Quotation

Quotation is fundamental to human communication. Language theorists have studied the linguistic, literary, semiotic, philosophical, functional, and cognitive nature of oral and written quotation for many decades, formally labeling it reported speech and thought. Theorists of direct (quote-marked) and indirect (non-quote-marked) quotation have concentrated most heavily on direct quotation—since quote marks add an important nonlinguistic, thus uniquely rhetorical element to language captured inside quotes—and somewhat less attention to the semantics of indirect speech.

Quotation qualifies as meta-language: language about language, one person’s repeating another’s words, whether in fictional or factual discourses. Accurate quotation of informational sources is critical in many occupations, especially journalism. A contemporary journalistic story is, in fact, virtually nothing but a series of quotations, making the citing of news sources journalism’s fundamental narrative device. Around the late 19th century, journalistic source quotation become commonplace, but there is no formal history of quotation in journalism, probably because reporters’ earliest source citations were generalized glosses and very loose summations, rather than accurately quoted words.

Only since the end of the 20th century have communication scholars begun to investigate, for example, how quotation helps establish news objectivity, or accuracy and fairness to all sides of an issue; can create different “voices” within a story; or rhetorically depicts differing “subjectivities” of sources and reporters, depending on the quote mode. Some studies treat quotation transparently, as simple information transmission—for example, when different sources are counted to assess viewpoint “balance”—but sometimes without attention to quotation itself as a unique meta-linguistic act.

This entry explains factual quotation’s emergence in journalism, details its linguistic and functional nature, and presents quote modes representative of contemporary print news. The focus on print is because television news features “sound bites,” where sources are seen and heard. Similarly, radio news sources are “heard from.” Only in print does the depiction of speech and thought take such a central role as a linguistic, rhetorical, and strictly standardized compositional process deserving study in its own right.