Use of Indirect Speech requiring any Pronoun of Nearness to be changed into One of Distance

She said yesterday that this was something the union had been seeking for the past few years as it was in line with its policy to provide quality education to Malay­sian children through highly qualified and dedicated teachers.

The above is a sentence appearing in a news item of a newspaper today. "This" used in the sentence is a pronoun of nearness referring to whatever that has been stated earlier.

The sentence is in indirect or reported speech. One of the rules for the use of indirect or reported speech is that any pronoun of nearness needs to be converted into a pronoun of distance.

"That" can have the same meaning of "this" explained above but "that" is a pronoun of distance. Hence, to be grammatically correct, the sentence in question should have been: She said yesterday that that was something the union had been seeking for the past few years as it was in line with its policy to provide quality education to Malay­sian children through highly qualified and dedicated teachers.

One will notice that there are two "that's" in the sentence with the first "that" functioning as a conjunction introducing the subordinate clause/s coming after it. Its use is, however, optional - that is, if it is omitted, the sentence is equally good as 'She said yesterday that was something the union had been seeking for the past few years as it was in line with its policy to provide quality education to Malay­sian children through highly qualified and dedicated teachers.'

Kengt, Penang, December 4, 2009.