USING QUOTATIONS (based on Bailey 2015: 55-57)

Using a quotation means bringing the original words of a writer into your work. Quotations must not
be overused (it is generally better to summarize the ideas in your own words), but are effective when:
• the original words express an idea in a distinctive way
• the original is more concise than your summary could be
• the original version is well known
 This means you need a good reason to quote a passage word-for-word.

Quotations should be introduced by a phrase that explains how this quotation fits into your argument
and shows the source:
This view is widely shared; as Friedman stated: “Inflation is the one form of taxation that can
be imposed without legislation” (1974: 93).
or: This view is widely shared: “Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without
legislation” (Friedman 1974: 93).

(a) Short quotations (2–3 lines) are shown by “quotation marks” (NOT italics or ‘inverted commas’).
(b) Longer quotations are indented (given a wider margin) and/or printed in smaller font (size 11
instead of 12) . In this case, quotation marks are not needed.

In the poorest countries, with weak transport networks and unreliable postal services, access to
telecommunications is a vital tool for starting or developing a business, since it provides access to
wider markets. Studies have shown that when household incomes rise, more money is spent on
mobile phones than any other item (Hoffman 2012: 87).

(c) The full reference (Name Date: Page) must always be given, usually immediately after the
quote.
(d) The full stop is used once only – after the reference: “(…) imposed without legislation” (1974: 93).
(e) If the reference occurs earlier, the full stop comes at the end of quote, within quotation marks:
As Friedman (1974: 93) stated: “Inflation (…) imposed without legislation.”
(f) Care must be taken to ensure that quotations are the exact words of the original. If it is necessary
to delete some words that are irrelevant, use points (. . .) for the missing section:
“Few inventions (. . .) have been as significant as the mobile phone” (Novak 2006: 14).
(g) If you need to insert a word or phrase into the quotation to clarify a point, use square brackets:
 “Modern ideas [of freedom] differ radically from those of the ancient world” (Smith 2011:
136).
Task 1: Identify problems with incorporating the quote into the text and correct them.

a) Additionally, he points out that the technologically pioneering Chinese market “have successfully
challenged the established Western companies in terms of quality as well as innovation.”

b) This was an amazing opportunity for new operators to “grown by catering for poorer customers,
being therefore well-placed to expand downmarket”

c.) What is crucial for employees to be fully motivated “it is worthwhile for a manager to understand
which needs are the more important for individual employees.”

d.) Cognitive linguists' point of view is that “(…) language is assumed to reflect certain fundamental
properties and design features of the human mind.”

e.) The bizarre phenomenon of the Pirahã language is based on it being deprived of many of the most
basic language characteristics such as: “the absence of numbers of any kind or a concept of counting
and of any terms for quantification, the absence of color terms, the absence of embedding (…)”

f.) The Pirahã language has an unusual grammar due to the fact that some generally
approved aspects of human language are culturally limited there: “the absence of numbers of any kind
or a concept of counting and of any terms for quantification, the absence of color terms (…).”

Task 2: . Incorporate the quotation into the text at a suitable point. Make any changes necessary
to the text. You do NOT need to paraphrase the text, but may use it as it is.

Quote 1: The whole point of selecting a prefabricated string is to bypass analysis (Wray 1999: 408).
Text 1: Formulaic language benefits both comprehension and production because such expressions are
stored and retrieved as holistic, unanalyzed chunks and this contributes to economy of expression.

Quote 2:
The “true” discourse community may be rarer and more esoteric than I once thought (Swales 1993:
695).
Text 2: Swales eventually withdrew slightly from his original conception of the discourse community.

Quote 3: It’s constructions all the way down (Goldberg 2006: 18).
Text 3: The cornerstone of Construction Grammar is the notion that constructions are form-function
pairings, which may be more specific or more schematic. Clause-level syntactic constructions,
phrases, collocations, words, and morphemes are all analyzed in a similar constructional fashion.

Task 3: Find the ‘quotable’ parts and summarize the passages with a quote.

a.) [The authors discuss conventional metaphors, the so-called ‘dead’ metaphors] Expressions like
wasting time, attacking positions, going our separate ways, etc., are reflections of systematic
metaphorical concepts that structure our actions and thoughts. They are “alive” in the most
fundamental sense: they are metaphors we live by. The fact that they are conventionally fixed within
the lexicon of English makes them no less alive. (p. 55)

Lakoff, G. & M. Johnson. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

b.) English get is something of a linguistic Swiss Army knife. It has many functions. Get has the
lexical meaning of ‘receiving’ as in Look what I got for my birthday! Then there is the get-passive that
I have mentioned a couple of times in these lectures, as in Nobody move, nobody get hurt. There is a
causative construction with get, Can I get you to deliver a message? There is what we could call
inchoative get: in expressions such as It gets worse and worse, get functions as a copula, which allows
us to express a predication. Lastly, there are many idiomatic uses of get. I get up at seven means that I
wake up at seven o’clock. I do not get it means that I do not understand it. (p. 258)

Hilpert, M. (2021). Ten lectures on Diachronic Construction Grammar. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

c.) Unlike metaphor, which usually involves a comparison between two unrelated entities, metonymy
is a process whereby one entity is used to refer to another , to which it is closely related or even forms
part of. The best way to illustrate this is with an authentic example such as the following from the
British National Corpus (BNC):
(1) This created something of a diplomatic flurry between London and Washington, as the Americans
sought assurances that the British were not trying to sabotage their plans. (BNC)

In this example, London and Washington are metonyms for the British and US governments, or rather
the people who work for them. This is a common metonymic relationship, in which a place stands for
the people or organizations that are based there. (p. 408)
Littlemore, J. (2017). Metonymy. In Dancygier, B. (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive
Linguistics, 405-422. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.