From quoting to reporting to stance-marking: rhetorical strategies and intersubjectification of reportative

Abstract

Quotative and reportative are grammatical devices of presenting information from a source other than the speaker himself. The Korean predicative reportative -tanta developed from a quotative construction and is currently used for self-quoting for rhetorical effect. The development of reportative from quotative was enabled by the loss of the verbum dicendi, ha- ‘say,’ which resulted in ambiguity of the speaker, i.e., the original source of the information. The opacity of the utterer further led to the extension of the usage to seemingly inappropriate contexts, i.e., when the report is about the speaker himself or herself, thus, technically, the speaker is reporting about himself or herself as if the information were from a third source. This type of change is motivated by the strategic use of reportative constructions for rhetorical effect, i.e., presenting subjective states of the speaker himself or herself, especially with emotional stances, as if they had objective validity. Furthermore, the rhetorical effect of this ‘self-reporting’ is the nuance of mirativity. The mirative function brings forth a strong engaging effect on the part of the addressee because it signals the speaker's invitation of the addressee into an epistemic or emotional common ground.