Le rôle des éléments implicites dans le passage d’un message du discours direct au discours indirect
The Role of the Implicit Elements in the Transgression from Direct into Indirect Speech

Summary/Abstract: Languages have three ways to introduce the words of another person in a message: direct speech (DS), indirect speech (IS), free indirect speech (FIS). Jean Paul Sartre stated: “In order to transform the most ordinary event into an extraordinary one, it is necessary and in the same time it is sufficient to relate it” (in Gauvenet, 1976, p. 18, o. t.). This statement seems to be valid and we can see a connection between it and the problems raised by the transposition of a message from direct into indirect speech. The messages change their value the very moment we change them from direct to indirect style. The transposition of a message from direct into indirect speech is an extremely complex phenomenon which has as results morpho-syntactic and semantic changes. The morpho-syntactic changes concern the grammatical categories of the verb (mood, tense), of the pronoun (personal, demonstrative, possessive), of the spatial and temporal substitutes. Regarding the semantic changes, they are due to the fact that when trying to reformulate the message from direct into indirect speech, the receiver of the message in direct speech, who has become transmitter of the message in indirect speech, starts from the meaning he has given to this message. What is even more, he will have to make explicit, by using words, all the elements which were implicit in the direct speech (gestures, intonation, mimics). The aim of this article is to prove that the non-explicit elements of the message in direct speech have an important role in this process of transposition. The presuppositions and the implicated elements are analyzed in this article, showing the different ways in which the same messages are transposed into indirect speech, due to the different interpretations of these elements.

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