Quotation through history: A historical case for the proper treatment of quotation

Abstract

I present a theory of quotation in speech reports and the resolution of indexicals in those reports based partially on the historical development of the practice of punctuating with quotation marks. For the first thousand or so years of English writing, quotation marks weren’t used. Their use in direct quotation developed in the eighteenth century through a need created by the rise of the novel, a need to clearly and frequently mark out when direct speech begins and ends. The eighteenth century practice differs noticeably from current practice. While eighteenth century novels always place direct speech forms within quotes, they sometimes also place indirect forms there as well. I present a diachronically consistent theory of quotation in speech reports. For a variety of reasons, contemporary direct speech reports may diverge from a verbatim reproduction of the reported speakers’ words: translation, removal of taboos, and clean-up of infelicities and non-standard dialect features. Speech that has been minimally altered in these respects is still appropriately placed within quotation marks. The same was true in the eighteenth century novel: but those authors allowed that context-sensitive direct forms could be altered within a quotation to indirect forms, in certain circumstances. The historical data also supports the claim that quotation marks are punctuation marks with no semantic effects. Monstrous accounts cannot handle cases where some but not all context sensitive expressions are “shifted” within quotes. I present a non-monstrous account of indexicals in reported speech.