104 Similarity
However, as a number of scholars have noted, it is also possible for the report-
ing speaker to infiltrate the reported speech even using direct quotation.^11 When
this is achieved the process is arguably somewhat covert, because the overt
metapragmatic signal that accompanies direct quotation does not alert us to this
process of infiltration. As Greg Matoesian has noted in his analysis of discourse in
rape trials, use of direct quotation is a powerful and complicated tool in creating
changes of discursive frame and footing:
Although direct quotes purport to represent an exact wording of speech, they func-
tion more accurately as a way of constructing drama in talk, as a method of marking
the speaker’s emotional involvement with an issue, and as an evidential device for
gauging, or better still constructing, the authenticity of the statement.... Thus, they
index the reporting speaker’s footing and moral agenda through stylistic variation in
talk, while appearing to maintain a strict separation between quoting voice and quoted
utterance.^12As we have seen, the way reported speech functions to construct “drama in talk” is
quite evident in law school teaching, where frequently the quoted speech is clearly
fictional. In these cases, the direct quotation obviously functions as a vivid device
for representing general arguments, thoughts, or positions rather than as a pur-
portedly accurate rendition of actually occurring speech.
Matoesian draws on work by Erving Goffman, which examines the different
kinds of footing that a person may occupy in any given segment of speech.^13 For
example, Goffman distinguishes among a number of distinct positions occupied
by producers of language: the person doing the actual speaking is the “animator,”
the person who composed the words spoken is the “author,” the person ultimately
responsible for the position expressed by the utterance is the “principal.” This
concept of footing permits us to analyze the way speech contains signals about
speakers’ positions, relationships, and social power. Goffman refers to a shift in
footing as “a change in our frame for events.”^14
What, then, can we make of the way direct quotation is used in law school
classes? In Transcript 6.1 above, we could view both professor and student as oc-
cupying the footing of mere animators; that is, by using direct quotation, they give
the semblance of merely speaking the words that were actually authored by char-
acters in the story.^15 However, it is also relatively clear that both professor and stu-
dent are putting words into these characters’ mouths, and thus are in fact authors
as well as animators. On the other hand, this authorship is hidden (albeit thinly)
by the metalinguistic signals that accompany direct quotation. As we have seen,
direct quotation retains the deictic markers of an original speech setting: of a re-
ported speech setting that is distinct from the current, reporting context. There
are a number of subtle ideological messages conveyed by the ubiquitous use of this
kind of fictionalized reported speech in law school classrooms:
(1) First, the effortless elision of animator and author footings through
the use of reported speech in this setting conveys a subtle message about the
power of legal discourse to put words in people’s mouths—indeed, to literally
create reality through discourse. As we saw in previous chapters, the rendi-
tion of events as facts in legal narratives actually creates an authoritative ac-