Others’ words and voices may be more, or less, explicitly signalled and differentiated, and some kinds of repetitions approved, others not – or not in particular contexts or from particular speakers. In others again it can be idiosyncratic family sayings, quips from television comedians or just tinges in everyday speaking. The notions around quotation flow into many different directions, emphases and viewpoints – and that is only the terms in one language.ĦThus what counts as quotation may in one setting be confined to authorised-as-sacred passages, in others to words from revered human ancestors.
The many terms noted in Chapter 7 which at one time or another have been used as synonymous or contiguous with ’quotation’ and ’quoting’ give some idea of its potential spread (see Fig.
And even when it is, there is little overall consensus even in one period let alone across the world or the ages as to just where the boundaries ultimately lie. In some instances ’quotation’ may indeed be clearly demarcated – but not always. Does repeating snatches from others’ conversations count and ’catchwords’ from television programmes? Or is it only ’proper’ quotations from the Bible or Shakespeare? Where are the boundaries of ’plagiarism’? And how far or in what sense are ’quotations’ distinct from ’normal’ language?ĥSuch queries are indeed to the point. This chimes well with the uncertainties of some British mass observers over where quotation starts and ends.
’No one has successfully solved what is and is not a quotation’ admitted the committee preparing the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations’ second edition fifty years ago: a question, the most recent editor adds, ’which may still be debated today’ (ODQ7 2009: xvi). The initial impression of clear-cut demarcation based on contrasts such as those between direct and indirect speech or the presence or absence of ’quote marks’ soon dissolves, for the nature and boundaries of quoting turn out elusive and complex. For if the explorations in this book have shown anything it is that quotation is not a single thing. So what is it?ĤThe question remains a knotty one. Just what is it to draw in, and on, the words and voices of others? And why, eventually, do we quote? 9.1. The background to our quoting is long and vast, practices and debates that still cast their influence over how we quote – a variegated and continuing human history that still shapes the engagement with others’ words and voices today.ģBut we are still left with a puzzle, one that the mass observers, like others, were reflectively concerned with. The intervening chapters since those opening examples reveal a plenitude of cases stretching back through the centuries: the forms and meanings of quotation marks the roots of quotation collections and their at-times remarkable continuities quoting in art and music unease about the definition of quotation or the status of unwritten forms others’ words and voices in literary, religious and rhetorical settings issues over authorship, plagiarism and control. The dominant educational practices presumption of widespread literacy particular mix of media literary genres the tensions surrounding notions of plagiarism the uses and prohibitions of quoting and their fluid dynamic amidst changing technologies and ethics even the linguistic forms through which we speak and write – all these between them present one specific case within the long human experience of quoting and quotation.ĢAnd it is also clear that these contemporary participants in the practices of quoting and in the debates that surround them are far from alone. Though they are by no means uniform across all participants and situations, some of the specificities of that ’here and now’ of quoting in twenty-first century England are now clearer. The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved byġOur glances at quoting in other times and places throw a sharper light on the contemporary quoting patterns with which we started. Our speech, that is, all our utterances filled with others’ words
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