What Is Indirect Speech?

Have you ever had to retell a story and didn’t want to quote every single thing a person said? Well, that’s partly what indirect speech does. By doing some modifications, we can tell what happened in the past with our own words. And, as we’ll see later on, that is one of the most important things: not missing a single detail while doing so.

Paraphrasing is an essential linguistic tool. It is formal enough to use in a professional environment, such as journalism. Moreover, as it happens with tenses, it gives a clearer insight into past events. Keep on reading to learn more about indirect speech, such as uses, examples, and rules. Take a step further towards mastering the English language with Inmersivo, Emponte’s learning platform.

Direct Speech vs Indirect Speech

Direct Speech

The main difference between indirect speech and direct speech is not that complex to explain. When we use direct speech, we are repeating the same words the other person said. Consequently, we need to write those words between quotation marks to express the exact words the person used. Take a look at this example:

“I don’t want to go to school today”, she said.

In this case, we are using direct speech to repeat what she said. We are not reporting nor paraphrasing. Of course, in this way, we don’t need to change anything included within the quotation marks. However, we can choose what verb to use (say, tell, ask, yell, exclaim, etc.) to add character to the speaker.

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Indirect Speech

On the other hand, indirect speech introduces what another person said without repeating the exact words. As opposed to the previous style, we are reporting or paraphrasing. Take a look at the same example, turned into indirect speech:

She said she didn’t want to go to school that day.

As you can see, we need to make some modifications when reporting. In this way, these alterations help us adjust the statement to express time, tense, and character more specifically. Here’s a list of what things you should take into account when reporting a message.

• Subject: As we are retelling what another person said, the executioner changes. Taking our example as a reference, the person who doesn’t want to go to school is not “I”, but “she”.
• Tense: When reporting, we are constantly referring to something that already happened. That is why indirect speech is never in the present tense. There is a logic to these changes. Taking the original statement, we translate it into its immediate past tense. Here’s a chart for you to understand it more clearly.

Do you need help with any of these tenses? Check our articles!

Look again at the chart and see how time reference changes. Of course, as we are reporting a statement, time references should change. Consequently, we must always take the moment in which the person said something to refer to time appropriately. Take a look at this example:

“I will buy the tickets tomorrow”, John promised.

When we report that statement, “tomorrow” may not refer to the same date. Thus, we change that to “the day after (that)”:

John promised he would buy the tickets the day after that.

There is no specific rule to this, as we can choose different ways of expressing it. For example, we can also use “the following day”. It is crucial to find the best way to tell that we are referring to a different period.

As we mentioned before, indirect speech is a more formal way of introducing a statement another person made. Have you ever had to explain, report, or retell what someone said? Was it a difficult task? Thank you for reading, see you next time!