QUOTATION, CONTEXT SENSITIVITY, SIGNS AND EXPRESSIONS

Can one and the same quotation be used on different occasions to quote distinct objects? The view that it can is taken for granted throughout the literature (e.g. Goddard & Routley 1966, Christensen 1967, Davidson 1979, Goldstein 1984, Jorgensen et al 1984, Atlas 1989, Clark & Gerrig 1990, Washington 1992, Garcia-Carpintero 1994, 2004, 2005, Reimer 1996, Saka 1998, Wertheimer 1999). Garcia-Carpintero (1994, p. 261) illustrates with the quotation expression ''gone''. He says it can be used to quote any of the following items: 1. The expression (''gone' is dissyllabic'); 2. Different types instantiated by the tokens (''gone' is cursive'); 3. Different types somehow related to the token (say, the graphic version of the uttered quoted material, or the spoken version of the inscribed quoted material, as in ''gone' sounds nice'); 4. Different tokens somehow related to the quoted token ('What was the part of the title of the movie which, by falling down, caused the killing? ‘gone’ was'); 5. The quoted token itself ('At least one of these words is heavier than 'gone'' which you should imagine written in big wooden letters). Here’s another of his examples: 6. There are contexts in which the quotations 'Madrid' and 'Madrid' would have the same content, but there are easily conceivable contexts in which they would have different contents... (Garcia-Carpintero 1994, p. 260; cf. also Garcia-Carpintero 2005, p. 97) We can summarize his points (as well as those of the other authors referenced above) as the thesis of Quotation Context Sensitivity (QCS): QCS: Let S be a sentence with a quotation expression Q. Two utterances u and u' of S can express different propositions because Q in u and in u’ quotes different items.