The previous chapter examines synchronic repetition: repeating one's own or another's words within a discourse. It also, however, says a bit about diachronic repetition: repeating words from a discourse distant in time. One way that people frequently talk about a situation in which a speaker repeats another's words at a later time is the situation generally referred to as “reported speech,” generally assumed to come in two forms: “direct” and “indirect” speech, discourse, or quotation. “Direct quotation” is commonly understood to apply when another's utterance is framed as dialogue in the other's voice (“Sam said, ‘I'll come”’). “Indirect quotation” (or “indirect discourse” or “speech”) iscommonly understood to apply when another's speech is paraphrased in the current speaker's voice (“Sam said hewould come”).

In this widely-accepted schema, “direct quotation” and “indirect quotation” are clearly distinguished in the abstract, but in actual discourse many equivocal cases arise. For example, Voloshinov ([1929]1986:131) describes the power of what he calls “texture-analyzing” indirect discourse in the novel which