This paper proposes to open up the dialogic scene by showing that a dialogue is never just about discourse and language. It is also about facts, principles, passions, values, ideologies, collectives, worldviews, etc. that can (or cannot) make a difference, i.e., do something, in a given interaction. According to this approach, dialogue is one of the most important phonation devices through which a plethora of ‘things’ – labelled actants – can come to act from a distance. Showing that these actants can be rhetorically mobilized in a given interaction allows me to account for phenomena of ‘ventriloquism,’ that is, the various ways by which human interactants make certain entities (collectives, procedures, policies, ideologies, etc.) speak in their name and vice versa.