Remarks on Impure Quotation

Abstract

Quotation marks are ambiguous, although the conventional rules that govern their different uses are similar in that they contain quantifications over quotable expressions. Pure uses are governed by a simple rule: by enclosing any expression within quotation marks one gets a singular term, the quotation, that stands for the enclosed expression. Impure uses are far less simple. In a series of uses the quotation marks conventionally indicate that (part of) the enclosed expression is a contextually appropriate version of expressions uttered by some relevant agent. When the quotation marks have this meaning, it is tempting to think of them as contributing that indication to the truth-conditional content of the utterance. I adopt a cautious attitude towards this hypothesis, for the evidence in its favor is inconclusive. In other uses the quotation marks conventionally indicate that the enclosed expression should be used not "plainly" but in some broadly speaking "distanced" way, or that it is being so used by the utterer, and typically context makes clear the exact nature of the "distance" at stake. In these cases the quotation marks do not even appear to contribute that indication to the truth-conditional content of the utterance.

Open Quotation Revisited

“…That is Cappelen & Lepore's response to my examples. Gomez‐Torrente, who agrees with me (against Cappelen & Lepore) that the mixed‐quotational ascription of the quoted words to the reportee is cancelable, agrees with them that my example (20), because it involves scare quotes, ‘cannot convince someone who does not accept that all uses of the quotation marks have the same meaning’ (Gomez‐Torrente 2005: 135).…”

“…14 14 Gomez‐Torrente claims that there are also non‐echoic uses that are not instances of flat mention. He mentions certain ‘scare‐quoting’ uses that he thinks are not echoic (2005: 150, fn 16); but I am not convinced by his example, which seems amenable to a context‐shifting analysis. …”

“…19 19 Marga Reimer gives an example like (19), for which she credits Philippe De Brabanter (Reimer 2005: 180). See also Gomez‐Torrente 2005: 135 for a similar example intended to demonstrate cancelability without relying on scare‐quoting. Benbaji (2005: 35) also mentions the possibility that the echoee might not be the reportee, but strangely shies away from the conclusion that the mixed‐quotational implication is cancelable, on the grounds that the conventional implicature/presupposition that someone used the words is not. …”

CRITICAL NOTICE OF LANGUAGE TURNED ON ITSELF, BY HERMAN CAPPELEN AND ERNIE LEPORE

“…I discuss later whether they apply to Tarski's theory. Following Richard (1986) and Gómez‐Torrente (2003), I will argue that the first three, at least, do not apply; what emerges is that Tarski's actual theory is quite close to the Minimal Theory that Cappelen and Lepore present—these objections threaten neither account. The parallel continues with the fourth objection, which threatens both accounts.…”

The Semantics and Pragmatics of Hybrid Quotations

“…if one adopts a weaker version of the mention‐line. Thus, Gómez‐Torrente takes quote marks in MQ to conventionally indicate that the quoted string is ‘a contextually appropriate version of expressions uttered by some agent or agents who are contextually relevant’ (2005: 131). This appears much more difficult to cancel than speech attribution (2005: 136).…”