The North African print media: from reported discourse to subjective discourse

Abstract

Recourse to the discourse of the other is inevitable in the written press. Our objective in this article is to study the subjective use of the reported speech and examine how it is employed by the journalist to better address the targeted audience. In essence, it seeks to detect the traces of the enunciator and to deduce whether he commits himself to the message(s) he tends to convey vis-à-vis the words he reports. That said, we will try to investigate the idea that he reports in his speech, explaining the different discursive strategies that allow him to intervene in the words of others while making attempts to maintain his sense of objectivity. We will, also, try to examine the effects of meaning and the narrative scope of the reported speech in order to see if there is any trace of subjectivity that displays the presence of the journalist or any other author.