Coherent Voicing : on Prosody in Conversational Reported Speech

The present paper addresses one of the most frequent shifts of footing, namely that occasioned by the use of reported speech in conversation. What happens with reported speech is that the unity within a single speaker of the three production roles which Goffman identifies animator, author and principal dissolves, leaving the role of animator separate from, and independent of, those of author and/or principal. The 'reporting' speaker animates or voices a 'reported' figure without necessarily composing the words which this figure is made to utter or espousing the beliefs which the figure's words will be heard as attesting to. The question which the 'voicing' of figures raises for a prosodist is whether and to what extent the speaker's phonatory voice is instrumental in the process. Using a methodology developed by crossing prosodic analysis with conversation analysis (Couper-Kuhlen/Selting 1996), this paper attempts to pin down exactly which tasks the 'voicing' of reported speech confronts conversationalists with and how speakers' prosodic and paralinguistic voice resources contribute to the accomplishment of these tasks