Friday, January 30, 2015

speech - How do you quote a quotation that itself has mismatched quotes?



Suppose that Eve said (in spoken English)




An apple a day keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a
great person? Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever,

much better than that Alice person




Now let us say that Bob wants to tell Alice what Eve said. Naively, he might say




Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said quote An apple a
day keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great
person? Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever,
much better than that Alice person unquote. What do you suppose it

means?




The problem with saying this is that Alice would interpret this as




Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away." Also isn't Eve such a great person? Like my
mom always said "Eve is the best person ever, much better than that
Alice person." What do you suppose it means?





Whereas Bob actually meant




Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great person?
Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better
than that Alice person." What do you suppose it means?





How would Bob properly quote Eve without causing the above ambiguity?






Note that this problem only really applies to spoken English, since if instead Bob was writing a letter to Alice, he could write




Eve said the weirdest thing the other day. She said "An apple a day
keeps the doctor away, unquote. Also isn't Eve such a great person?

Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better
than that Alice person." What do you suppose it means?




and if Eve instead used quotation marks, there are already conventions for dealing with that.


Answer



To resolve ambiguity in spoken English (and, I’d expect, in any other language), use appropriate framing / context.



To use your example, Bob could say:





Eve said the weirdest thing the other day.
She said, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” then she said the word, “unquote”. Then she referred to herself in the third person, saying, “Also isn't Eve such a great person?” Eve then quotes her mother by saying, “Like my mom always said quote Eve is the best person ever, much better than that Alice person”.




As you can see, this gets messy pretty quickly.



In practice, it would be easier to quote the relevant parts, simplifying the commentary.


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