Source marking in represented talk and thought in Vietnamese narratives

Abstract

AbstractThis paper uses conversation analysis to examine when Vietnamese speakers explicitly mark the source of represented talk or thought (RT) and when they may omit the RTs source in narratives in dyadic and multiparty family conversations. In Vietnamese, a pro-drop, non-inflectional language, RTs may be introduced by a verb of speaking and its subject, a verb of speaking without the subject, or no verb of speaking and no subject. The analysis focuses on how these three choices are employed in the sequential organization of narrative series, narrative participation frameworks, and narrative dramatization. The findings contribute to current understandings about source marking through linguistic devices as an interactional practice in conversations in addition to other resources such as voicing and embodied actions.