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

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis 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)