Simulating prosody in free indirect speech: A reading study

Direct speech is more vivid and expressive than indirect speech because it involves the demonstration of a speech act rather than just a description that seems to pattern with direct speech in many respects, including, anecdotally, prosody. Based on Yao and Scheepers’s finding that readers adjust their reading rate to the contextually implied speech rate of the reported speaker in direct speech, and (ii) the quotational theory of free indirect speech, we hypothesized that free indirect speech should differ from indirect speech in showing reading rate adjustment. However, in an experiment comparing reading rate adjustment in free indirect and in indirect speech we found no significant differences. This could indicate that free indirect speech is not after all just a species of quotation, like direct speech. However, given the differences between Yao and Scheepers’s task and ours, further testing is required to prove this.