Investigating reporting signals in the Harry Potter saga and its Italian translation

This contribution aims explore verbs introducing direct speech (“reporting signals”, Thompson 1994), which are often employed in fiction to introduce turns at speech. When they are used in this function, they condense very crucial diegetic information on the characters involved. Following in the footsteps of several works that have compared these verbs in English and Italian, the current aim is to further enquire into the role of inquits in the Harry Potter saga and its Italian translations. The first purpose is to ascertain which reporting verbs English relies on in a genre that aims at entertaining by creating strong, impactful characters, and with which frequency and patterns. The second is to verify whether in the Italian translations these aspects have been dealt with in depth and in a similar fashion.