He said, she said: Reported speech and backshift of tenses

When you report what someone has said, you need to turn the direct speech, i.e. the actual spoken words, into indirect speech. In doing so, there are some rules you need to keep in mind that will be explained in the following.

Let’s have a look at an example in order to get a first understanding of what the differences are between direct and indirect speech:

As the quotation marks indicate, this is a sentence in direct speech. It can be turned into reported speech by the employment of a reporting verb:

In this case, you can see how the pronoun ‚I‘ has changed into ’she‘ as it is no longer Rosa Parks herself that is speaking, but the person reporting who repeats what she says. Other reporting verbs may be answer, add, admit, announce, argue, claim, comment, complain, doubt, deny, explain, insist, mention, remark, repeat, reply, state, suggest, tell, ask, and many more. However, as this is a historical quote, it is more adequate to employ the reporting verb in the past tense:

Note how by employing the reporting verb in the past tense, the tense in the reported clause changes as well: In the direct speech version, it was employed in the simple present, whereas it is now employed in the simple past. This is a very important particularity of reported speech and is called tense shift or backshift of tenses as (in most cases), the tense is shifted one tense back to the past. In the table below, you will find all the tense shifts that occur when the reported part of the sentence is preceded by a reporting verb in the past tense.

 

Backshift of tenses

Tense	Direct speech	Indirect speech	Tense (or mode)
simple present	Rosa Parks: “I’m tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.”	Rosa Parks said that she was tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.	simple past
present progressive/continuous	Malcolm X: "It isn't that time is running out - time has run out!"	Malcolm X stated that it wasn't that time was running out but that time had already run out.	past progressive/continuous
present perfect	Maya Angelou: "There is no person here who is over one year old who hasn’t slept with fear, or pain or loss or grief, or terror, and yet we have all arisen [...]."	Maya Angelou argued that there was no person there who was over one year old who had not slept with fear, pain, loss, grief, or terror, and that yet, they had all arisen.	past perfect
present perfect progressive/continuous	Barack Obama: "We are the ones we've been waiting for."	Barack Obama remarked that they were the ones they had been waiting for.	past perfect progressive/continuous
simple past	Nelson Mandela: "I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it."	Nelson Mandela stated he had learned that courage had not been the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.	past perfect
past progressive/continuous	Woody Allen: "They were doing the Dying Swan at the ballet."	Woody Allen mentioned that they had been doing the Dying Swan at the ballet.	past perfect progressive/continuous
past perfect	James Baldwin: "Since I had been born in a Christian nation, I accepted this Deity as the only one."	James Baldwin argued that since he had been born in a Christian nation, he had accepted this Deity as the only one."	past perfect
past perfect progressive/continuous	Jerome Cavanagh: "We hoped against hope that what we had been doing was enough to prevent a riot."	Jerome Cavanagh admitted that they had hoped against hope that what they had been doing had been enough to prevent a riot.	past perfect progressive/continuous
will-future	Barack Obama: "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time."	Barack Obama stated that change would not come if we waited for some other person or if we waited for some other time.	present conditional
future progressive/continuous	Madhur Mittal: "Things are looking up, and hopefully, I will be doing good roles in both Hollywood and Bollywood."	Madhur Mittal answered that things were looking up and that he would hopefully be doing good roles in both Hollywood and Bollywood.	conditional progressive/continuous

 

Reported speech with modal auxiliaries

With regard to modal auxiliaries, it is important to note that can, shall and may become could, should and might in reported speech, whereas might, should and could as well as must and had to remain the same in indirect speech.

 

Reported speech with conditional sentences 

 In the conditional sentence type I, the verb forms change after a past tense reporting verb.

There are two possibilities for the conditional sentence type II, depending on whether or not the condition refers to a possible future. If the condition could possibly occur in the future, there is no backshift of tenses made and the tenses remain unchanged:

If the condition is impossible due to past time reference, the verb forms change:

In the conditional sentence type III, once more, verb forms remain unchanged.

 

Reported speech and changes in structure

With some reporting verbs, the grammatical structure of the reported clause changes significantly in that the reporting verb is not followed by that + reported clause, but by  structures with to-infinitives or the subjunctive (yes, the subjunctive also exists in English.) Reporting verbs that trigger structures with to-infinitives are advise, ask (in the sense of demand), forbid, instruct, invite, order, persuade, remind, tell, warn. Note how very often, but not necessarily, the sentences that are to be reported are imperative clauses:

 Reporting verbs that trigger the subjunctive or a structure that embeds the modal verb should are suggest, propose, recommend, advise, agree, demand, insist, prefer, propose, request, urge. The subjunctive is identical with the infinitve form of the verb, which is why the only difference in the present tense between the two modes occurs in the third person singular as there is no -s added to it. The only verb that has a past subjunctive form is be: its two indicative forms, was/were, are reduced to only one form, namely were (which is why Beyoncé sings „If I were a boy“ instead of „If I was a boy“…). Here are some example sentences:

 

A special case: reporting ideas in academic writing

There is one situation in which reporting ’speech‘ is in fact less clear-cut.  A significant feature of most types of academic writing is the inclusion of ideas and data provided by earlier research in the field, often described as ‚literature review‘ or ’state of the art‘. This serves to put the writer’s own ideas into context and show where they fit in the discourse on the subject. Thus, there is a kind of reported speech occurring here. However, when it comes to referring to such ideas, it is conventional to formulate them in the present, as the ideas are considered to be ongoing. Thus, even long-dead personalities such as Confucius, Karl Marx, or Benjamin Franklin are presented as immortal in a sense, putting both the reporting verbs and the verbs of what is reported in the present tense:

 

Now that you have read this article, you can test your knowledge on reported speech by taking this test. If you still have questions regarding this or any other grammar topic, feel free to contact us!