Teaching indirect speech: deixis points the way

The purpose of this article is to suggest an alternative approach to the teaching of indirect, or reported, speech. I propose deixis1 as a means of clarifying the anomalies which lurk beneath the deceptively calm surface of reported speech. I shall concern myself with the reporting of statements (as opposed to the reporting of questions or commands). While the latter aspects have received thorough coverage in standard pedagogical grammars, scant attention has been paid to the deictic element of direct and indirect speech. I shall assess the problem from a grammatical and a semantic point of view before outlining what I have called ‘The Deictic Circle’, leading to an approach to direct and indirect speech in the EFL class-room which has communicative potential.