Here the other one: the polyphonic text

We propose a reflection addressed especially to philologists: Javier Yániz,
student from 4th year of Philology Hispánica, proposes a linguistic analysis of a linguistic question.
linguistic question. Philologists like to "eviscerate" phrases and words,
their Structures and meanings. What does this question mean?
Is it text or speech? conversation or speech? As linguistic
linguistic reflections are not easy, in the end, as often happens in real life, "you don't even know what you're
one doesn't even know what one is asking oneself".

What happens in conversation when someone introduces words that are not their own?

The question with which the following article is constructed perhaps deserves some clarification, especially with regard to its constituent terms. In final, what does this question mean? To understand what we intend to say in our own questions, to enter into the meaning and its possible interpretation, often reveals that one does not even know what one is asking oneself. "He who speaks much, errs much", as the saying goes, so I will try to err as little as possible. 

What happens in the conversation...?

Firstly, the what. This element (if we go by the definitions provided by the Diccionario de la language Española) "asks about the identity of one or several [...] things of an identifiable set", in turn, it "asks about the subject or the class to which one or several [...] things belong". The curious person who goes to the entrance of the dictionary will see that "person" has been omitted (between the square brackets), which we will come to a little later. We can see that the task we want to tackle here concerns both the "identity" of this phenomenon of introducing foreign words into a speech, and the "subject or class" to which these words belong. After all, it is a question of knowing what happens to the words.

The second element of the question is go toThe second element of the question is "pasar", a rather ambiguous verb, as it has the capacity to describe a process that implies a spatial movement as in "pasa el tren" or a temporal movement as in "pasa el tiempo". Even, as the DLE again indicates, it can designate the action of "putting something through the hole of something else", giving us the example of "passing a thread through the eye of a needle". 

In short, our initial question seems to focus on solving the mystery of the events: "What is happening? It does so by referring to its spatio-temporal (contextual) and structural manifestation: "What is it? And this, without forgetting the class and the identity of the object: of these foreign words.

What happens in the conversation when someone...?

The third element is the conversation. On this, although a long paragraph could be devoted to it, naively on my part and presupposing in the reader that he knows, for example, the contributions of pragmatics, I simplify in a radical way by saying (and feeling this very baroque sentence that ends with a colon): Action of speaking between two or more beings. This fully expandable definition avoids the term "speech" to purpose. 

But, first, let's go for the fourth element: someone. With this someone I would like to leave uncertain the physical or linguistic (almost metaphysical) existence of the one who "introduces the words that are not his own". Perhaps someone is thinking of the theory of enunciation with its different actants (empirical subject, speaker and enunciators). That's where the shots are aimed, but we would like to have a fixed target before shooting. Someone in the conversation is the manager of that which he or she enunciates, but does this enunciation fall back on the speaker? It seems that in everyday dialogue the speaker and the voice of speech are the same person. Thus in: "I like Marvel movies" (said by me) I am apparently the manager. But the case of literature can be somewhat more interesting. Thus, The Family of Pascual Duarte begins thus: "I, sir, am not evil, though I would not be without reason to be so". Who is responsible for the statements here? Camilo José Cela? Pascual Duarte, who is the narrator and fictional character? 

...when someone introduces words that are not their own?

"Words, words, words, words...", as in Shakespeare's tragedy. Words in the plural, knowing that the construction of a speech (or a text?) involves more than placing words one after the other in a sequence. We could roughly link conversation to text and speech to speech, i.e. linguistic issues to text and contextual issues to speech. Although this division has been practised by scholars, it can be seen that it is not always so clear-cut. So, to be precise, is it a conversation or a speech?

At this point, a concern arises. I ask myself: which came first, the conversation or the speech? In other words, the purely linguistic elements or the contextual elements; the linguistic elements that enable the speech or the communicative intention that makes use of the linguistic elements. 

What a pity... We only had to clear the end of our initial question, and now we realise that asking about "conversation" may pose a problem. What can I then call the spatio-temporal moment in which one or more subjects decide to move from silence (without even looking at each other) to interacting through speech? 

These almost nominalistic questions may seem to be of little importance ("Call it what you like and leave me alone!", you might think, dear reader), but, when it comes to starting this research, they can be clarifying. Starting? Here I don't mean 'start from nothing', but start from somewhere. In my case, it would be from the question that I have asked myself and that I would like to be able to answer, and that I see that, for the moment, I will leave it to the dear reader... 

...when someone introduces words that are not his own?

The final line of the question reads "which do not belong to it". This foreignness of the other words (here perhaps the term "utterance" is better suited) refers to the introduction of the other into speech itself. Here is the question !

Thus, this person inserts a point of view (also called an "enunciator") into the conversation that he or she proposes to another. These foreign words can be a repetition of what the other has just said (thus the foreign words spoken by that someone else function as an echo); or it can be the recovery of the words of a third party. The words may not even appear explicitly and may be a accredited specialization to a speech act (a conversation) that has taken place at another time. Without being naïve, we must bear in mind that the introduction of what is said by the other is always presented under the mediation of the someone, the speaker. Therefore, it is not surprising that the direct quotation (one of the clearest procedures where the voice of the other is marked) does not respond as faithfully as we might think to what is said by the other.

And, for the moment, I say no more because I have heard from the corridor how:

⎯ Let's eat!

...Hopefully this very text will serve to exemplify the complexity of answering this question. But which one?

Bibliography

Itziar Edurne Arechederra Pérez, "Ecos diafónicos y trifónicos en un discussion televisivo", in Polifonía e intertextualidad en el diálogo (coord. Clara Ubaldina Lorda Mur). Arco/Libros: 2012. (Madrid), 158.