The role of reported speech in the evaluation of arguments from expert opinion

Abstract

This paper discusses how grammatical aspects of direct and indirect speech affect the evaluation of the argument from expert opinion. Direct speech is often characterized by having two different discourse acts and, consequently, two deictic centres; and indirect speech is regarded as one discourse act with one deictic centre. These grammatical structures have different pragmatic effects, mainly because in direct speech, the reported content is assumed to be faithful in form and content. In contrast, in indirect speech, the current speaker embeds the reported content in their speech. Considering these features, this work provides a comparative analysis of the types of reported speech and their relation to Wagemans’ (2011) argument scheme and critical questions and offers modifications in the existing argument schemes to allow a more precise evaluation of arguments.