indirect discourse

American  

[in-di-rekt dis-kawrs] / ˈɪn dɪˈrɛkt ˈdɪs kɔrs /

noun

1. the reporting of what a speaker said consisting not of the speaker's exact words but of a version transformed for grammatical inclusion in a larger sentence, as in She said she was not at all hungry.

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Etymology

Origin of indirect discourse

First recorded in 1845–50

Example Sentences

She is a brilliant wordsmith, who had a transformative effect in literature by shifting the focus inward using indirect discourse to combine a character’s inner thoughts with the narrator’s voice.

From Los Angeles Times

Yet it’s not just pithy quotations, real or imagined, that Todd is borrowing here; she is also using Austen’s famous “free indirect discourse.”

From Washington Post

The novel, peppered with rants about ex-wives, newsroom politics, and the Long Island Expressway, is an astonishing read for many reasons, including O’Reilly’s credible ability to write in free indirect discourse.

From The New Yorker

A third principle is that indirect discourse is not always introduced with an expression like he said that or she thought that; sometimes it is implicit in the context.

From Literature

“She didn’t invent free indirect discourse,” Wells says, “it had been used by others—but she’s certainly the one who took it the farthest and established its primacy, its necessariness.”

From Time