“The word … becomes "one's own" only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention. Prior to this moment of appropriation, the word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions.”

—  Mikhail Bakhtin

Source: "Discourse in the Novel" (1935), pp. 293-294

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Mikhail Bakhtin3
Philosopher, scholar 1895–1975

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