Conversation analysis is used in investigating the interactional uses of loosely portrayed speech (LPS) in interaction. The device combines elements of direct and indirect portrayal, conveying some fidelity to an original at the same time as indicating that it is not verbatim enactment of specific utterances. The instances in the current collection are in English, deriving from informal interaction, mainly telephone calls recorded in the UK and USA. tThey occur in complaints about a third party, recurrently by portraying the reported speaker's criticisms of the current speaker. The reported speaker is depicted as making multiple criticisms, which adds to the reprehensible nature of their actions. By constructing the reported speaker's actions, and, at the same time, indicating the stance of the current speaker towards them, the complained-about speaker's behaviour is portrayed as infringing the moral order, and, therefore, the complaint as legitimate.Angelica rattles on. 'Oh, she has ever talked this way, "indentured servitude", and "legal prostitution" and la la la -one wonders how she got to be where she is, she is not so very beautiful...' (P.120, From The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, by Imogen Hermes Gower, Penguin Random House, UK, 2018)In describing events speakers simultaneously convey the rightness or wrongness of actions; thus, morality "suffuses conversation" (Drew, 1998). We can see orientation to morality in both the way participants design their talk to implicitly or explicitly take stances towards matters discussed, and construct their contributions, orienting to how they themselves may be judged. Descriptions may be evaluated "in terms of the fairness or justice or accuracy with