The spoken speech is a form of the figurative speech and encounters us in epic texts, usually accompanied by a personal narrator. The speech is between direct and indirect speech and is a mixed form of narrative and monologue (self-talk). The spoken speech means the refraction of a person’s thoughts or words into the perspective of the consciousness that she experiences. It is expressed in the indicative third person.
This means that the speech that has been experienced will remove the distance between narrator and figure. This is because, on the one hand, the word is directly in the speech, but on the other hand the third person, and usually the preterite, is retained. The thoughts of a figure are not depicted directly by themselves, but by the narrator. Let’s look at an example.
Was not Hanna always disturbing him?
She would show it to her! That would be something to experience!
In the above example, the thoughts of a character are presented to the reader. However, these are not expressed by the figure itself, which suggests an inner monologue (“Hanna is it who always bothered me, I will show it!”), But presented by the personal narrator, the inner view, Thoughts, the figure in the third person (him, him).
Thus we are dealing here with an intervention by the narrator, which slips into the thoughts of the figure to reflect their thoughts and emotions. Nevertheless, the narrator is perceptible, since it becomes clear that the figure does not express or articulate the thoughts themselves.
Rebekka was waiting for her husband in the pension. She looked uneasily at the door, which constantly opened and closed again, but she could not find him anywhere between the entrants. Would he let her wait again? That must not be! Not today, not in this situation. Suddenly he stood before her.
In this passage, too, we can discover the speech that has been interwoven with the rest of the text. At first, the reader is merely portraying the situation, telling what Rebekka is doing and whom she is waiting for, namely, her husband, who seems to be a bit late.
But the second sentence is already shown in the form of the speech, since we participate directly in the thought of the protagonist, without expressing it. The narrator is thus present and gives us a glimpse into the world of thought of Rebekka. Since it is the narrator who presents us the thoughts and not the figure itself, there is nevertheless a distance between figure and reader.
Why was her husband not at least one of those quiet, but ambitious men of science who sat all their books over their books …? The name Bovary, who was hers, would have been famous, would have had to be in books and newspapers, known all over France. But Charles had no ambition. (Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary)
The above example of the speech given is taken from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, a novel which is one of the great works of literature in the world, as the narrative of reality, which is close to reality, appeared new and special. The passage is formulated entirely in the form of an experienced speech. The thoughts of the main character Emma, who is looking at her husband, are exposed to us. But in the third person.
Note: Sometimes it is very difficult to separate figure and narrator clearly. Above all, if the speech that has been experienced appears as a long flow text and has been incorporated directly into the narrative report. Then we have to read exactly. For the speech which is experienced is quite recognizable by the expression (usually as the figure speaks) and question formulations of the figure or even assumptions.
Experienced speech, indirect speech, direct speech
At the beginning, it was mentioned that the speech was an intermediate form of direct and indirect speech. As a result, there must be similarities between all three forms of figuration, and, of course, some differences. Let’s take a closer look.
With a direct speech, she has the same thing in common: the indirect one is similar to the fact that the expulsion object is moved to the third person. As a result, this speech is a hybrid of the two other forms. Let us look at an example.
Direct speech: He asked, “Do I really need help?”
Indirect speech: He asked if he really needed to help.
Experienced speech: Did he really have to help?
The direct speech, as will be seen, is an utterance in which the language is reproduced in wording. In contrast, in the second case the statement is shown by the narrator. The character does not speak here, but the narrator returns what the figure says.
The spoken speech is reminiscent of the direct insofar as the word is the same, which can be seen in the example above. However, the Redesubject is grammatically in the third person (I become to him), which in turn recalls the indirect speech.
Difference: inner monologue and experienced speech
It is most difficult to distinguish the speech which has been experienced from the inner monologue. The difference is quite easy to see if we pay attention to the grammatical structure of the respective passage, because grammatically both forms differ from each other.
The inner monologue basically shows the same thing: namely the thoughts of a figure. However, these are reproduced in the first person and also in the present tense. The figure speaks accordingly with itself and there is no narrator who shows us the thoughts.
I’ll go crazy. Where is my watch now? Do not really have anything better to do in the house, than to let me – yes, me – wait. My wife was right from the start. What I’m just for an idiot. How could I get involved and agree to this?
In the example above, the figure speaks to itself. It poses questions and gives the reader his own thoughts. It can be clearly seen that there is an ego, which speaks here. According to this, the inner monologue is, of course, more often found in a narrator of the ego, where the speech is typical of the personal narrator. Nevertheless, mixed forms are possible with regard to the narrative perspective.The most important information about the speech at hand
The spoken speech is a form of the figurative speech and can thus only be encountered in epic texts. It stands between direct and indirect speech and is still a hybrid form of self-talk of the protagonist and the report.
The reader is presented with the thoughts of a person without expressing them. The narrator thus gives the reader a glimpse into the head of the acting figure.
The narrated speech can either be very closely tied to the narrator, or be more oriented towards the view of the figure. The narrative rhymes often retain the expression of the figure, which often makes the speech heard.
In contrast to the inner monologue, it is grammatically in the third person and is usually used in epic preterite. The inner monologue is grammatically in the first person and is also used in the present.
The narrated speech is typical of the personal narrator, which is fused by a direct representation of thoughts with the figure. This means that the distance between narrator and figure disappears a bit.
The speech that is experienced is embedded in situ in most cases, with a verbum credendi missing. This is a verb of thought and, in this context, a mark that the figure expresses (thinks, believes, contemplated, etc.).
Furthermore, the speech in question is more mimesisable than the thought report. This means that the presented thoughts of the characters are better understood by the reader, which is why he can feel the feelings and thoughts. This effect is, of course, more pronounced in the inner monologue.
