| Summary: | In reported discourse, the ethos of the quoted speaker interacts with that of the quoting speaker. The most interesting speech situations are those with strong differences between quoted ethos and quoting ethos, when the former legitimates the latter. This is precisely what is pointed out in the four texts studied in this article, texts belonging to different genres and written at different periods: the middle of the 17th century and the end of the 19th century. The texts from the 17th century are based on a theatrical setting and involved in societal debates while the texts from the 19th century pertain to the literary field. In any case, the quoting speaker quotes characters with a “typified” ethos supposed to illustrate how the members of a given social group speak. I will first compare the two texts from the 17th century before focusing on those from the 19th century, which feature popular characters –a worker and a farmer– exterior to the world of the quoting speaker and their audience.
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