#reported speech

[languagestudymaterials]

～ている vs. ～る in reported speech

～ている vs. plain past in reported speech — why 言ってた carries more weight than 言った. Example from Jujutsu Kaisen.

そういや 今夜 学校であれのお札 剥がすって言ってた → Oh right, they mentioned something about peeling off that seal tonight at school.

そういや = come to think of it; oh right (casual contraction of そういえば)

今夜 (こんや) = tonight

お札 (おふだ) = talisman; seal; charm

剥がす (はがす) = to peel off; to remove

言ってた = 言っていた (contracted) — past of 言っている

More on ている vs. る: here.

言ってた vs. 言った — what's the difference?

Both are past tense. Both refer to something someone said earlier. But they frame that information differently.

言った treats the act of speaking as a completed past event — someone said something, that's it. It's neutral and factual, focused on the moment of utterance.

言ってた (言っていた) treats the content of what was said as still relevant and active — the information is being carried into the present moment. The speaker isn't just reporting a past event; they're saying "this thing that was said still matters right now."

In this scene, Itadori isn't quoting his friends for the sake of accuracy. He's flagging information that is relevant to what's happening tonight. The ている is what signals that — the content of those words has arrived here, into this conversation, and it matters.

言ってた → the information is still live; it applies now 言った → the act of saying happened; neutral report

If Megumi had asked "what exactly did they say, word for word?" — then 言った would be the natural choice. But Itadori isn't being asked anything. He's volunteering information because it's relevant. That's 言ってた territory.

[superlinguo]

Notes and observations about air quote gestures

Air quote gestures are weird. They’re weird because they have a really specific form and a specific use and meaning for people who use them. Most gestures that have these features are in a category of ‘emblems’, things like a thumbs up (👍), please sign (✌️) or fingers crossed (🤞). All of these emblems have a meaning and use even if there’s no speech. Air quotes, in contrast, need speech to make sense. So they’re weird.

They’re so weird I’ve been thinking about them since writing an undergraduate research paper about fifteen years ago. I had always planned to build a larger corpus, collect more data and say something more definitive about these gestures, but it’s been a decade and a half and I haven’t yet, so I thought I’d drag out that old paper and share some of the observations from it.

The earliest reference of this gesture that I found for that paper appears in the July 1927 edition of Science. S. Francis Howard wrote to the magazine of how a 'very intelligent young woman' he knew '[raised] both hands above her head with the first and second finger pointing upwards' (Howard 1927, p. 38) in order to indicate that she was quoting text.

Air quotes haven’t received a lot of attention. Bäuml and Bäuml define the air quotes as a gesture of disassociation, whereby speaker who uses the gesture makes a value judgement about the credibility of the accompanying speech (Bäuml & Bäuml 1997, p. 153). Cirillo (2019) analysed a corpus of academic presentations for the use of air quotes (190 examples from 346 presentations). She found they exhibited a relatively stable form and were used to show the speaker’s stance towards the content being marked.

I looked at a mini corpus of 32 examples of air quotes from Australian television between 1993 and 2007 (ie. I watched a lot of tv and used this as a justification). Here are some observations from this data:

Air quotes have a stable form: two hands, palms outward, and somewhere between the upper chest and eye level.

There was some variation: some speakers did not so much pulse the fingers as wiggle them backwards and forwards.

2 finger air quotes are more common than 1 finger, but they also occur.

Air quotes are found with a wide variety of lexical content, including verbs, adverbs, adjectives and nouns, and longer phrases.

For noun phrases, if there was a determiner it was never included in the scope of the quote mark gesture in this corpus.

The average section of speech accompanied by quote mark gestures was only 1-3 words long, and comprises of generally no more than 4 syllables. The performance of the gesture for longer phrases would terminate before the end of the phrase it had scope over. For example the gesture was only performed with the words “I love public” in the spoken phrase “I love public broadcasting”.

Sometimes the number of pulses of air quotes followed the syllables in the speech, sometimes the number of words. Some were harder to determine, so there was no clear answer as to what people are aligning the performance of the gesture to.

In this small corpus, air quotes had four functions; reported speech, sarcasm, distancing and emphasis - or a combination of these.

It’s really nice that a lot of what I observed in this small study aligns with Cirillo‘s much larger and more detailed study.

In terms of categories, at the end of the short paper, I suggested that maybe air quotes fits with Kendon’s (1995, 2004) category of ‘pragmatic gestures’ - a category of gestures that are used alongside speech and mark the discourse level rather than the content level. For example, the ‘ring gesture’ is often used to show precision or specificity of a point being made in Western discourse Neumann (2004). Cirillo also suggests that air quotes might be a pragamtic category, but notes that their origin as a feature of writing makes them particularly unique. It’s been fun to dig up this old work, and even though I won’t get to revisit it, I’ll still continue to appreciate the weirdness of air quote gestures.

Thanks to Lou-Ann Kleppa, whose email make me go back and dig up this old paper!

References

Bäuml, B. J., & Bäuml, F. H. (1997). Dictionary of worldwide gestures (2nd ed.). Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

Cirillo, L. (2019). The pragmatics of air quotes in English academic presentations. Journal of Pragmatics, 142, 1-15.

Howard, S. F. (1927). Quotations. In Science, 66 (1697), 38.

Kendon, A. (1995). Gestures as illucutionary and discourse structure markers in Southern Italian conversation. Journal of pragmatics, 23, 247-279.

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Neumann, R. (2004). The conventionalization of the Ring Gesture in German discourse. In C. Müller & R. Posner (Eds.), The semantics and pragmatics of everyday gestures (pp. 217-224). Weidler: Buchverlag.

Cite this blog post

All original content on Superlinguo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If this post has inspired you to think and write about hyperlinks, please let me know! You can also cite this blog post:

Gawne, Lauren. 2022. Notes and observations about air quote gestures. Superlinguo. <Link> Accessed DATE.

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[aaiieell]

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THIS SHEET IN PDF FORMAT HERE :  https://www.aprendeinglesenleganes.com/tables.php

 REPORTED SPEECH TABLE

This useful table will help you to change sentences from direct speech into indirect speech (reported speech).

NOTE : In the key word transformation part of the exam (use of English part 4), you may have to turn direct into indirect speech or the other way round.

[sgribhisg]

[oxfordjunior]

What is an Oxymoron? Whether you know it or not, you have probably used, or at least read, some oxymorons. So if you're busy doing nothing, you can read this awfully good Infographic about #Oxymorons.

[krjpstudy]

Korean grammar lesson 1: reported speech breakdown

In Korean reported speech is used to quote something someone has said or something that is written, using the forms 다고, 라고, 냐고 and 자고. I’ve tried to explain all the forms as simply as I can with examples, so I hope this proves useful!

 ☆(ㄴ/는) 다고 하다 – for verbs and adjectives

When reporting a verb add ㄴ/ 는 depending on whether or not there’s a ending letter.

With a consonant:

언니는 아빠가 밥을 먹는다고 했다.

My sister said that my dad is eating.

언니는 아빠가 밥을 (벌써) 먹었다고 했다.

My sister said that my dad (already) ate.

Without a consonant:

아빠가 지금 간다고 했다.

Dad said he’s going now.

아빠가 갔다고 했다.

Dad said he’s gone.

For adjectives just add 다고.

앨리스가 오늘은 날씨가 좋다고 했다.

Alice said that the weather is nice today.

앨리스가 오늘은 날씨가 좋았다고 했다.

Alice said that the weather will be nice today.

Alternatively, if you want to change ‘said’ into ‘says’ then use the present tense for the ending verb.

언니는 아빠가 밥을 먹는다고 한다/합니다/해요

My sister says that my dad is eating.

앨리스가 오늘은 날씨가 좋다고 한다/합니다/해요

Alice says that the weather is nice today.

앨리스가 오늘은 날씨가 좋았다고 한다/합니다/해요.

Alice says that the weather was nice today.

-겠다 is added to verbs to make them future tense but it also has the feeling of having to do something.

친구는 그 음식점에 가겠다고 했다.

My friend said he’s going to that eating place

This could also mean ‘My friend says he has to go to that eating place,’ or ‘My friend says he should go to that eating place, upon an order or suggestion.

엄마는 내가 아파도 학교에 가겠다고 했다.

My mum said that even if I’m sick I’m going to school/ My mum said that even if I’m sick I have to go to school/ My mum said that even if I’m sick I should go to school.

More commonly used for future tense is *ㄹ 것이다, which is explained in the next section.

☆(이)라고 하다

1. Used with 이다 nouns for present tense quoting.

차 – tea

Past: 친구는 네가 아까 마신 것은 울롱 차였다고 했다.

My friend said that the thing you drank just now was oolong tea.

Present: 친구는 네가 마시는 것은 울롱 차라고 했다.

My friend said that the thing you’re drinking is oolong tea.

If the noun ends in a consonant use 이라고.

학생 – student

Past: 그는 학생이었다고 했다.

He said he was a student.

Present: 그는 학생이라고 했다.

He said he is a student.

2. with future tense ㄹ 것이다.

ㄹ 것이다 can attach to verbs but since 것 is an 이다 noun, it’s not 것이다고 its 것이라고.

오늘 밤 공부할 것이라고 했다.

I said I’m going to study tonight.

Or 오늘 밤 공부할 거라고 했다, shortening 것이다 to 거.

3.라고 is also used to say something is called something.

그 것은 만화라고 한다.

That that thing is (called) manhwa.

그 책은 해리 포터라고 한다.

That book is called (known as) Harry Potter.

Instead of 하다 you can use 부르다 (called/named) for further clarification.

의사들은 그 책을 의사의 성서라고 부른다.

Doctors call that book the doctor’s bible.

4. reporting what someone has exactly said (used as ‘said’ in literature)

앨리스는 ‘오늘은 날씨가 좋네’ 라고 했다.

‘The weather is nice today,’ said Alice.

‘여긴 너무 추워’ 라고 앨리스가 말했다.

‘It’s so cold here,’ said Alice.

‘아침을 못 먹어서 배 고파죽겠어’ 라고 앨리스가 불명했다.

‘I couldn’t eat breakfast this morning so I’m super hungry,’ complained Alice.

☆(느)냐고 하다 Verbs

I was taught that it’s ok to omit 느 and just use 냐고 if you like. I usually just use 냐고.

앨리스는 어디 가냐고 했다.

Alice asked where you’re going.

앨리스는 어디 갔냐고 물었다.

Alice asked where you went.

냐고 can also be used when reiterating your own question.

가: 뭐 먹고 싶어?

What do you want to eat?

나: 뭐라고 했어?

What did you say?

가: 뭐 먹어 싶냐고 (했어).

I asked what do you want to eat.

☆(으)냐고 하다 Adjectives

그 애는 예쁘냐고 했다.

I asked if she was pretty.

시험이 어려웠냐고 물었다.

I asked if the exam was difficult.

Using 으냐고 with an adjective that has an ending consonant is grammatically correct but a lot of Koreans omit the 으 and just add 냐고.

사람이 많으냐고 물었다.

or

사람이 많냐고 물었다.

I asked if there was a lot of people.

Future tense ㄹ 거냐고

학교에 갈 거냐고 했다.

I asked if you are going to school.

내일 공부를 할거냐고 했다.

I asked if you are going to study tomorrow.

  ☆자고 하다 – reporting a suggestion.

By far the easiest of all is 자고. It only attaches to verbs.

친구는 그 카페에 가자고 했다.

My friend said let’s go to that café.

엄마는 밥 먹자고 했다.

My mum said let’s eat.

Phew, that was a long post! If there are any questions (or if you spot a mistake oops;;;) feel free to message me. I hope this post is helpful!

[linguisticillustrations]

Figure: The reported speech situation.

I wanted to use this rather scary-looking collection of faces for Halloween, but didn’t make it.

I forgot the source for this one. Can anyone help me? My friend sent it to me.

[languagestudymaterials]

～ている vs. ～る — what changes in reported speech

～ていた vs. plain past — why the same quotation can carry completely different weight depending on which form you use.

Two sentences, same content, different feel:

先生は「あいうえお」と言った 先生は「あいうえお」と言っていた

The difference here is less about grammar and more about how the speaker is framing the information — and what reaction they expect from the listener.

と言った — the words, nothing more

と言った puts the focus on the act of saying and the exact content of what was said. This is a neutral report — here are the words, this is what happened, moving on. You'd use it if someone asked you to quote the teacher precisely, like citing a source. No emotional weight, no implication that it matters beyond the fact itself.

と言っていた — the information is still live

と言っていた shifts the focus. The speaker isn't just reporting a past event — they're presenting the content of what was said as something that still matters now, something the listener should register and respond to. If someone said this to you out of the blue, you'd probably want more context: the teacher said that? Why? What does that mean for us?

This is the broader logic of ている at work. ている describes a state that holds — an action or event whose relevance hasn't ended. When applied to reported speech, it signals that the information being quoted is still active, still in play. The teacher said it, and that fact is carrying weight into this conversation.

The same logic, different verbs

This isn't specific to 言う. The same contrast appears with other verbs in reported or observed contexts:

彼は笑った → he laughed (neutral report of a moment) 彼は笑っていた → he was laughing / he had been laughing (the state of laughing was ongoing and relevant)

窓が開いた → the window opened (the event) 窓が開いていた → the window was open (the resulting state)

In each case, the plain past describes the event as a completed point in time. ていた describes either an ongoing state at a past moment, or a resultative state that was already in place. The distinction is about what the speaker wants to foreground — the event itself, or the state that surrounds it.

More on ている: theory · examples