Indirect Discourse in ShahnameFerdowsi Based on Catherine Kerbrat’sSemantic Theory

Catherine Kerbrat, a famous French linguist, in one of her valuable works entitled “Indirect Discourse”, introduced an issue regarding verbal communication, which began later studies on semantics, linguistics and, especially, science of communication. In her opinion, the possibility of a direct discourse is very little and most of our verbal communication is not direct in our daily life, and,basically, we usually express our ulterior motives and inner intentions indirectly. Therefore, always in prepositions, the untold prevail over the told, and, their size and scope is more extensive than the told or direct speech. Expressing these prepositions forces the addressee to think about their quality and quantity and to decipher them. The purpose of the present study was to analyze indirect discourse in ShahnamehFerdowsi based on the semantic theory of Kerbrat. The results indicated that the indirect speech was frequently used in Shahnameh beautifully and eloquently, and, Ferdowsi was successful in using the language and metalanguage factors.