30 Sept 2025
113 We are all grammatically distant
Join me in the pleasure of observing conversation, particularly times when people report the speech of others. They can do this using direct speech, indirect speech or narrative reports of speech events. Here are examples of all three:
Mrs Jenkins told the class shat she was cancelling the field trip (indirect)
There was a roar of protest (narrative report of a speech event)
‘It’s just not fair,’ said Jenny. ‘We’ve been so looking forward to this trip.’ (direct)
In fiction, you could try free indirect discourse, which is mostly indirect with some touches of direct. Here’s an example:
Mrs. Jenkins told the class she was cancelling the field trip. There was a roar of protest. It just wasn’t fair. They’d been so looking forward to the trip.
To convert direct speech into indirect speech requires a little grammatical finagling. The point of view shifts from the person speaking to the person talking about the person speaking, so pronouns, tense and other deictics might change.
Indirect speech, I say in this episode, requires a certain grammatical distancing.
And then, after all that logical discussion of the linguistics and stylistics of speech reporting, I go a little mystical.
What if all human language keeps us at a grammatical distance from the here, the now, the magical mystery tour of multidimensional consciousness that is the Earth? What if ‘mundane reality’ were the astronomical opposite of mundane? What if what keeps us from seeing this mysterious reality is the shroud of language?
Key takeaways:
We’re not the only conscious beings on the planet
The Earth is teeming with multidimensional consciousness—of the kind some folks have ascribed to ‘God’, ‘the Divine’, ‘the universe’
If you get the feeling that it’s hard to be on this planet—don’t blame the planet
Blame language. But don’t really blame it. Simply recognise that it’s restricting your consciousness
Whatever you create from within that position of restrictedness—is one of the Earth’s great achievements
Here is the transcript of the conversation with Rachel and Mary I discuss in the episode:
Rachel: Or, like, like when she told me, when she told me that Marilyn was- she’s more American than me? We’re like- we’re like, “OK, both of us have light skin, blue eyes freckles, one of us happens to have blonde hair, one of us has- happens to have brown hair,” like
Mary: does that make you, y’know-
Jodie: No, the only thing is that you’ve been in France before, so, y’know you’re probably more comfortable with the language
Mary: right
Jodie: and that’s probably why she thought
Rachel: But she said we look. She’s like, “Oh, you look more American” (.) and Marilyn was like really offended
Mary: Well, what di- wha- did you ask her what- what you look like? like, “What do I look like?”
Rachel: No, because we were trying to get her to go away.
Mary: I would’ve had to ask her though, I would’ve been, “W(e)ll, what do I look like?”
Rachel: That was, like 45 minutes into the one-sided conversation.
The stories I read are ‘Point of view’ and ‘The effects of language on the body.’
Check out my new free course, Grammar for Dreamers. All the grammar you need, plus a touch of mystery in under 30 minutes.
Subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. Rate, review, tell your friends!
