Reported and enacted actions: Moving beyond reported speech and related concepts

Abstract

This article examines not only how events are verbally reported in everyday and institutional storytelling episodes, but also how the actions witnessed are enacted by participants. This is particularly important to not only the believability of what occurred and is being discussed (e.g. the US court of law), but also how ordinary audience members react to stories and how they believe the truthfulness of them. As is seen in data analyzed from multiple sources, the way in which something is both reported and (re)enacted has major implications for not only the telling of stories, but what we know about the world around us. Questions about the idea of ‘direct reported actions’ are also considered.