Rhetorical discourses which are embedded inside other discourses or texts

What is it about?

This article deals with the oral discourses (speeches) which are inserted in literary or historical texts. The characteristics and the function of these discourses are based on their real or fictitious nature. Real discourses included in texts are studied from the point of view of their dependence on world models of type I (models for real referents) and their transformation into material of fictional texts. Fictitious discourses inserted in texts are taken in consideration by taking into account their dependence on world models of type II (models for verisimile fictitious referents) or world models of type III (world models for non-verisimile fictitious referents). Some kinds of inserted discourses are explained, and attention is paid to the insertion of paraphrased and condensed speeches. The insertion of discourses is explained as a technique of the construction of texts that contributes to their composition as the concrete execution of a device of culturalrhetorical nature. The article offers results which are valid for Literary Theory and for Rhetorical Studies according to the interest of the historical and current cooperation between Poetics and Rhetoric in the study of literature and of the art of language.

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Why is it important?

The study of pragmatics within texts as a kind of syntactic pragmatics. Discourses are key constructions in communication, so that we can consider that there is "a galaxy of discourses we live by". Texts reproduce the real communication by means of embedded discourses.

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