Book Description

In examining the phenomenon of quoting from multiple angles, The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then offers a fresh view on the forms, functions and usage of quoting as a meta-communicative act in various forms of old (printed) and new (electronically mediated) communication, setting it apart from (seemingly) related acts like repeating or referring. Recent interest in the formal (copy-paste quoting) and ethical (quoting as plagiarizing) aspects of quoting has been gaining considerable momentum in linguistics (and other disciplines), predominantly fuelled by enormous technological progress and the impact on both the procedure of quoting itself and its appraisal in public discourse. Embracing a broad, interdisciplinary perspective, the authors pay special tribute to the inherent complementarity of both synchronic and diachronic perspectives. With contributions pinpointing the formal and functional evolution of quoting and tracing trends in linguistic variation, this volume brings together interpersonal pragmatics, sociolinguistics, historical, cognitive and text linguistics as well as cultural studies. In this way, the present title provides a more comprehensive and integral understanding of the nature of quoting.