On the social practice of indirect reports (further advances in the theory of pragmemes)

This paper deals with the social practice of indirect reports and treats them as cases of language games. It proposes a number of principles like the following:Paraphrasis/Form PrincipleThe that-clause embedded in the verb ‘say’ is a paraphrasis of what Y said, and meets the following constraints: should Y hear what X said he (Y) had said, he would not take issue with it, as to content, but would approve of it as a fair paraphrasis of his original utterance. Furthermore, he would not object to vocalizing the assertion made out of the words following the complementizer ‘that’ on account of its form/style.Furthermore, it connects such principles with Relevance Theory considerations.