Context of thought and context of utterance: A note on free indirect discourse and the historical present

Abstract

Based on the analysis of narrations in Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present, I argue (building in particular on (Banfield, 1982) and (Doron, 1991)) that the grammatical notion of context of speech should be ramified into a Context of Thought and a Context of Utterance. Tense and person depend on the Context of Utterance, while all other indexicals (including here, now and the demonstratives) are evaluated with respect to the Context of Thought. Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present are analyzed as special combinatorial possibilities that arise when the two contexts are distinct, and exactly one of them is presented as identical to the physical point at which the sentence is articulated.