Abstract
The study examines the works of J. K.
Rowling, R. Dahl, S.
Rushdie, and M. Paver for children and for adults to explore the impact of the intended reader on the one hand, and the authorial style on the other on the representation of direct speech in fiction.
Methodologically, it combines a corpus-assisted quantitative approach with a qualitative analysis of text samples. The results confirm that in books for children, the proportion of direct speech is significantly higher than in adult fiction.
The reporting verbs were classified using Caldas-Coulthard's (1994) taxonomy. When writing for children, all the writers rely heavily on 'descriptive verbs', which refer to vocal effects and voice quality (e.g. hissed, mumbled), highlighting the importance of sound in children's literature.
In their fiction for adults, verbs explicitly indicating the intended illocutionary force (e.g. agreed, accused) are more prominent. At the same time, the writers were found to differ in the extent of their presence in the text (e.g. in the use of glossing phrases with neutral reporting verbs, e.g. said Snape icily).