Tense Shift in Indirect Speech in Newspaper Reports

Abstract

This bachelor thesis focuses its attention on the analysis of application or eventually non-application of backshift in indirect speech in the discourse of newspaper reports. The theoretical part starts with a brief overview of the English tense system. Furthermore, it provides a definition of indirect speech and its characteristics, including the conditions under which the phenomenon of backshift is or is not applied, and eventually introduces the discourse of newspaper reports. The practical part of the paper deals with the analysis of indirect speech occurrences selected from online versions of British daily newspapers. It especially focuses on the frequency with which individual types of indirect speech occur and the reasons behind the application or non-application of the phenomenon of backshifting.