Double-Duty Quotation: The Deferred Ostension Account

This paper starts by outlining relevant aspects of a view of how indexicals in general and demonstratives in particular work, after which it presents a version of Davidson’s (1979) Demonstrative Theory of quotation that I have argued for in previous work. On this form of the demonstrative view, the quoted material plays a role analogous to the demonstrated item in cases of “deferred ostension” uses of ordinary demonstratives. The paper then examines the phenomenon that Recanati calls open quotation, here called instead double-duty quotation, and argues that the version of the Demonstrative Theory previously sketched is consistent with the existence of doubleduty quotation, and to that extent is confirmed by it even though the theory was elaborated without regard for double-duty quotation.