but Leech and Short pointed out
that some of the categories had different effects on the differ- ent scales (in
particular, free indirect thought had effects which were often opposite to those for
free indirect speech, and the direct and free direct forms had different effects in
speech, as opposed to thought, presentation). The Leech and Short acc

The Leech and Short account also suggested a new cate- gory (the narrative report
of speech acts, and its equivalent on the thought presentation scale) and the repositioning of the free direct cate- gory on the scales. Instead of being positioned
between the free indirect and direct categories, as assumed by scholars previously,
Leech and Short proposed that the free direct category (free direct speech, free
direct thought) was at one extreme end of the scales, beyond the direct forms
(direct speech and direct thought). Since 1981 this ordering appears to have been
generally accepted by most scholars (see, for example, Flud- ernik 1993: 289315,
Simpson 1993: 2130 and Toolan 2001: 11640, but contrast Person 1999: 1932).