Serious study of speech presentation was first carried out by traditional grammarians. Early on the twentieth century, Otto Jespersen began to study the different modes of speech presentation. The classification, however, was quite simple, with two modes only: Direct Speech and Indirect speech. Otto Jespersen, in A Modern English Grammar (1927), gave the definition of Direct Speech and Indirect Speech as follows: 

When one wishes to report what someone else says or has said (thinks or has thought) –or what one has said or thought on some previous occasion oneself –two ways are open to one. Either one gives, or purports to gives, the exact words: direct speech, or else one adopts the words according to the circumstances in which they are now quoted: indirect speech.               (Jespersen, 151)