Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation - cover image

Copyright

Ruth Finnegan

Published On

2011-03-01

ISBN

Paperback978-1-906924-33-1
Hardback978-1-906924-34-8
PDF978-1-906924-35-5
HTML978-1-80064-439-7

Language

  • English

Print Length

350 pages (xix + 331)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 18 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.72" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 21 x 234 mm(6.14" x 0.81" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1079g (38.06oz)
Hardback1465g (51.68oz)

Media

Illustrations41

OCLC Number

741648010

LCCN

2019452798

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

Why Do We Quote?

The Culture and History of Quotation

  • Ruth Finnegan (author)

Quoting 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'.

Endorsements

This is a rich and engaging work of outstanding scholarship. Scholars in sociolinguistics, literature, and folklore will recognize the importance of the book for their fields. General readers will find it just plain interesting.

Professor Amy Shuman

Ohio State University

Additional Resources

[blog]Is open access the future of academic publishing?(Ruth Finnegan)

Ruth Finnegan discusses Open Access and the future of academic publishing on Open University's Platform. She predicts that "the long reign of the weighty academic tome is nearing its end".

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.