Abstract:

News discourse is, to a large degree, about what people say and how they say. Reported speech accounts for a large portion in news reports. And there is a relationship between tense and reported speech. This thesis tends to study the use of reported speech in the news discourse and its influence on readers. Many experts find that the change of tense in English Indirect Reported Speech can help authors to fix their voices in the news discourse. On the basis of previous research, this paper is from the perspective of the news discourse to combine the indirect speech and tense. Hope to provide some reference for the indirect speech used by journalists and provide the readers better understanding of the news discourse to convey meaning.

Key words: indirect speech; tense; news discourse
   
摘要:

新闻报道很大程度就是记叙其他人所说的话以及他们如何说这些话语，因此，转述话语在新闻报道中占有至关重要的地位。间接引语和时态又是紧密联系的，时态的正确选择能更好的体现新闻的语境，而语境揭示了有关新闻语篇产生的国际形势和政治背景的重要信息。本文旨在研究间接引语的使用在新闻语篇中的功能和对读者的影响。研究发现报道者有时可通过对引语时态的转换方式的不同，把自己的观点融入引用声音之中。本文将在前人的研究基础上，从新闻话语出发，将间接引语与时态结合起来研究，希望能为新闻记者更好的运用间接引语时态以及为读者更好的理解新闻语篇所要传达的意思提供一些参考。

关键词：间接引语；时态；新闻语篇

1．    Introduction of Indirect Reported Speech
Tenses differ from language to language and have been paid much attention by many linguists. In recent thirty years, tense acquisition has gradually become a hot research topic in the field of second language acquisition. Based on the previous studies, this thesis aims to explore the tense acquisition in English indirect reported speech from the perspective of the deixis theory by the Chinese EFL learners. 
This chapter begins with an introduction of indirect reported speech, including its definition and classification and reporting verbs. Tense in indirect reported speech will also be referred to. Then it gives the theoretical basis of this study.