Abstract
This paper offers a comprehensive analysis of English and Czech reporting clauses (frames) in a corpus of fiction samples and their translations. A number of aspects were scrutinized, including the position of the frames, the subjects featured, the word order, type of verbs, optional modification, etc.
The results show that Czech appears to integrate the frames far more smoothly in the narrative, gives a fuller picture of the speech situation, encoding more of its elements and in this way it strives to shape more conspicuously the processing of direct speech, taking greater control over the recipient's reception compared to the English original, and simultaneously taking over some interpretative burden from the recipient. Conversely, English appears to treat the frames as more or less automatic, parenthetical units, clearly set off from the narrative, biasing the recipient's processing to a minimum, though inviting much more interpretative and evaluative effort.