Abstract
In this chapter I propose, unlike Maier (Semant Pragmat 7, 2014), that quoted fragments in so called ‘mixed quotations’ (what I prefer to call ‘mixed indirect reports’) are opaque. This view of opacity is required, we propose, to preserve the difference between direct and indirect reports, direct reports involving possibly high levels of literality, accuracy and granularity, even if we concede, in keeping with Maier, that verbatim quotations are also susceptible to contextual standards of ‘verbatimness’, as Maier terms it. Maier’s considerations against opacity and in favour of transparency are based on a shifted interpretation of indexicals, anaphoric reference, morphological adjustments (in Italian) and grammatical adjustments (transformations involving a different word order with respect to the original utterance in Dutch). Claim by claim, we are made aware that we should see regard things differently and that, after all, it makes sense to adhere to the conservative and classical Fregean claim that mixed quotations (and indeed quotations) are cases involving opacity. In fact, where would we be if we abandoned the idea that quotation in mixed quotation requires reference to an utterance understood to be verbatim, rather than through mere paraphrase? Is this not similar to arguing that quotation is also not an opaque context? Yet Frege, as highlighted by Evans (The varieties of reference, OUP, Oxford, 1982), insisted that intensional contexts were contexts providing evidence in favour of opacity and were at a level of meaning which was different from denotation (the other level of meaning which is constituted by senses or modes of presentation).
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Notes
- 1.
A serious objection to Capone’s Paraphrase Principle was raised by Franco Lo Piparo (personal communication). Lo Piparo stated that the Paraphrase Principle is anchored too much to the original speaker’s approval with regards to the legitimacy of the indirect report. However, in some cases, the speaker is not the best authority to judge what he says, and what he is really saying only emerges in interaction with the addressees. We assume that the cases which Lo Piparo has in mind are those in which, by saying something, we offend a hearer and we are only aware of that when the hearer tells us. We assume that if Lo Piparo is considering the perlocutionary effects of the utterance, then his objection may not jeopardise the Paraphrase Principle which is primarily intended to encompass illocutionary effects and what the speaker means or says, without considering the perlocutionary effects, whether intended or unintended. Another response to Lo Piparo’s objection is to combine his objection with the one raised by Wayne Davis (p.c.) and offer the same reply; when the original speaker is likely to fail to be sufficiently objective, then the indirect report has to be approved by an impartial judge.
- 2.
Of course, to be fair to Maier’s compelling paper, he makes an interesting distinction between quotation and mixed quotation. In quotation proper, the quoted segmented between the quotation marks is syntactically an NP. In mixed indirect reports (what Maier terms mixed quotation), the quoted fragment (encapsulated between the quotation marks) is syntactically any grammatical category that suits the constituent which it is occupying syntactically (it could be an N, a V, etc.).
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Capone, A. (2019). Maier on the Alleged Transparency of Mixed Quotation. In: Pragmatics and Philosophy. Connections and Ramifications. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19146-7_9
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