Reported discourse and text types in early 19th-century German newspapers: a quantitative study

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between text types and the realization of reported discourse in three German-language newspapers (Wiener Zeitung, Berlinische Nachrichten, Hamburgischer Correspondent) between 1830 and 1835. Building on earlier findings (cf. Assenzi 2026), which revealed a divergent use of direct speech and source attribution in the Wiener Zeitung after 1800, this study expands the existing corpus by annotating text types and statistically analyzing their influence on the formal realization of reported discourse. Drawing on 12 issues across the three newspapers and employing generalized linear mixed-effects models (GLMMs), the analysis demonstrates that text type significantly affects the form of reported discourse. Direct speech appears more frequently in longer, analytically structured text types such as background reports and protocols, which are used more frequently in the Wiener Zeitung. Moreover, the Wiener Zeitung uses direct speech with a significantly higher than average frequency even in text types in which the other two newspapers avoid it. This suggests that editorial practices specific to the Wiener Zeitung may contribute to explaining these differences. The study concludes by proposing future research to include cited source type as an explanatory variable and underscoring the necessity of collaborating with media historians to investigate possible extra-linguistic causes of the Wiener Zeitung’s distinctive use of direct speech in this time period, e. g., specific preferences of the newspaper’s editorial team.