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Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation

  • Ruth Finnegan (author)
Metadata
TitleWhy Do We Quote?
SubtitleThe Culture and History of Quotation
ContributorRuth Finnegan (author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0012
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0012
Licensehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
CopyrightRuth Finnegan
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Publication placeCambridge, UK
Published on2011-03-01
ISBN978-1-906924-33-1 (Paperback)
978-1-906924-34-8 (Hardback)
978-1-906924-35-5 (PDF)
978-1-80064-439-7 (HTML)
Short abstractThis book combines a down-to-earth account of contemporary quoting with an examination of its comparative and historical background. Drawing from anthropology, cultural history, folklore, cultural studies, sociolinguistics, literary studies and the ethnography of speaking, Ruth Finnegan’s fascinating study sets our present conventions in cross-cultural and historical perspective. She traces the curious history of quotation marks, examines the long tradition of quotation collections, and explores the uses of quotation in literary, visual and oral traditions. By tracking the changing definitions and control of quoting over the millennia, Finnegan sheds new light on ideas such as ‘imitation’, ‘allusion’, ‘authorship’, ‘originality’ and ‘plagiarism’.
Long abstractQuoting is all around us. But do we really know what it means? How do people actually quote today, and how did our present systems come about? This book brings together a down-to-earth account of contemporary quoting with an examination of the comparative and historical background that lies behind it and the characteristic way that quoting links past and present, the far and the near. Drawing from anthropology, cultural history, folklore, cultural studies, sociolinguistics, literary studies and the ethnography of speaking, Ruth Finnegan’s fascinating study sets our present conventions into cross-cultural and historical perspective. She traces the curious history of quotation marks, examines the long tradition of quotation collections with their remarkable recycling across the centuries, and explores the uses of quotation in literary, visual and oral traditions. The book tracks the changing definitions and control of quoting over the millennia and in doing so throws new light on ideas such as 'imitation', 'allusion', 'authorship', 'originality' and 'plagiarism'.
Print length350 pages (xix + 331)
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Dimensions156 x 18 x 234 mm | 6.14" x 0.72" x 9.21" (Paperback)
156 x 21 x 234 mm | 6.14" x 0.81" x 9.21" (Hardback)
Weight1079g | 38.06oz (Paperback)
1465g | 51.68oz (Hardback)
Media41 illustrations
OCLC Number741648010
LCCN2019452798
BIC
  • CB
  • JHMC
BISAC
  • LAN000000
  • SOC002010
  • SOC011000
LCC
  • PN171.Q6
Keywords
  • Quoting
  • plagiarism
  • imitation
  • originality
  • quotation marks
  • cultural history
  • cultural anthropology
  • quotation
  • language
  • English
  • folklore
  • sociolinguistics
  • oral traditions
  • oral literature
Contributors

Ruth Finnegan

(author)
Fellow at British Academy
Honorary Fellow of Somerville College at University of Oxford

Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal. She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford.