PROJECTING OTHERS' SPEECH: LINGUISTIC STRATEGIES

 This paper deals with the different techniques to represent other people's sayings. The framework adopted is Halliday's (1994), and Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) functional study of projection which is one of two logico- semantic types of relation that may exist between two clauses. Halliday  distinguishes two types of projection: paratactic quoting (i.e. direct speech) and hypotactic reporting (indirect speech). Although the basic patterns are 'quoting speech' and 'reporting thought, while projecting, speakers can also 'report speech' and 'quote thought. It is this function of 'reporting speech' that this paper aims to focus on. Halliday (1994) argues that, although this function is treated as logically subsequent to quoting, it "is the normal way of representing what people say, in most registers of English today" (255). This 'abnormal' situation leads to the following questions: What motivates this linguistic choice? Why do people 'filter' other people's sayings and present them as meaning? Does this mean that a paratactic projection is an objective representation of speech? The paper tries to answer these questions through the study of a corpus of texts where the speech of a politician is projected by three news networks. The analysis of the corpus shows that whatever strategy is used, projection remains a highly subjective act.