Abstract
I defend a semantic theory of quotation marks, according to which these are ambiguous, as they have several different acceptations involving corresponding different conventional indications. In particular, in allusion (“mixed”) uses, the corresponding conventional indication is one with an adverbial or prepositional content, roughly equivalent to “using the quoted expression or an appropriate version of it”. And in “scare” uses, the corresponding conventional indication is 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. I also defend this view against some alternative views on which allusion and distance indications are to be seen as pragmatically conveyed. In particular, I consider several views that attempt to explain especially allusion and distance indications as pragmatic suggestions generated from a meager conventional basis, and I argue that they cannot accommodate a number of linguistic phenomena and reflectively supported theses about the use of quotation marks. I lay special emphasis on the fact that the main pragmatic theories fail to pass an extremely plausible test for challenges to polysemic accounts of an expression.
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Notes
- 1.
“Impure” in my usage is thus a purely negative concept, largely free from theoretical presuppositions. Other terms used in the literature to cover the same range of phenomena seem to me to be inappropriately theory-laden. Thus, for example, “mixed” and “hybrid” as applied to a quotation mean that the quoted expression is being both “used and mentioned”, but this seems to me already to load the dice in favor of particular accounts of the relevant uses of quotations.
- 2.
In the technical usage predominant in this paper, “quotation” is a term that applies to the result of enclosing an expression within quotation marks. In the few cases where “quotation” means something else, such as the act of forming a quotation, or the act or result of citing someone, I trust context will make this clear.
- 3.
They also include the utterance of the quotation in cases of so-called “direct quotation”, as in a normal utterance of Ford said: “thinking is the hardest work there is”. On referential uses, including a number of pragmatic aspects, see Gomez-Torrente (2001, 2011, 2013, and the bibliographical references therein).
- 4.
This qualification (already noted in Gomez-Torrente 2005) was meant to accommodate the fact that ellipsis points (and other devices, like clarifications in brackets), sometimes occur inside quotation marks but are not implied to have been uttered by the agent that is relevant in the context. These have been called “unquotation” devices in the recent literature. On this topic see Shan (2010), Maier (2014), and Saka (2017).
- 5.
As an anonymous referee has pointed out to me, this need not mean that the main motivation for a pragmatic theory is always one of economy. In Recanati’s case, for example, the main motivation for his theory is arguably what he takes to be the pictographic nature of quotations, which he believes to virtually necessitate a pragmatic view of most of what is normally conveyed by means of them. I myself, on the other hand, think that “distance” and “special name” uses of quotations, at the very least, cannot be said to be pictographic in any natural sense (see Gomez-Torrente 2005, 148, n. 6). In any case, the considerations in this paper will seek to discredit pragmatic views, and to defend a semantic view, independently of considerations concerning the alleged pictographic nature of all quotations, and exclusively by focusing on how the different theories handle the semantics/pragmatics interface in the case of the quotation marks.
- 6.
Saka (2011: section 5), modifies his 2005 theory somewhat, reducing a bit the field of things that according to the theory could be pragmatically indicated by quotation marks. On Saka’s most complete attempt to state the new theory, quotation marks carry a minimal conventional indication that the user, in using the quoted expression, means something different from or additional to what the enclosed expression conventionally means and different from or additional to what is or can be “cognitively generated therefrom” (311, n. 5). (What can be “cognitively generated” from the conventional meaning of the quoted expression includes, paradigmatically, metaphorical extensions of the conventional meaning.) I will present my criticisms of Saka’s ideas below by reference to the old, simpler theory, as they will apply indifferently to it and to the more difficult to state (and in fact not fully stated by Saka) revised theory. The abstract reason why the criticisms apply to both theories is that the indications involved in the criticisms will at no point include indications “cognitively generated” specifically from the particular meanings of the quoted expressions. See notes 10 and 17 below for exemplifications of this point.
- 7.
This would be a problem also for my earlier (2005) view of the conventional indication of allusion uses as a straightforward indication that the enclosed expression that the quoted expression is a contextually appropriate version of expressions uttered by some agent or agents who are contextually relevant (and for many other views; see note 20 below for an example). See Sect. 3 for the announced modification of my view, which takes care of these counterexamples.
- 8.
Note that the echoic view is also open to counterexamples arising from the “special name” use of quotation marks, for surely there is no “echoing” when someone simply introduces a title, or the name of a ship, etc. And for even more against echoic views see Saka (2005, section 3.3).
- 9.
On Recanati’s “attention” theory, an indication that the quotation is being used to refer to the quoted expression is semantic whenever the quotation is pure, so it cannot be canceled when it’s the intended indication. But on Saka’s theory, that indication is always pragmatic when it exists.
- 10.
Note that the same could be said of a more complicated version of (15′) incorporating the conventional indication of the quotation marks postulated in Saka’s (2011) revised theory, mentioned above in note 6. A reader of the following sentence will be at least as puzzled, and probably more, than a reader of (15′): “2” + 2 = “4”, “and” “there” are no “polyhedra” “of” seven faces; watch out, I’m not alluding to anyone’s expressions nor using the quotation marks to distance myself from the quoted expressions; I’m just indicating that I’m using the words with unusual meanings not “cognitively generated” from the conventional meanings of the quoted expressions in this way.
- 11.
A referee suggests that the fact that (14′) and (15′) will appear puzzling is predicted at least by Recanati’s theory, since it’s part of the theory that utterances of quotations (or at least normal utterances, I suppose) always have a “quotational point”, while (14′) and (15′) themselves deny that they have such a point. To this I would reply, first, that (14′) and (15′) do not deny that they have a “quotational point”; on the contrary, they state that their point is to communicate precisely the indication postulated as conventional by Recanati’s theory and Saka’s theory, respectively. And second, that if Recanati’s theory were to include the claim that the “quotational point” of utterances of impure quotations must always go beyond the indication that attention is being called to the quoted expression, and thus presumably that it must include either an allusion or a distance or a special name indication, then the theory would not merely postulate a meager conventional indication from which other non-conventional indications can be derived pragmatically, but rather a rich conventional association with the quotation marks, from which specific quotational indications might be derived in context; it would in fact be a “contextualist” version of a semantic theory of the quotation marks.
- 12.
The same could be said of (15). As noted in the text above, different basic indications can presumably be combined with different pragmatic mechanisms, so Saka’s basic indication could be combined with a mechanism of free enrichment; the point to be made will equally hold.
- 13.
Saka (2013) questions the idea of this sort of quotation as emphatic on the grounds that “reading aloud examples of mystery quotation does not normally yield the stressed syllables that emphasis would demand” (938). But I myself, on the contrary, if forced to read aloud (17) and (18), would think that I would represent best the original utterers’ intentions if I stressed the quoted items.
- 14.
The criticism doesn’t apply to the echoic theory because the echoic theorist could claim that the problem is that in (17) and (18) there is evidently no echo.
- 15.
- 16.
In any case, the emphasis indication can clearly be derived as a standard implicature, in the Gricean fashion, from a hypothetical “attention” or “difference” meaning. In the case of (18) and the “attention” hypothesis:
We presume the writer to be following the plausible maxims regulatory of conversation identified by Grice when she literally expresses the content that there will be no refunds or exchanges and all sales will be final, and attention is called to “no” and “final”.
But we must suppose that she is aware of or thinks that the concepts expressed by “no” and “final” are being emphasized if we are to hold on to this presumption. (For she must be observing the maxim of Relation directing her to say only things relevant in the context, and the hypothesis that the concepts expressed by “no” and “final” are being emphasized is necessary if she is to be supposed to be observing the maxim (while to suppose that she merely means to call attention to the expressions “no” and “final” amounts to attributing to her a failure to observe the maxim).)
And surely she thinks that we can see this, so she thinks that we can see that she thinks that the concepts expressed by “no” and “final” are being emphasized.
So she has conversationally implicated that the concepts expressed by “no” and “final” are being emphasized.
- 17.
And mutatis mutandis for Saka’s (2011) revised theory, mentioned above in note 6. The theory says that the marks mean that the utterer is signaling that something beyond or different from the meaning of the quoted expression, though not something “cognitively generated” from it, is being meant. And the utterers of (17) and (18) in the examples are signaling that something beyond or different from the meaning of the quoted expression, though not “cognitively generated” from it, is being meant—they are signaling that they want to emphasize the corresponding concepts. The further indication that the utterer is emphasizing the concept expressed by the quoted expression ought then to be painlessly conveyable as a “free enrichment” or as a standard conversational implicature of that conventional indication. A thought experiment of introducing by stipulation a pair of marks with the mentioned meaning again reinforces the point.
- 18.
The expression alluded to is understood here not to include parts which may be enclosed within the quotation marks but not for allusive purposes, such as ellipsis points, clarifications in brackets, etc. (See note 4 above.) The indications of these parts, when they appear, are probably to be understood, at least typically, as additional content inserted by the utterer, which doesn’t contribute to truth conditions, which “projects” beyond scopal devices, etc. Thus, for example, if I say Shaw said that there is no “sincerer [truer] love” than the love of food, what I say is true just in case Shaw said that there is no sincerer love than the love of food, using the words “sincerer love”; the clarification that “sincerer” means “truer” is not part of the truth conditions of my utterance. And if I say Maybe Shaw said that there is no “sincerer [truer] love” than the love of food, what is said might be the case is that Shaw said that there is no sincerer love than the love of food, using the words “sincerer love”; the clarification that “sincerer” means “truer” is not part of what is said might be the case.
- 19.
In Gomez-Torrente (2005) I spoke of the existence of the various acceptations of the quotation marks as showing that the marks are ambiguous. Some readers have suggested that I should have said they are polysemous instead. This may be acceptable, provided we become convinced that the several acceptations of the marks are in fact closely related in some specific sense, as they probably are (see my own thoughts on this matter below). But my use of “ambiguous” was and is meant to be for a weak concept that subsumes both polysemy and homonymy, and I saw and see no reason not to frame the claims of my view in terms of ambiguity, as this highlights the fact that the view is not essentially committed to a stronger claim of either polysemy or homonymy.
- 20.
This fact presents problems for many theories of allusive (or “mixed”, or “hybrid”) quotation. On Maier’s (2014) important theory, for example, the use of an allusive quotation carries a presupposition that the quoted phrase was used in an earlier utterance, and I wonder if Ford said that thinking is “the hardest work” gets analyzed roughly as I wonder if Ford said that thinking is whatever some salient speaker meant when they uttered “the hardest work”. But this doesn’t have the intuitively right truth conditions in cases where no one has uttered “the hardest work” before, and the utterer is just wondering out of the blue if Ford said that thinking is the hardest work by uttering “the hardest work”.
- 21.
Cases of essentially this kind are presented by Amaral et al. (2007) as counterexamples to the unqualified claim in Potts (2005) and in many other places that appositives and expressives are always “speaker-oriented”. In Harris and Potts (2009), Potts accepts these counterexamples to his earlier general claim, but proposes a pragmatic explanation of the cases.
- 22.
Bach has also argued that “but”, “still”, “even” and other traditional alleged generators of conventional implicatures do contribute at least typically to the truth conditions of utterances of sentences that contain them; but I am hesitant to follow him here. In any case, I reject a view like Predelli’s (2003), which, despite being semantic like the present view, largely assimilates impure allusion and distance quotation marks to “but”, “still”, etc. and sees no substantive difference between allusive indications of the quotation marks and distance indications, assigning to both of them a truth-conditional role (in the case of at least many quotational utterances).
- 23.
Ludwig and Ray (2017) relatedly propose that quotation marks are polysemous and yet the semantic rules governing their different acceptations are unified by their common use of pure quotation.
- 24.
These remarks leave open the exact nature of the mechanism that allows the communication of emphasis indications by means of quotations. But the mechanism is in all probability related to other mechanisms that make possible the communication of indications via the use of misnomers and catachreses. As noted above in the text, in all their acceptations the quotation marks conventionally indicate a content involving the quoted expression. It is therefore easy for new uses to arise that seek to indicate new contents involving the quoted expression, such as the content that the concept expressed by the quoted expression is being emphasized.
- 25.
I am grateful to Minyao Huang, Kasia Jaszczolt, Kirk Ludwig and Mark McCullagh for their reactions to a presentation of part of this material at the 2015 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting in Vancouver, and to Paul Saka and an anonymous referee for large batches of written comments on earlier versions of the paper. Thanks also to audiences at the UNAM and the University of Texas at Austin for helpful comments. The research was supported by the Mexican CONACyT (CCB 2011 166502), by the PAPIIT-UNAM project IA 401015, and by the Spanish MINECO (research project FFI2015-70707-P), and a generous sabbatical leave grant from the DGAPA-UNAM allowed me to complete work on the paper.
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Gómez-Torrente, M. (2017). Semantics vs. Pragmatics in Impure Quotation. In: Saka, P., Johnson, M. (eds) The Semantics and Pragmatics of Quotation. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68747-6_6
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