9.19 referring to spoken or written texts

You can often refer back to what has already been said in a text by using a noun which classes it as a type of verbal action, for example an admission, suggestion, or question.

• 'Martin, what are you going to do?' --- 'That's a good question, Larry.'
• 'You claim to know this man's identity?' --- 'I do.' --- 'You can substantiate this claim?'

The noun that you use to refer back like this not only refers to the text but also shows your feelings about it. For example, if you refer back to someone's reply to something using the noun 'response', this shows that your feelings about it are quite neutral, whereas if you use the noun 'retort', this shows that your feelings about the reply are much stronger.

Here is a list of nouns which refer back to texts, classing them as types of verbal action:

• account, accusation, acknowledgement, admission, advice, allegation, announcement, answer, apology, appeal, argument, assertion, assurance, boast, charge, claim, comment, complaint, compliment, concession, condemnation, confession, contention, correction, criticism, declaration, defence, definition, demand, denial, denunciation, description, digression, disclosure, discussion, endorsement, excuse, explanation, exposition, gossip, information, judgement, lie, message, narrative, objection, observation, plea, point, prediction, promise, pronouncement, prophecy, proposal, proposition, protest, question, reference, refusal, remark, reminder, reply, report, request, response, retort, revelation, rumour, statement, stipulation, story, suggestion, summary, tale, threat, verdict, warning

Note that many of these nouns are related to reporting verbs.

• People will feel the need to be informed and they will go wherever they can to get this information.
• 'I don't know what we should do about that.' This remark had the effect of totally dumbfounding the audience.
• The Chancellor remarked that he had no inferiority complex about the Soviet Union.