I try to find out and analyze the direct and indirect speech in
the two articles which are entitled TEPCO
shareholders demand end to N-power and Policy pragmatist. The analysis consists of the change of direct speech into
indirect speech. It is classified into three forms of speeches. They are
statement, question, and imperative. The analysis of direct and indirect speech
will be discussed below:
The first article:
TEPCO shareholders demand end to
N-power
Furious shareholders in
the company that runs Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power station joined
campaigners on Thursday to demand the permanent closure of the utility's atomic
plants, as it held its annual meeting. Dozens of demonstrators with
loudspeakers and banners said Tokyo Electric Power Co must act to avoid a
repetition of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, where three
reactors went into meltdown after Japan's huge earthquake-sparked tsunami.
Japan shut down all 48
of its reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, the country's worst nuclear
crisis in a generation. The government and electricity companies, including
TEPCO, would like to fire some of them up again - but public unease has so far
prevented that, as has a new, more-effective watchdog.
There was pushing and
shoving between security guards and demonstrators as they tried to approach
TEPCO shareholders going into the annual meeting in Tokyo. Activists from
conservation group Greenpeace wore full protective suits and industrial face
masks to remind shareholders what evacuated families who lived near Fukushima
must wear if they go back to check on their homes.
Katsutaka Idogawa,
former mayor of the town of Futaba, where the crippled plant is located, lashed
out at supporters of nuclear power, including TEPCO's management. "Why
don't you get exposed to radiation yourself? Why don't you lose your
homeland?" he asked as shareholders filed into Tokyo International Forum
for the meeting. His town remains evacuated because of elevated levels of
radiation, amid expectations that it will be decades before it is safe to
return, if ever.
Idogawa - who bought
TEPCO shares last year in a bid to influence the company's decisions - said the
firm has been slow to offer compensation to those who lost homes, jobs, farms
and their communities, and what they have offered has been inadequate. "You
don't pay enough compensation and don't take responsibility. I can't forgive
you!" he said.
The sentiment was
echoed during the meeting by fellow shareholders whose communities host other
nuclear plants. A woman from Niigata prefecture - where TEPCO hopes to restart
reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the world's largest nuclear plant - also urged
the company to put an end to its nuclear operations.
"Are we going to
make the same mistake that we had in Fukushima, also in Niigata?" she
said. "Fellow shareholders, please support this proposal of scrapping the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant ... and revitalizing the site with plans for
renewable energy," she said.
TEPCO has argued that
restarting selected reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is the key to ensuring the
company's survival as it battles huge costs. The calls for an end to nuclear
power were rejected on Thursday by TEPCO and a majority of its shareholders -
which include a government-backed fund designed to rescue it, which holds 54.74
percent of outstanding stock. The government has poured billions of dollars
into TEPCO to keep afloat the company that supplies electricity to Tokyo and
its surrounding area.
The second article:
Policy Pragmatist
Few
get excited as Narongchai Akrasanee about new e-mails coming in. As his
smartphone buzzes across the coffee table, he politely asks, “Can I reply to a
message quickly?”
His
enthusiasm for this brief interruption is soon explained, “I’ve been invited to
Peru to give a speech on Southeast Asia. How nice!” he says. A frequent
globe-trotter and conference speaker, Narongchai, 69, is currently chairman of
MFC Asset Management, Thailand’s oldest mutual fund management company.
However, he is best known as a versatile economic heavyweight.
The
former commerce minister was involved in Thailand’s economic policies
throughout the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. To date, Narongchai
has also been an economist, professor, businessman, trade diplomat and adviser
to various prime ministers and consultant to the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank. He also cofounded the Thailand Development Research
Institute, a leading policy think tank. But behind this variety of roles, there
has been a consistency in theme. “I have shifted in my career in terms of who
pays my salary,” he tells China Daily Asia Weekly. “But in terms of what I am
doing, it’s the same. It’s all related to public policy.”
Narongchai
has been forging an impressive career path from a young age. At 29, he was the
dean of the economics faculty at the prestigious Thammasat University in
Bangkok and adviser to the Thai prime minister.
Born
into a family of civil servants in Bangkok, Narongchai grew up at a time when
elite education was not usually affordable to students outside of the upper
class. But thanks to scholarships, he was able to finance his education at
Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, then in Western Australia. A third
scholarship, from the US-based Rockefeller Foundation, enabled him to complete
a doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.
A
move into politics from academia placed Narongchai center stage during the
Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. He was Thailand’s commerce minister,
and advocated a free market economy and a flexible exchange rate.
Sitting
in a coffee shop at the Island Shangri-La hotel in Hong Kong, Narongchai
recalls the turbulence of those years. “When you float the currency, it has to
be the right timing,” he says. But time was not on his side. The Thai central
bank was forced to float the baht in 1997 due to a shortage of foreign reserves
needed to continue its peg with the US dollar. “We were waiting for a calm sea
to float the baht but it never came. We were floating the baht by default,” he
says. “This is my regret in life.”
After
the collapse of the baht, the crisis quickly spread and gripped much of Asia.
But, in fact, signs of the crisis had been building as early as 1994. Thailand
was in debt and its economy vulnerable to speculative attacks.
It
was at another hotel in Hong Kong, the Conrad, where an incident happened that
underlines the fault lines in the Thai economy in the years before the crash.
Narongchai at the time was chairman of the now-defunct General Finance, a Thai
conglomerate with investments in property and securities.
He
recalls that the glassy building was where he signed an agreement with a
syndicated lender for a loan of $150 million — double the amount that his
company had asked for. With the benefit of hindsight, he realizes that some
obvious questions should have been asked. “Why did they offer money so easily?
We should have been suspicious,” he says.
It
was a painful lesson. “This is what students learn in introduction to
accounting 101 about balance sheets and indebtedness,” he says, “but people
make mistakes.” Narongchai uses the phrase the “asymmetry of money” to describe
how even highly trained economists can make errors.
“When
you give money away, you feel bad. When people give you money, you feel good.
When you are human beings, it’s difficult to be mindful about it.” But
Narongchai has chosen to make the best out of the lessons learned and share his
knowledge about hedging against a future crisis. His advice for regulators
across the region is: Don’t get too much into debt.
“I
warn people seriously we must manage our current debt position and current
ratio very well,” he says. “When you don’t have liquidity in times of crisis,
you are going to hurt badly. That high cost will kill you. You may not die
right away, but slowly you’ll die.”
Thailand
is undergoing a different type of turmoil today with ongoing anti-government
protests. Narongchai believes the most pressing issue is to bring relief to the
country’s rice farmers. “Farmers have very little savings,” he says. “We should
do whatever it takes to save them.”
Since
October, thousands of farmers have not been paid by the caretaker government
led by Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra for rice submitted to the pledging
scheme. “It’s a government (promise), not a tissue paper you clean your mouth
with and throw away. In order not to let this happen again, we might need to
scrap the scheme,” he says, stressing the need for Thai rice to remain
competitive.
Narongchai’s
interests are not limited to domestic affairs. He was a pioneer in pushing for
free trade negotiations within ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
and APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation).
His
years of hard work eventually translated into the ASEAN free trade area in 1992
and tariff reductions. “That was probably my major achievement,” he says.
Moving forward, Narongchai believes the “China factor” is indispensable to the
region’s prosperity. “China is so important for ASEAN, particularly for
Thailand,” he adds.
Currently,
business relations between China and Thailand are largely limited to trade and
tourism. “We will move on to investments in infrastructure, which China is
really good at,” he says. Narongchai has no plans to retire. “I am doing what I
enjoy,” he says. “That’s why I can’t differentiate between work and leisure.”
In
recent years, he has turned to the circuit of international conferences. He
brings along history and philosophy books with him even on vacations. “Is
reading a way to stay away from work or part of work? It depends on what you
think,” he says.
He
got into the habit of reading extensively about every topic he addresses in
public speeches. “You can never learn enough no matter how much you read,” he
says. Narongchai’s schedule is currently fully packed with business luncheons,
company meetings and speaking engagements.
“When
I say yes to something, I am committed to it. That is my style,” he says. But
living a hectic life is by no means a sacrifice of work-life balance. “I am
busy, but for the same reason I cannot fail in terms of health,” says
Narongchai, a father of two with four grandchildren.
He
has a routine that ensures he has time for exercise. For 40 years, he has
walked 4 kilometers in 45 minutes every morning, followed by a slow breakfast
and time to read the news before getting to work at 10am.
When
asked if he regarded himself as successful, Narongchai answers with a smile,
saying: “I first define success in terms of whether I can be financially and
physically independent. “Secondly, it’s (the ability) to inspire. You don’t
have to work very hard by then. They do it without you telling them.”
Narongchai
is clearly working toward the latter. Attending an APEC event in Singapore is
next on his schedule, followed by a trip to India to lecture a group of
directors. “Don’t be surprised to see me again in Hong Kong in about a week’s
time,” he jokes.
Source:
China
Daily Asia Weekly newspaper, Page 32 ‖ Friday, March 21st 2014.
I. STATEMENT
a) Direct speech:
In the first article; Paragraph 5, Line
3:
"You don't pay enough compensation and don't
take responsibility. I can't forgive you!" he said.
Indirect
speech:
He
said that they didn’t pay enough
compensation and didn’t take responsibility. He couldn’t forgive them!
Analysis:
Because
the reporting verb is in the past tense (i.e. said), we have to change the tense which is used in the direct
speech. The two statements in the direct speech above use simple present tense.
Hence, in the indirect speech, we have to change the simple present tense into the
simple past tense. In this case, we have to change don’t pay into didn’t pay and
also can’t forgive into couldn’t forgive.
In
order to keep the same meaning of the sentence in the reported speech, we have
to change the pronoun which is used in the direct speech. In the first
statement, if I read the whole sentence in the fifth paragraph, I assumed that “You”
in the reported statement relates to TEPCO shareholders. Hence, we have to
change the second person plural “You” to the third person plural “They.” Whilst
in the second statement, we have to change the pronoun “I” to “He” because the reporting statement uses the pronoun “he.” Then,
we have to change the pronoun “you” to “them” because “you” is used as object
in the second statement that relates to TEPCO shareholders.
When
we would like to change the direct speech into indirect speech, we have to put
the speaker’s words into a sentence without quotation mark. We can use the word
“that” to introduce the reported
speech. However, “that” can be omitted
because it is optional.
b) Direct
speech:
In
the second article; Paragraph 3, Line 6:
“I have shifted in my career in terms of who pays my
salary,” he tells China Daily Asia Weekly.
Indirect
speech:
He tells China Daily
Asia Weekly that he has shifted in his career in terms of who pays his salary.
Analysis:
The
reporting verb in the direct speech above uses simple present tense (i.e. says). It means that we do not need to
change the tense which is used in the indirect speech. The reported statement
in the direct speech above uses present perfect tense, so we still use the
present perfect tense in the indirect speech. However, we have to keep changing
the pronoun which is used in the direct speech in order to keep the same
meaning of the sentence in the indirect speech. The reporting statement in the
direct speech uses pronoun “he.” Hence, we have to change the pronoun “I” to
“He” and “my” to “his.” Because the
pronoun “I” has been changed to “He”, we also have to change the verb which is
used, that is, have shifted into has shifted.
In
the indirect speech, we can use either ‘say’ or ‘tell’. The meaning is the
same, but the grammar is different. If we use ‘tell’, we need the object, but we
cannot use the object if we use ‘say’. Because I use ‘tells’ as the introductory verb in the indirect speech, so I have
to keep writing China Daily Asia Weekly as
the object after the verb ‘tells’. We
can use the word ‘that’ (optional) to introduce the reported speech, and
without using quotation marks.
II. QUESTION
a) Direct
speech:
In
the first article; Paragraph 7, Line 1:
"Are we going to make the
same mistake that we had in
Fukushima, also in Niigata?" she said.
Indirect
speech:
She wondered
whether they were going to make
the same mistake that they had had
in Fukushima, also in Niigata.
Analysis:
To
change yes/no question to a noun clause in indirect speech, we introduce the
noun clause with if or whether. Yes/no question can be reported
by using ask, want to know, wonder, and
inquire. In this case, I use the word
‘wonder’. Because the reporting verb
is in the past tense ‘said’, so we
also have to use the past tense‘wondered’
in the reported speech. The direct question is in the simple future tense (be going to), so we need to change into
the past future. Then, we have to change the question form ‘Are we going to’ by inverting the subject and the verb, and it
becomes ‘they were going to’. Besides,
there is a change of the tense which is used in that-clause, that is, the simple past tense into past perfect tense.
We have to change the verb had into had had.
The
change of pronoun is required when we would like to change the direct speech
into indirect speech. In this case, we have to change the pronoun’ we’ to ‘they’. In addition, the final punctuation mark (question mark)
must be changed to a full stop (period) in the indirect speech.
b) Direct
speech:
In
the second article; Paragraph 10, Line 4:
“Why did they offer money
so easily?,” he says.
Indirect
speech:
He
wants to know why they offered money so easily.
Analysis:
There is no change of tense when the reporting verb uses simple present
tense (i.e. says). The direct
question in the direct speech uses simple past tense, so we still use the
simple past tense in the indirect speech. I use want to know to introduce the reported statement in the indirect speech, so they become He wants to know (in the present tense). Then, when we convert a direct
question to an indirect one, the subject and verb have to be inverted. In this
case, ‘Why did they’ become ‘why they offered’.
Because
the direct question above uses Wh-question,
we do not need to use if/whether, but
we keep using ‘why’ to introduce the
noun clause. In this case, there is no change of pronoun ‘they’ in the indirect speech. Then, we have to change the question
mark to a full stop (period) in the indirect speech.
III. IMPERATIVE
a) Direct
speech:
In
the first article; paragraph 7, second sentence:
"Fellow
shareholders, please support this proposal of scrapping the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant ... and revitalizing the site with plans for
renewable energy," she said.
Indirect
speech:
She asked
fellow shareholders to support that proposal of scrapping the
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant ... and revitalizing the site with plans for
renewable energy.
Analysis:
I
use the verb ‘ask’ as the introductory
verb in the indirect speech. Because the reporting verb in the direct speech
uses simple past tense, so we have to use ‘asked’
as the introductory verb in the indirect speech. If I read the direct
imperative above, I assumed that the request is addressed to fellow
shareholders. Hence, I use fellow
shareholders as the object after the intoductory verb asked. The direct speech above uses affirmative imperative, so we
have to use to + infinitive in the
indirect speech. Please support becomes
to support. Then, we have to change
the demostrative ‘this’ to ‘that’.
b) Direct
speech:
In
the second article; the last paragraph, line 3:
“Don’t be surprised to see me again in Hong Kong in about a week’s
time,” he jokes.
Indirect
speech:
He asks not to be surprised to see him again in Hong Kong in about a
week’s time.
Analysis:
Because
the reporting verb in the direct speech uses simple present tense (i.e. jokes), we also have to use the simple
present tense in the introductory verb of the indirect speech. In this case, I
use ‘asks’ as the introductory verb,
but it is optional. We can use other verbs such as advise, ask, encourage, invite, order, tell, etc. The direct speech
above is in negative imperative, so we use not to + infinitive
(without to). Then, we have to
change the object pronoun ‘me’ to ‘him’ because the reporting clause in
the direct speech uses subject pronoun ‘he’.
In the indirect speech, the pronoun object (e.g., me) can be omitted after ask.
