Backshift

Reported Speech

to report (verb): to tell somebody what you have heard or seen

Reported speech, the structure that we use when we report what another person has said.

If we want to say what somebody has said, we basically have two options:

• We can use the person's exact words in quotation marks "..." (direct speech)
• We can change the person's words into our own words (reported speech)

Reported speech is not really difficult. It is more a matter of logic and common sense. You probably have the same concept in your own language, where you use your own words to say what somebody has said or written.

Reported Statements

Reported statements are one form of reported speech.

We usually introduce reported statements with " reporting verbs" such as " say" or " tell":

• He said (that)...
• He told me (that)...

When we report a statement, we can say " He said that..." or simply " He said...". Both are possible. " He said that..." is more formal.

When we use our own words to report speech, there are one or two things that we sometimes change:

• pronouns may need to change to reflect a different perspective
• tense sometimes has to go back one tense (eg, present becomes past) - this is called backshift

There are sometimes other things too that we may need to change, such as time or place. Look at these examples:

We also sometimes need to think about the third person singular " s":

Notice that in the above example, we do not change the tense. Usually, with the present simple, if something is still true now - she still works in London - we don't need to change it.

Typical reporting verbs for statements: say, tell, mention, inform

• He said that... OR He said...
• He told me that... OR He told me...
• He mentioned that...
• He informed me that...

Backshift

In simple terms, the structure of reported speech is:

report ing clause + conjuntion + report ed clause

We sometimes change the tense of the reported clause by moving it back one tense. For example, present simple goes back one tense to past simple. We call this change " backshift ".