20080829

assoandsosays

There are roughly two motives in quoting someone. In one you expect the esteem for the person to lend credence to the words. In the other you expect the words to be judged on their own, and the attribution is merely giving credit where credit is due --and perhaps to affect the esteem for the person.
The first approach is authoritarian. The second is the ideal of rational discourse.
Posted by Zac at 11:10 AM
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3 comments:

Sra said...

Sometimes you quote someone because they have said what you want to say better than you could. Methinks.

29/8/08 11:54
Sra said...

P.S. In fifth grade, we were presented with a quote every week or so, and a lot of them were attributed to "Anonymous", and I remember thinking, "Gee, this Anonymous guy sure got around!" I thought it was some Greek dude.

29/8/08 11:56
Zac said...

I had similar confusion about "Ibid." Apparently it's a book with references to everything ever written anywhere about anything.

30/8/08 03:05

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