par De Brabanter, Philippe 
Référence 6th Łódź Symposium: New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics (26-28 May 2015: Łódź, Poland)
Publication Non publié, 2012-05-26
Référence 6th Łódź Symposium: New Developments in Linguistic Pragmatics (26-28 May 2015: Łódź, Poland)
Publication Non publié, 2012-05-26
Communication à un colloque
| Résumé : | Quoteless quotationsIn the philosophical literature about quotation, it is a standard assumption that there is no quotation without quotation marks. This lies at the basis of what have been dubbed the ‘semantic’ theories of quotation, which currently dominate the field (Cappelen & Lepore 1997, 2005; García-Carpintero 2004; Gómez-Torrente 2001, 2005).When faced with (apparent) instances of quotation without quote marks, proponents of those theories tend to adopt one of these strategies:there’s no ‘quoteless’ quotation: the marks are there (in logical form) even when they aren’t (at the surface). quoteless mention generates pragmatic repair: an utterance of Boston has two syllables is blatantly false, and this triggers ‘corrective’ implicatures to the effect that the utterer meant to talk about the word, not the city. quoteless mention falls outside the scope of a theory of quotation.A general problem with these strategies is that they somehow make all language use contingent on writing conventions. One specific problem with (i) is that it postulates the existence of (at least covert) marks in all languages in which quoting is possible — arguably all extant languages, including many that have never been written. Though (ii) resorts to a standard Gricean move (cf. metaphor and irony), one potential problem with it is that it predicts that, e.g. My name is Donald will take longer to process than My name is ‘Donald’, since the former but not the latter requires pragmatic repair. The problem with (iii) is it looks suspiciously like a theory-preserving move that no empirically-minded linguist would accept.In this paper, I’ll flesh out these points, analyse some oral data, and will further argue that quoteless quotation occurs even in the trickier case of ‘mixed’ quotation, notably in literary allusion.I’ll conclude that theories of quotation marks are, ultimately, prescriptive and do not, therefore, make the grade as theories of quotation as an empirical phenomenon. I’ll outline a radically pragmatic ‘depictive’ account based on Clark & Gerrig (1990) and Recanati (2001, 2009) that holds the best promise of providing a descriptively adequate theory of all varieties of quotation.References:Cappelen, H, and E. Lepore. 1997. Varieties of quotation. Mind 106.429-50.Cappelen, H, and E. Lepore. 2005. Varieties of quotation revisited. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 17.51-75.Clark, H., and R. Gerrig. 1990. Quotations as demonstrations. Language 66.764-805.García-Carpintero, M. 2004. The Deferred Ostension theory of quotation. Noûs 38.674–692Gómez-Torrente, M. 2001. Quotation revisited. Philosophical Studies 102.123–153.Gómez-Torrente, M. 2005. Remarks on impure quotation. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 17.129-51.Recanati, F. 2001. Open quotation. Mind 110.637-87.Recanati, F. 2009. Open quotation revisited. Philosophical Perspectives 22.399-427 |
