Oh talking voice that is so sweet

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voice is suggested by incorporating into the exposition words and locutions he is implied to have used (lovely new wife, baby on the way). So
on consideration, the line is also, in a way, direct discourse: a representation
of his actual words.
Even in the traditional framework, then, the boundary between direct
and indirect discourse is fuzzy. On the deepest level, moreover, as has been
shown in the preceding chapter in the context of Beckers illumination of
grammar as prior text, and as Kristeva (1986:37) puts it, in paraphrase of
Bakhtin, any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the
absorption and transformation of another. Thus even what seems like
indirect discourse, or discourse that does not quote at all, is, in a sense,
quoting others. My concern in this chapter, however, is to demonstrate that
instances in which dialogue is presented as direct quotation are also not
clearcut. Rather, even seemingly direct quotation is really constructed
dialogue, that is, primarily the creation of the speaker rather than the party
quoted.
Reported speech and dialogue
For Voloshinov/Bakhtin, dialogue is crucial: not dialogue per se, that is the
exchange of turns that is of central concern to conversation analysts, but
the polyphonic nature of all utterance, of every word. This polyphony
derives from the multiple resonances of the people, contexts, and genres
with which the utterance or word has been associated. As Bakhtin
([19523]1986:91) puts it, Each utterance is lled with the echoes and
reverberations of other utterances to which it is related by the communality
of the sphere of speech communication.
In the terms of Becker (1984b, 1988, ms.), every utterance derives from
and echoes prior text. Recursively demonstrating what he is describing,
Becker uses the Javanese term jarwa dhosok, pressing old language into new
contexts, to characterize every act of utterance. There are no spanking new
words.1 Both the meanings of individual words (indeed, as frame semantics
and the philosophy of Heidegger and Wittgenstein have made clear, words
can have meaning precisely because of their associations with familiar contexts) and the combinations into which we can put them are given to us by
previous speakers, traces of whose voices and contexts cling inevitably to
them.
Not only is every utterance dialogic, but also hearing and understanding
are dialogic acts because they require active interpretation, not passive
reception. In exploring dialogue in this sense, Voloshinov ([1929] 1986)
devotes extensive analysis to reported speech. He introduces this focus as
follows: