This study is about reported speech considered from a textual point of view in the genre of journalistic discourse. In this work, our purpose is to defend the usefulness of defining reported speech as a sequence of text that narrates, describes or refers to a person’s words. This textual sequence is twofold because it combines a fragment that verbalizes and selects situational data of the original utterance (accompanying segment) and a fragment representing the original utterance (quoting segment). The textual approach to reported speech is proposed as a counterpart to the “phrasal” approaches which describe “forms” of reported speech and emphasize its grammaticalization. We will try to demonstrate that the textual conception is highly operational in discourse analysis and can influence the description of “in-language” reported speech patterns through the application of analysis tools specific to text grammar, such as the concepts of diaphora or diegesis.