1.Introduction

Newspaper headlines are designed to attract readers’ attention to a singled-out event while at the same time luring them into reading the news story. For online papers, this means click baits (Blom and Hansen 2015Blom, Jonas Nygaard, and Kenneth Reinecke Hansen 2015 “Click Bait: Forward-Reference as Lure in Online News Headlines.” Journal of Pragmatics 76: 87–100. ), if not subscriptions for full online access, and for printed papers, it means selling paper copies, if not subscriptions. By arousing readers’ curiosity and desire to find out more about an event, headlines do not only have representative, but also directive illocutionary potentials. In the printed and online quality press, headlines come with the presumption of presenting information considered to be true inviting readers to follow up on the headline and read the printed news story or access further news frames by clicking on the hyperlinked headline. The contextual constraints of the printed press require headlines to be brief and eye-catching and that is why they tend to contain indexical expressions rather than complex noun phrases and be syntactically incomplete and semantically underspecified (Chovanec 2014Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 118–120). To catch their readers’ eyes, headlines are printed in particular fonts, colours, and sizes, and they may be accompanied by pictures.

From a discourse-pragmatic perspective in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts, headlines are a constitutive part of the news story. This is reflected in headlines containing indexical expressions with their janus-like anaphoric and cataphoric referencing potentials, connecting not only the headline with the news story, but also the news story with the headline. It is also reflected in the strategic use of quotations, which refer anaphorically to some prior stretch of discourse produced in another context and cataphorically to the news story in which relevant metadata of the quotation, such as source, quotative and other relevant contextual coordinates, may be entextualised11.‘Entextualisation’ as used in the discourse-pragmatic framework shares Park and Bucholtz’s (2009Park, Joseph Sung-Yul, and Mary Bucholtz 2009 “Public Transcripts: Entextualization and Linguistic Representation in Institutional Contexts.” Text & Talk 5: 485–502. , 489) conceptualisation in terms of “conditions inherent in the transposition of discourse from one context into another”. The discourse-pragmatic framework additionally considers the entextualisation of unbounded context at particular stages in the discourse. This is the case when participants assign an unbounded referential domain, for instance ‘here’, the status of a bounded referential domain, for instance ‘here in Manchester’. It also applies to unbounded events, for instance to the embodied act of speaking entextualised in ‘quote’, ‘criticise’ or ‘blame’, or to embodied speakers, for instance ‘citizen’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Keir Starmer’. This is further elaborated in Sections 2 and 4. in accordance with the discursive constraints of the quoting discourse, the printed quality press in this study.

This paper is firmly anchored in discourse pragmatics and its overarching premises: the Gricean Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975Grice, Herbert Paul 1975 “Logic and Conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics, ed. by Peter Cole, and Jerry L. Morgan, 41–58. New York: Academic Press.), intentionality of communicative action (Searle 1969Searle, John R. 1969 Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 1983Searle, John R. 1983 Intentionality. An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge University Press. ), pluralism of communicative action22. Sbisà (2013)Sbisà, Marina 2013 “Some Remarks about Speech Act Pluralism.” In Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy, ed. by Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, and Marco Carapezza, 227–244. Cham: Springer. refers to pluralism of communicative action as ‘speech act pluralism’. Illocutionary pluralism is discussed in Sbisà (2023)Sbisà, Marina 2023 Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. . (Fetzer 2022Fetzer, Anita 2022 “Doing Things with Discourse in the Mediated Political Arena: Participation and Pluralism of Discursive Action.” Pragmatics & Society 13 (5): 770–747. ; Sbisà 2013Sbisà, Marina 2013 “Some Remarks about Speech Act Pluralism.” In Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy, ed. by Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo, and Marco Carapezza, 227–244. Cham: Springer. , 2023Sbisà, Marina 2023 Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ), and indexicality of communicative action (Gumperz 1996Gumperz, John J. 1996 “The Linguistic and Cultural Relativity of Inference.” In Rethinking Linguistic Relativity, ed. by John J. Gumperz, and Stephen C. Levinson, 374–406. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). It is also based on the premise that discourse comes with the presumption of being — more or less — coherent, as put forward by the “general default principle of coherence” (Bublitz and Lenk 1999Bublitz, Wolfram, and Uta Lenk 1999 “Disturbed Coherence: ‘Fill Me in’.” In Coherence in Spoken and Written Discourse, ed. by Wolfram Bublitz, Uta Lenk, and Eija Ventola, 153–174. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 157, original emphasis), which may be seen as mirroring relevance theory’s fundamental premise that communication comes with the presumption of being optimally relevant (Sperber and Wilson 1986Sperber, Dan, and Deidre Wilson 1986 Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell., 158). The discourse-pragmatic premises hold both for discourse-as-a-whole, in this instance the news story, and for its constitutive parts, such as headline, subhead, lead and paragraph. Discourse pragmatics conceives quotation as communicative action and thus does not only account for the constitutive parts of speaker (or: quoter), addressee, illocutionary force (or: quotative), and one or more propositions (or: quoted). It also considers explicitly the contextual embeddedness and felicity conditions of the quotation imported in the quoting discourse.33.For a context-based analysis of Austinian felicity condition, see Sbisà (2002b)Sbisà, Marina 2002b “Speech Acts in Context.” Language and Communication 22 (4): 421–436. . Fetzer (2022Fetzer, Anita 2022 “Doing Things with Discourse in the Mediated Political Arena: Participation and Pluralism of Discursive Action.” Pragmatics & Society 13 (5): 770–747. , 2024Fetzer, Anita 2024 “ ‘Being Sensible is Now a Radical Concept I LOVE that Quote haha’: Quotations in Political Speeches and User Comments.” Internet Pragmatics (online first). ) expands the analysis by additionally adapting Searlean felicity conditions to a production- and reception-oriented analysis to discursive action in and across contexts.

In discourse pragmatics, newsworthiness is not an inherent feature of news discourse. Rather, it is — just as discourse coherence — constructed and negotiated by participants in interaction. Its discursive construction is based on the contextualisation of news values, such as unexpectedness, impact, superlativeness, eliteness, proximity, timeliness, negativity, positivity, and personalisation (Bednarek 2016Bednarek, Monika 2016 “Voices and Values in the News: News Media Talk, News Values and Attribution.” Discourse, Context & Media 11: 27–37. ; Bednarek and Caple 2017Bednarek, Monika, and Helen Caple 2017 The Discourse of News Values: How News Organisations Create Newsworthiness. New York: Oxford University Press. ; Bell 1991Bell, Allan 1991 The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.). Adopting the parts-whole perspective, both news discourse and its headlines come with the presumption of coherence and newsworthiness. Despite having been produced in another discourse in another context, quotations in headlines — referred to as quotation headlines44.In this paper ‘quotation headline’ is used as an umbrella term which refers to quotation headlines proper and to quotations contained in a headline. in the following — come with the presumption of newsworthiness. This is not only because of their placing in the superordinate position of a headline above lead and news story and their cataphoric referencing potential to the news story, but also because of their indexical reference to the genre expectation that the headline quotation will be taken up and addressed in the news story, thus recontextualising some prior, taken-for-granted contextualisation. In headlines of the printed press, the constitutive parts of the communicative act of quotation are hardly ever fully entextualised because “the length of a headline is dictated by the constraints of page layout, and page layout is the work of subeditors” (Bell 1991Bell, Allan 1991 The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell., 186). The presumption of newsworthiness holding for news discourse as a whole and for the constitutive part of headline is one of the reasons why readers may be lured into proceeding with their contextualisation of an underspecified headline to bring out its newsworthiness by connecting the headline with background information provided in the news story. One important device to achieve that goal, this paper argues, is the strategic use of the act of quotation.

This paper examines how the communicative act of quotation is adapted to the contextual constraints of headlines in printed quality newspapers. It analyses (1) frequency and formats, e.g. direct, indirect, scare, mixed and mixed type, (2) their typographic and linguistic signalling, considering the entextualisation of its constitutive parts and felicity conditions, e.g. quotation marks, quotative, source, and contextual embeddedness, and (3) their uptake and (re)contextualisation in the news story. The data examined comprise headlines from the print versions of the quality newspapers The Guardian and The Times collected between 7 and 21 August 2020, and between 9 and 20 August 2021. The research opted for the print versions of the newspapers as both the newspapers and their news stories are bounded texts, which is not the case with hyperlinked online papers.

The paper is structured as follows: The following sections present research reports on quotations and news headlines. The fourth section examines the strategic use of quotations in the data sets: Section 4.1 presents method and data, Section 4.2 results and distribution, Section 4.3 format and linguistic signalling, Section 4.4 discursive function, and Section 4.5 uptake. This is followed by a discussion (Section 5).

2.Quotations in context

Quotations have been analysed in and across linguistics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, conversation analysis and philosophy, to name but the most prominent research paradigms. Discourse analysis addresses questions of hypothetical discourse, talking voices and allusion (Tannen 2007Tannen, Deborah 2007 Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ; Weiss 2020Weiss, Daniel 2020 “Analogical Reasoning with Quotations.” Journal of Pragmatics 155: 101–110. ), and conversation analysis considers quotability, formatting and functions (Clayman 1995Clayman, Steven 1995 “Defining Moments, Presidential Debates, and the Dynamics of Quotability.” Journal of Communication 45 (3): 118–146. ; Reber 2021Reber, Elisabeth 2021 Quoting in Parliamentary Question Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). Philosophical investigations examine sense and reference, force, or proper names, but also their status as demonstrations (Clark and Gerrig 1990Clark, Herbert H., and Richard J. Gerrig 1990 “Quotations as Demonstrations.” Language 66 (4): 764–805. ; Saka 2013Saka, Paul 2013 “Quotation.” Philosophy Compass 8 (10): 935–949. ).

Linguistic and pragmatic approaches have focussed on the formatting, signalling and function of quotations, not only addressing the semantics-pragmatics interface but also cognitive, social, and discursive implications (Arendholz et al. 2015Arendholz, Jenny, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig (eds.) 2015 The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then. Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Brendel et al. 2011Brendel, Elke, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach 2011 “Exploring the Meaning of Quotation.” In Understanding Quotation, ed. by Elke Brendel, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach, 1–33. Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Fetzer 2015Fetzer, Anita 2015 “ ‘When You Came into Office You Said that Your Government Would Be Different’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Mediated Political Discourse.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin. 245–273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Fetzer and Bull 2019Fetzer, Anita, and Peter Bull 2019 “Quoting Ordinary People in Prime Minister’s Questions.” In The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Elda Weizman, 73–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Fetzer and Weiss 2020Fetzer, Anita, and Daniel Weiss 2020 “Doing Things with Quotes: Introduction.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 84–88. ; Morady Moghaddam 2019Morady Moghaddam, Mostafa 2019 The Praxis of Indirect Reports Cognitive, Sociopragmatic, and Philosophical Issues. Cham: Springer. ). Bublitz (2015)Bublitz, Wolfram 2015 “Introducing Quoting as a Ubiquitous Meta-Communicative Act.” In The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then, ed. by Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig, 1–26. Berlin: De Gruyter. describes quotation as taking up other’s voices, and defines quoting as a complex meta-communicative act, in and through which the focus and perspective of another communicative act are changed and re-contextualised. Analogously to semantic, pragmatic and philosophical research (Brendel et al. 2011Brendel, Elke, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach 2011 “Exploring the Meaning of Quotation.” In Understanding Quotation, ed. by Elke Brendel, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach, 1–33. Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Cappelen and Lepore 1997Cappelen, Herman, and Ernie Lepore 1997 “Varieties of Quotation.” Mind 106 (423): 429–450. ; Saka 2013Saka, Paul 2013 “Quotation.” Philosophy Compass 8 (10): 935–949. ), Bublitz (2015Bublitz, Wolfram 2015 “Introducing Quoting as a Ubiquitous Meta-Communicative Act.” In The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then, ed. by Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig, 1–26. Berlin: De Gruyter. , 9) differentiates between pure quotes, direct quotes, indirect quotes, mixed quotes, echo quotes, and scare quotes; he discusses their multifarious, context- and quoter-dependent functions reaching from endorsing quoted content and its source to deflecting responsibility from the quoted and assigning it to source only. In linguistic stylistics, Short (1991)Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge. distinguishes between five different modes of speech presentation in newspaper articles: (1) direct speech, which shares Bublitz’s form-based features; (2) free direct speech, which shares a direct quote’s features, but not the necessary feature of introductory framing, that is the presentation of source and quotative, and sometimes quoter; (3) indirect speech, which shares the form-based features of indirect quotes; and (4) free indirect speech, which is also referred to as free indirect discourse (Semino and Short 2004Semino, Elena, and Michael Short 2004 Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. ) or as mixed type of quotation (Fetzer 2020Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. ). Short (1991)Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge., and Semino and Short (2004)Semino, Elena, and Michael Short 2004 Corpus Stylistics: Speech, Writing and Thought Presentation in a Corpus of English Writing. London: Routledge. also mention (5) narrative report of speech, respectively narrative report of speech acts, which corresponds to the systemic-functional-grammar concept of verbiage (Halliday 1994Halliday, Michael 1994 Introduction to Functional Grammar. 2nd ed. London: Arnold., 141). More recently, other formats have been added to the list: focusing quotations embed the quotative in a pseudo-cleft-like focussing construction, e.g. ‘And this is what they said’ followed by the quoted content (Fetzer 2020Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. ; Fetzer and Bull 2019Fetzer, Anita, and Peter Bull 2019 “Quoting Ordinary People in Prime Minister’s Questions.” In The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Elda Weizman, 73–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), and a non-faithful kind of quotation: fake quotes with the intention to mislead, on the part of the quoter, mis-metarepresenting source and/or quoted and/or other relevant contextual coordinates (Kirner-Ludwig 2020Kirner-Ludwig, Monika 2020 “Creation, Dissemination and Uptake of Fake-Quotes in Lay Political Discourse on Facebook and Twitter.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 101–118. ). Hybrid formats, such as mixed quotations composed of different formats, for instance a direct or indirect quotation embedding a scare quotation, have been examined by Saka (2013)Saka, Paul 2013 “Quotation.” Philosophy Compass 8 (10): 935–949. and Cappelen and Lepore (1997)Cappelen, Herman, and Ernie Lepore 1997 “Varieties of Quotation.” Mind 106 (423): 429–450. .

Short (1991)Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge. claims that the different modes of speech presentation express varying degrees of faithfulness: Direct speech claims to represent faithfully the truthfulness of illocutionary force, propositional content, and words and structures used by the quoted speaker (or: source). Indirect speech claims to represent faithfully the truthfulness of illocutionary force and propositional content, but not that of the words and structures used in its original formulation. In the discourse-pragmatic approach to quotation adopted in this paper, the high degree of faithfulness claimed by direct speech does not hold fully because quotation is seen as the quoter’s entextualisation of a prior discursive contribution and its contextual embeddedness and thus their interpretation of the stretch of discourse to be quoted.

Cognitive pragmatics addresses the relationship between representation and metarepresentation, and between representation, interpretation, and pragmatic enrichment (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ). Quotation is described as a kind of metarepresentation which “involves a higher-order representation with a lower-order representation embedded inside it. The higher-order representation is generally an utterance or a thought” (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 232). Quotation can thus only “be analysed in terms of a notion of representation by resemblance” (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 243, original emphasis), and “resemblance involves shared properties” (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 244). As a consequence of that, direct quotation can never be a verbatim metarepresentation. Instead, it is a metarepresentation with “merely […] to some degree” (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 244). Resemblance can therefore never be solely form-based as it is also interpretative. That is to say, “[i]nterpretive resemblance is resemblance in content: that is shared implications” (Wilson 2012Wilson, Deidre 2012 “Metarepresentation in Linguistic Communication.” In Meaning and Relevance, ed. by Deidre Wilson, and Dan Sperber, 230–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. , 244). The quantity of features of resemblance reflects the degrees of reliability of the quoted content and its force. However, not all constitutive parts of a quotation can be metarepresented: indexicals, metaphors or prosodic, gestural, and facial cues used in the discursive excerpt to be quoted cannot be bound by the quoting context. Thus, it is not only the impossibility to share a full set of features of resemblance with an original representation which makes any kind of quotation referentially opaque, but also its non-bounded indexical expressions and other types of implicit meanings (Brendel et al. 2011Brendel, Elke, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach 2011 “Exploring the Meaning of Quotation.” In Understanding Quotation, ed. by Elke Brendel, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach, 1–33. Berlin: De Gruyter. ). Thus, cognitive pragmatics and research from the pragmatics-semantics-syntax interface provide further evidence for why direct quotation cannot be seen as claiming full faithfulness for the truthfulness of the quoted illocutionary force, propositional content, and words and structures.

Socio- and discourse pragmatics consider context-based issues, such as context-importation, (re)contextualisation and entextualisation, quotatives, stance, and discourse coherence (Arendholz et al. 2015Arendholz, Jenny, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig (eds.) 2015 The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then. Berlin: De Gruyter. ; Buchstaller and van Alphen 2012Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Ingrid van Alphen 2012 “Introductory Remarks on New and Old Quotatives.” In Quotatives: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Isabelle Buchstaller, and Ingrid van Alphen, xi–xxx, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ; Fetzer 2015Fetzer, Anita 2015 “ ‘When You Came into Office You Said that Your Government Would Be Different’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Mediated Political Discourse.” In The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and Functions of Follow-Ups, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman, and Lawrence N. Berlin. 245–273. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2020Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. ). In the discussion of quotation above, it has already surfaced that the act of quotation is context-dependent and that quotations import context into an ongoing discourse. Context as a dynamic construct is interdependent on the processes of contextualisation, recontextualisation and decontextualisation (Linell 2009Linell, Per 2009 Rethinking Language, Mind, and World Dialogically: Interactional and Contextual Theories of Human Sense-Making. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.), and — as this paper argues — entextualisation. The latter is different to re- and decontextualisation as it encodes the quoter’s linguistic realisation (or: product) of the discursive contribution to be quoted as well as those constitutive parts of its contextual embeddedness which the quoter considers relevant for their discursive goal at that particular stage in the quoting discourse: “I link processes of entextualization to the notion of mediation, […] involving the encoding, transfer, and decoding / interpretation of meaning” (Jaffe 2009Jaffe, Alexandra 2009 “Entextualization, Mediatization and Authentication: Orthographic Choice in Media Transcripts.” Text & Talk 29 (5): 571–594. , 573, original emphasis). As already mentioned in footnote 1, context may be entextualised in the speaker’s encoding of unbounded referential domains, for instance deictic ‘now’ may be entextualised with ‘25 January 2024 14h GMT’, which assigns the unbounded referential domain ‘now’ the status of a bounded object. Quotations may embed unbounded referential domains, such as indexicals, or they may be embedded in unbounded referential domains, such as a speech situation. This is of particular importance for the analysis of the entextualisation of their metarepresented constitutive parts.

Quoting in context means the performance of a communicative act in which the current speaker in their role as quoter entextualises a prior felicitous communicative act in accordance with the discursive constraints of the quoting discourse. The quoter may thus entextualise the original speaker and their discursive roles and functions, which are generally implicit in the original context. Additionally, they may entextualise the original illocutionary force, which is generally implicit in its original use, they may entextualise the propositional content and its original linguistic representation, and they may entextualise the contextual embeddedness of the original discursive contribution. While the quoter entextualises the original unboundedness of the illocutionary force in a quotative, and their interpretation of the original propositional content in the quoted, the entextualisation of other relevant contextual coordinates, such as temporal, local, and discursive embeddedness, is generally used to provide further evidence for the validity of the quotation as regards its degree of similarity with the quoter’s entextualisation — in Short’s terminology (1991Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge.), it would count as a reference to the quotation’s faithfulness claim. The sociopragmatics of quotatives — or the entextualisation of illocutionary force in accordance with the constraints of the quoting discourse — has been examined by Buchstaller and van Alphen (2012)Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Ingrid van Alphen 2012 “Introductory Remarks on New and Old Quotatives.” In Quotatives: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Isabelle Buchstaller, and Ingrid van Alphen, xi–xxx, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. . In line with Wilson’s analysis of quotation above, they point out that quotatives are frequently realised with “lexical items that denote comparison, similarity or approximation” (Buchstaller and van Alphen 2012Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Ingrid van Alphen 2012 “Introductory Remarks on New and Old Quotatives.” In Quotatives: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Isabelle Buchstaller, and Ingrid van Alphen, xi–xxx, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , xiv). It is not only their inherent vagueness, which make lexical items qualify for quotatives: “The second major source of innovative quotative forms is lexical items that have demonstrative or deictic function” (Buchstaller and van Alphen 2012Buchstaller, Isabelle, and Ingrid van Alphen 2012 “Introductory Remarks on New and Old Quotatives.” In Quotatives: Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Isabelle Buchstaller, and Ingrid van Alphen, xi–xxx, Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , xv).

In the discourse-pragmatic approach adopted here, quotation is a higher-level act in which the metarepresentation of a communicative act which is assumed to have been felicitous in another discursive context is entextualised in accordance with the discursive constraints of the quoting discourse. However, it needs to be pointed out that the act of quotation does not count as a meta-communicative act. True, there is a ‘meta’ aspect to quotation and quotation may be used to perform some kind of metacommunication, but this is, technically speaking, not their primary function. Their primary function is to import context from another discourse into the ongoing discourse, entextualising a more or less bounded discursive contribution and bringing it into another discourse. As for terminology, quoter refers to the participant who undertakes the act of quoting; quoted refers to the discursive material, or to excerpts of discursive material, whose metarepresentation the quoter entextualises; source refers to the original producer of the quoted excerpt; and quotative refers to the verb of communication which entextualises the source’s original illocutionary force. The scope of the quotative is generally the entire quoted excerpt.

In the analysis of quotation headlines, the following quotation formats have been used:55.The five different formats are informed by linguistic, pragmatic, discursive, and philosophical research on quotation, as discussed in Arendholz et al. (2015)Arendholz, Jenny, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludwig (eds.) 2015 The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then. Berlin: De Gruyter. , Brendel et al. (2011)Brendel, Elke, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach 2011 “Exploring the Meaning of Quotation.” In Understanding Quotation, ed. by Elke Brendel, Jörg Meibauer, and Markus Steinbach, 1–33. Berlin: De Gruyter. , Cappelen and Lepore (1997)Cappelen, Herman, and Ernie Lepore 1997 “Varieties of Quotation.” Mind 106 (423): 429–450. , Fetzer (2020)Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. , Saka (2013)Saka, Paul 2013 “Quotation.” Philosophy Compass 8 (10): 935–949. , and Short (1991)Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge., to name but the most prominent ones.

• Direct quotation is described as the quoter’s entextualisation of the metarepresentation of a felicitous communicative act. What has been said is entextualised in the quoted, the illocutionary force is entextualised in the quotative, and the producer is entextualised in the source. In written discourse, direct quotation is generally signalled with quotations marks, and with air quotes, pauses and other prosodic features in spoken discourse; the metarepresentation of other contextual coordinates may additionally be entextualised in both modes. To count as a direct quotation, only the quoted needs to be entextualised; the other constitutive parts of the quotation can be left implicit. Short’s format of free direct speech is thus included in this discourse-pragmatic conceptualisation.

• Indirect quotation is described as the quoter’s entextualisation of their metarepresentation of a felicitous communicative act produced at a prior stage in another context. Indirect quotation is signalled with the entextualisation of metarepresented deictic and temporal shifts in the quoted, and with the entextualisation of metarepresented source and quotative — and, if necessary, with other relevant contextual coordinates — in both spoken and written discourse. Indirect quotations may display inversion in the introductory phrase, and they may additionally be furnished with the complementiser ‘that’.

• Mixed quotation is a hybrid format which embeds the entextualisation of a metarepresentation of a communicative act formatted as direct, indirect or scare quotation in another quotation. Both are assumed to have been felicitous in another context, and both are signalled accordingly in spoken and written discourse. In mixed quotation, the quoter is ascribed a particular stance, consisting in the expression of detachment from the embedding quotation while at the same time querying the appropriateness, if not validity, of the embedded quotation.

• Mixed type of quotation is another hybrid format, which has been referred to as free indirect speech or free indirect discourse. This communicative act has both direct-speech formatting, that is no deictic shifts in the quoted, and indirect-speech formatting, that is an entextualised quotative.

• Scare quotation is an elliptically realised act embedded in another communicative act of which it is — syntactically speaking — a constitutive part. To scare quote felicitously, the quoted needs to be signalled with typographic quotation marks in written discourse or with air quotes or functionally similar devices in spoken discourse.

In his analysis of British newspapers, Chovanec (2014Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 118) describes the “telegraphic style of English headlines”. For quotation headlines, scare, direct, indirect, and mixed quotations seem to be good candidates for doing that job. However, it is not frequency and distribution of quotations,66.The majority of headlines in Short’s (1991)Short, Michael 1991 “Speech Presentation, the Novel and the Press.” In The Taming of the Text. Explorations in Language, Literature and Culture, ed. by Willie van Peer, 61–81. London: Routledge. data were formatted as direct speech and free direct speech. but rather the entextualisation of the metarepresented constitutive parts of quoter, source, quotative, quoted and other metadata, and their signalling which is at the heart of our analysis. Before this question can be addressed in a comprehensive manner, a research report on news headlines is in order.

3.News headlines in context

Headlines have a prominent position in news discourse as is reflected in their occupying the first slot in its sequential organisation. This superordinate position sets them apart from the rest of the news discourse, and at the same time assigns them a frame-setting function for the discourse-as-a-whole. However, production and reception of news discourse follow different paths: “The three components of the headline, lead and body copy are presented and read in that order, but were produced in the order lead-body-headline” (Bell 1991Bell, Allan 1991 The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell., 186). Bell expands on their production format, with journalists writing “the lead but other news producers write the headline” (Bell 1991Bell, Allan 1991 The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell., 186). Against this background, the quoter of the quotation headlines under investigation can be described as a media representative of the collective voice of the media outlet and thus as a kind of collective meta-quoter.

Headlines have been analysed with regard to their forms and functions. Chovanec (2014)Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. describes their grammatical and lexical features, discussing tense, syntax and noun groups, and the use of determiners as well as lexical creativity and the use of evaluative language. The telegraphic style of English headlines — to use Chovanec’s words — is also reflected in the condensed representation of quotations in headlines with colons replacing quotatives (Chovanec 2014Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 118). What is more, headlines are foregrounded typographically, sometimes with an interplay of textual and visual components.

Newspaper headlines fulfil a dual function: that of a representative act, which evokes readers’ expectations of original, newsworthy and factual information, and that of a request inviting readers to follow up on these expectations and retrieve relevant background information from the news story. Headlines delimit and frame larger units of text with respect to their external boundaries, delimiting a news story from other news articles, while at the same time providing cues for the contextualisation and interpretation of the delimited text’s discursive content. Chovanec (2014Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 273) makes clear that the “headline is far from being an autonomous textual unit. Not only can it stand in a complex hierarchical relationship to other headlines within an article cluster but it is also the opening part of its own article.”

Only very few studies have explored headlines from a discourse-pragmatic perspective, addressing the strategic use of presupposition and implicature which may be triggered by wh-headlines, such as How councils were sidelined in favour of outsourcing firms as virus slipped out of control (The Guardian 12/08/2020). The non-canonical wh-headline triggers the presupposition that councils were sidelined in favour of outsourcing firms, and it triggers the implicature that the news story will specify how that was done. Both presupposition and implicature raise reader expectations regarding discourse content and discourse structuring (Finkbeiner and Fetzer 2022Finkbeiner, Rita, and Anita Fetzer 2022 “Wh-Überschriften im Deutschen und Englischen. Eine explorative kontrastive Studie zu ihrer Form und textstrukturierenden Funktion in Pressetexten.“ In Wege der Germanistik in transkultureller Perspektive. Akten des XIV. Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung für Germanistik (IVG) (Bd. 6) — Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik — Beihefte, ed. by Laura Auteri, Natascia Barrale, and Arianna Di Bella, 263–302. Bern: Peter Lang.). The assumption that a headline in the printed press is “the starting point for cohesion analysis in news texts since it opens several co-referential chains whose elements are brought into a mutual relationship for the first time” (Chovanec 2014Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 209) may be true for a large number of news headlines, but there are also others which may be quite a challenge to the reader as they neither summarise nor present the detail of the news reports (Bonyadi and Moses 2013Bonyadi, Alireza, and Moses Samuel 2013 “Headlines in Newspaper Editorials: A Contrastive Study.” SAGE Open 3 (2). ).

In the following, the strategic use of the act of quotation in printed newspaper headlines is examined, considering formats, distribution, functions, and uptake.

4.The strategic use of quotations in printed newspaper headlines

In discourse pragmatics, quotation is a communicative act with particular discursive functions. It makes manifest that the quoted and quotative are not the quoter’s own proposition and illocution, but those of their source. Quotations thus bring a source and their communicative act with its felicity conditions, in particular its entextualised in- and output conditions, sincerity rule, and its contextual embeddedness into the ongoing discourse and at the same time allow the quoter to distance themselves from source, original illocutionary force, and content, or to align with them. Quotations may thus be used strategically to fulfil various discursive functions, such personalisation in news stories (Landert 2014Landert, Daniela 2014 Personalisation in Mass Media Communication. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), intensifying the force of an argument in political debate or support the construction of discursive identities (Fetzer 2018Fetzer, Anita 2018 “ ‘And You Know, Jeremy, My Father Came from a Very Poor Background Indeed’: Collective Identities and the Private-Public Interface in Political Discourse.” In The Discursive Construction of Identities in Online and Offline Contexts: Personal — Group — Collective, ed. by Birte Bös, Sonja Kleinke, Sandra Mollin, and Nuria Hernandez, 227–247. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2020Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. ).

Headlines have been described as coming with the presumption of newsworthiness, and they have been described as underspecified. To bring out their full newsworthiness, readers would need to contextualise the headlines with background information which is assumed to be provided in the news story. In conversation-analytic terms, headlines may be described as “doubly contextual” (Heritage 1984Heritage, John 1984 Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press., 242): they rely upon the existing context for their production and interpretation — and it is that kind of context which is generally addressed in the news story — and headlines are, in their own right, events that shape new contexts for action — the expectation that the news story provides relevant background information for the contextualisation of the underspecified headline.

From an interactional-sociolinguistic perspective, participants use quotations to import context into an ongoing discourse, and they adapt the formatting and linguistic signalling of the quotation to the constraints of the quoting discourse. In news discourse, quotations import context into an ongoing discourse and assign the imported context the status of newsworthiness. Because of the layout constraints of headlines, the contextual embeddedness of a quotation is generally not entextualised fully. It is this kind of information, i.e. source, quotative, and temporal, local, and discursive embeddedness, which readers would expect to be able to retrieve from the news story. Before discursive function and uptake of quotation headlines (Sections 4.4 and 4.5) and their format and signalling (Section 4.3) are examined, method and data (Section 4.1), and results and distribution (Section 4.2) are described.

4.1Method and data

The research is anchored firmly in discourse pragmatics and its premise of pluralism of communicative action, as has been shown for headlines having both representative and directive illocutionary force. The analytic framework adopted is thus in dis-accordance with Ifantidou (2009)Ifantidou, Elly 2009 “Newspaper Headlines and Relevance: Ad Hoc Concepts in Ad Hoc Contexts.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 699–720. , who claims that newspaper headlines have only one function and are an “attention-getting rather than information-providing device since headlines do not accurately represent the articles they introduce. In other words, newspaper headlines are persuasive rather than informative” (Ifantidou 2009Ifantidou, Elly 2009 “Newspaper Headlines and Relevance: Ad Hoc Concepts in Ad Hoc Contexts.” Journal of Pragmatics 41: 699–720. , 97). It is also in dis-accordance with headlines considered as autonomous texts. Instead, headlines are seen as one of news articles’ constitutive building blocks, albeit with particular discursive functions.

The data examined comprise headlines from twenty-three print versions of the newspapers The Guardian (TG) and The Times (TT) collected between 7 and 21 August 2020 and between 9 and 20 August 2021. The research design opted for print versions as they represent bounded entities and thus allow for addressing the three research questions more comprehensively, especially the question of whether and how quotation headlines are taken up in the news stories. The different time spans and different newspapers were selected to ensure that the results obtained were of a more general nature and not solely dependent on one particular time span and one particular media outlet. The research intends to relate the formatting and signalling of quotations in headlines neither to possible ideologies represented by the two outlets nor to particular social events.

All newspapers were coded for headlines containing quotations by the author and two research assistants, Olena Lazarieva M.A. and Ekaterina Guseva M.A.. The quotations were classified into direct, indirect, scare, mixed, and mixed type of quotation, and their classification was additionally interrated by the author and their research assistants.

4.2Results and distribution

The total number of quotation headlines in the data sets is 1,028 (545 for TG and 483 for TT), and their classification and distribution are systematised in Table 1; the most frequent formats are printed in bold:

Table 1.Distribution of quotation headlines across newspaper outlets and time spans

	The Guardian			The Times
	2020	2021		2020	2021
Direct quotation	43.8% (122/278)	47.1% (126/267)		20.3% (53/261)	21.2% (47/221)
Indirect quotation	23.3% (65/278)	15.3% (41/267)		22.6% (59/261)	27.1% (60/221)
Scare quotation	26.2% (73/278)	29.2% (78/267)		46.3% (121/261)	42.0% (93/221)
Mixed quotation	5.0% (14/278)	6.7% (18/267)		3.8% (10/261)	3.1% (7/221)
Mixed type of quotation	1.4% (4/278)	1.4% (4/267)		7.2% (19/261)	6.3% (14/221)

Direct quotation is the most frequent format of TG with scare quotation coming in second across the time spans, and scare quotation is the most frequent format for TT with indirect quotation coming in second across the time spans. The least frequent format is the mixed type of quotation for TG, and mixed quotation for TT. A tentative conclusion may be that there are outlet-specific preferences with TG opting for direct quotation and TT for scare quotation.

4.3Format and linguistic signalling

Quotation headlines display various kinds of linguistic and typographic signalling. They are signalled typographically with colons77.In the data at hand, colons are also used to segment non-quotation headlines. as in Example (1) — referred to as condensed quotation in Chovanec (2014)Chovanec, Jan 2014 Pragmatics of Tense and Time in News: From Canonical Headlines to Online News Texts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. — with the insertion of a new line in Example (2), with single quotation marks in Examples (3), (6), (7), and in (8) in the subhead. Other typographic devices used to signal quotation headlines are hyphens. In the context of news stories, quotations are generally signalled with double quotation marks, not with colons or hyphens only. The linguistic signals used for quotation headlines are quotatives, as in (4), (5), (6), (8), and (9), and additionally inversion for the indirect quotation in (5):88.In the examples metadata are formatted as follows: typographic and linguistic signalling with quotatives are printed in bold, the quoted is underlined, the source is printed in italics, and contextual coordinates are printed in small caps.

(1)

Navalny from jail: why we must fight corruption — and Putin (TG 20/08/2021)

(2)

Kay Burley

The night I broke the Covid rules (TT 09/08/2021)

(3)

‘Levelling up needs funding on same scale as German reunification’ (TG 16/08/2021)

Examples (1), (2), and (3) are formatted as direct quotation, the most frequent format for quotation headlines in TG. In the data direct quotation in quotation headlines is also signalled with single quotation marks, as in (3). While the source is generally entextualised — if not in the headline, then in the subhead or lead — the quotative tends to remain implicit.

Examples (4) and (5) are formatted as indirect quotation, and come in second for TT quotation headlines, and third for TG. While the quotative generally remains implicit with direct quotations, it is entextualised in their indirect formatting. This is because quotatives are obligatory signals for indirect quotations. Their syntactic placement, however, allows for variation as regards inversion. The entextualisation of source is also obligatory for indirect quotation, as is the case in (4) and (5):

(4)

Get back to the office, ministers order staff (TT 09/08/2021)

(5)

Jailed lawyer is an MI6 spy, claims Iran (TT 12/08/2020)

The following two headlines contain scare quotations, the most frequent format in TT quotation headlines; it comes in second for TG. Scare quotations are signalled with single quotation marks throughout the data in the headlines, and their signalling with quotation marks is obligatory. Scare quotation is a constitutive part of the headline syntax and can only be identified as an entextualised metarepresentation, if signalled:

(6)

Treasury accused of ‘ blocking green policies ’ (TG 14/08/2021)

(7)

Duke ‘ not above law ’ (TT 13/08/2021)

Less frequent quotation headlines in the data sets are formatted as mixed quotation, as in (8), and mixed type of quotation, as in (9). The mixed quotation in (8) is actually a subhead quotation, which refers anaphorically to the headline, connecting its implied content, i.e. pupils will not have to pay for appeals over poor exam grades, with the government’s newly adopted policy of free appeals reflected in the quoter’s use of the semantically coloured quotative ‘vow’ and its source ‘education secretary’. The mixed type of quotation combines direct and indirect formatting: in line with indirect quotation it uses inversion with source and quotative, and in line with direct quotation it does not use deictic shifts in the quoted. Since it is very infrequent, this format seems more appropriate for personal stories rather than for news stories:

(8)

Free appeals for pupils over poor exam grades

No ‘shocking injustices’ s, education secretary vows (TT 15/08/2020)

(9)

America’s troubles have given me depression, says Michelle Obama (TT 07/08/2020, p. 5)

The following sections examine the discursive functions of the linguistic realisation of the different formats of quotation headlines and their uptake in the news story. Particular attention will be paid to the question of whether their formatting and the kind of entextualised metadata have an impact on their discursive functions.

4.4Discursive function

Quotations fulfil a variety of discursive functions. By bringing entextualised voices and their contextual embeddedness into the discourse, they may fulfil interpersonal functions and contribute to the co-construction of discourse common ground, to personalisation, to the positioning of participants vis-à-vis each other and vis-à-vis the discourse, and to interpersonal involvement. The relational nature of quotations holds for all formats. By bringing in entextualised opinions, premises, and contextual coordinates, quotations may fulfil argumentative functions, as discussed above with regard to intra- and interdiscursive uptake. The entextualised argument, its validity claims and context-dependent presuppositions may be used strategically to count as evidence in argumentative attacks or as support for a claim (Fetzer 2020Fetzer, Anita 2020 “ ‘And I Quote’: Forms and Functions of Quotations in Prime Minister’s Questions.” Journal of Pragmatics 157: 89–100. , 2024Fetzer, Anita 2024 “ ‘Being Sensible is Now a Radical Concept I LOVE that Quote haha’: Quotations in Political Speeches and User Comments.” Internet Pragmatics (online first). ). Of particular importance for that function is the quoter’s entextualisation of the metarepresentation of what others have said, and when, where, and how that had taken place. Thus, on a more general level quotations fulfil important interdiscursive functions relating discourse and its constitutive parts with other discourses and their constitutive parts, as is reflected in their uptake in and across the discourse. So, how are the quotation formats entextualised in the quotation headlines of the data at hand, and how are they taken up in the news story?

In the direct-quotation headlines (1) and (2) the quoter as a representative of the collective voice of the media outlet entextualises the source (‘Navalny’) in the introductory phrase, and the element-vs-class relationship between source and collective ‘we’ in the quoted,99.I would like to thank one of my reviewers for drawing my attention to the element-vs-class relationship. and the source ‘Kay Burley’ with co-referential singular self-reference, ‘I’. In both examples the existential presupposition of source is assumed to be part of the discourse common ground, and in both examples the contextual coordinates of temporal (‘the night’) and local embeddedness (‘from jail’) are entextualised: in (1) in the introductory phrase framing the quoted, and in (2) it is a constitutive part of the quoted. The direct-quotation headline in (3) is different. The direct quotation is not framed with an introductory phrase, but only signalled typographically with single quotation marks framing the quoted, which entextualises a general statement about levelling up and German reunification not entextualising any agency. The direct-quotation headlines raise their readers’ expectation that they will find an argumentative sequence and a recontextualisation of the political situation in Russia with the presupposition in the quoted that Russia and Putin are corrupt, some kind of personal narrative about breaking social rules and a recontextualisation of source, and an argumentative text about the connectedness between German reunification and levelling up in which levelling up is recontextualised against the background of governmental support.

Indirect-quotation headlines entextualise both source and quotative and are thus more specific as regards the contextual embeddedness of the metarepresented contribution and the quoter’s attitude towards quoted and source. In (5) the entextualised quotative ‘claim’ raises expectations about an argumentative text in which the sincerity of the quoter and the validity of the quoted are an object of discourse. The implicit tension between the quotative and the quoted entextualised in a declarative sentence, which comes with the assumption of representing factual information, intensifies the expectation that the source may not be fully trustworthy in the eyes of the quoter and that the quoted may need to be recontextualised. In (4) the quoter entextualises the illocutionary force in the quotative ‘order’ and its source (‘ministers’), which is congruent with the imperative syntax of the quoted and intensified accordingly. The headline raises the expectation that the appropriateness of that order will be addressed and recontextualised in the news story.

In scare-quotation headlines the quoted is a constitutive part of the headline syntax which provides relevant context for its recontextualisation. Scare quotes raise readers’ expectations that a prior contextualised claim entextualised in the scare quote, which had been felicitous in another context in another discourse, can no longer be considered felicitous, and that the reasons for the recontextualisation will be addressed in the news story. The scare quote and its felicity conditions are thus put on the table for reassessing its validity. This includes the social context and its constitutive parts of source and quotative, and the linguistic context embedding the scare quote. Both scare quotes in (6) and (7) occur in a negative context indicated by the negation marker ‘not’ and the quotative ‘accuse’. They fulfil a particular discursive function in that prominent position. The quoter as the collective voice of the media outlet does not use them as a distancing device but rather to indicate that the scare quote has already been an object of talk in another discourse in another context and has been felicitous then. The current context, however, requires the scare quote to be re-addressed and recontextualised. The recycling of quoted material and its contextualisation in the headline of a news story raises expectations that the news story will provide an argumentative sequence in which an already accepted status quo is recontextualised: the government’s green policies and the legal status of a member of the Royal Family.

In mixed-quotation headlines one quotation embeds another. The typographic formatting of the embedded quotation is — like with scare quotation — single quotation marks. In (8) the headline ‘Free appeals for pupils over poor exam grades’ provides the context for the mixed-quotation subhead. The quoter as the collective voice of the media outlet entextualises the original illocutionary force with the quotative ‘vow’, indicating the source’s — the education secretary — very strong commitment to the quoted. The introductory phrase of the embedding indirect quotation is placed in the right periphery of the subhead, foregrounding the quoted in which the scare quotation co-occurs with the negative quantifier ‘no’ in a negative context, as has been the case with the scare quotations in (6) and (7). The negative context of the quoted and the semantically coloured quotative raise expectations of a news story in which the straightforward claim put forward in the headline is going to be recontextualised and specified against the background of an entextualised soundbite in the quoted implying that there may be other, less drastic, kinds of injustices.

Mixed-type-quotation headlines combine direct and indirect formatting: they use inversion with source and quotative in the introductory phrase as in indirect quotation, but no deictic shifts in the quoted as required for a direct quotation. In the quality press, this format is not very frequent and co-occurs with personal narratives or home stories, as in (9). The mixed-type-quotation headline raises expectations about a news story about politics recontextualised by a public figure: America’s troubles and Michelle Obama. As with the direct quotation headline (2), a proper-named source, which is assumed to be part of the discourse common ground, is co-referenced in the quoted with a self-reference (‘me’) signalling a more subjective recontextualisation of politics.

Quotation headlines fulfil particularised discursive functions in the context of printed newspapers. This is due not only to their prominent position in a news story, but also to their telegraphic style. In the data at hand, it is not so much their formatting as direct, indirect, mixed or scare quotation; rather, it is the quoter’s entextualisation — and non-entextualisation — of metarepresented contextual coordinates, which contributes to the discursive functions of the quotation as an object of talk in the news story, triggering the implication that a taken-for-granted contextualisation of the different kinds of headline-quotations is going to be re-addressed and recontextualised. For the distribution of quotation formats across the two news outlets, this means that TG may prefer news stories which address and recontextualise the entire quotation, while TT may prefer to focus on particular issues singled out in the scare quotation.

4.5Uptake

This section presents case studies of how direct-, indirect-, scare-, and mixed-quotation headlines, the four most frequent formats found in the data, are taken up in the subhead and news story. Particular attention will be paid to the question of whether their formatting and linguistic signalling has an impact on their uptake.

In discourse pragmatics, quotations are metarepresentations of one or more communicative acts which have been felicitous in another context and discourse (or parts of the same discourse). As such, the source’s intention to achieve their interlocutors’ uptake has been felicitous for the quotation as a constitutive part of another discourse. Uptake has not only been examined in dialogic scenarios, but also as a discursive phenomenon, as is reflected in the sequential organisation of discourse-as-a-whole and in the sequential organisation across different discourses. Sbisà (2002aSbisà, Marina 2002a “Cognition and Narrativity in Speech Act Sequences.” In Rethinking Sequentiality: Linguistics Meets Conversational Interaction, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Christiane Meierkord, 71–97. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , bSbisà, Marina 2002b “Speech Acts in Context.” Language and Communication 22 (4): 421–436. ) argues for speech-acts-in-discourse to be conceived of as social acts which have conventional effects and perlocutionary consequences, and this also holds for speech acts in argumentative newspaper articles and in their headlines examined in this paper, which constrain which types of speech act are possible and which types are not. In argumentative discourse, an argumentative sequence needs to be ordered along the lines of a claim represented by a speech act which counts as an assertion, followed by a warrant represented by another assertion, possibly followed by a backing represented by another assertion, or by a rebuttal: it is the communicative act of quotation, which may — depending on its context — fulfil one of these argumentative functions.

The quotation headline ‘Make virus tests routine for teachers and pupils’1010.‘Make virus tests routine for teachers and pupils’Plea by children’s tsar puts her at odds with ministersFrancis Elliot Political EditorNicola Woolcock Education Correspondent (TT 10/08/2020). Content- and quotation-formatting-wise, the printed article is identical with the online article available at https://​www​.thetimes​.co​.uk​/article​/make​-virus​-tests​-routine​-for​-teachers​-and​-pupils​-5nnz6wb9s (accessed 7 May 2024). The opening and closing sections are identical. The online topical section contains some more quotations and there is no second header structuring the text. is formatted as a direct quotation and signalled with the typographic device of single quotation marks; the subhead entextualises its metarepresented contextual coordinates: illocutionary force (plea), source (children’s tsar), perlocutionary effects (the source is put at odds with ministers) and quoters (political editor, Francis Elliot, and education correspondent, Nicola Woolcock). The quotation headline is taken up in the subhead and in the news story, where it is the object of talk and discussed accordingly. The news story spreads over two pages and the entextualised quotative is taken up again on page 2 and entextualised in another header “plea to test teachers for Covid 19”. In the news story, the journalists use other-quotations in the contextualisation and recontextualisation of their argument and present the pros and cons of testing in a bullet-point list. All quotations are signalled with typographic devices: single quotation marks for headline, and double quotation marks for the direct, scare and mixed quotations in the news story; indirect quotations are signalled with quotatives and deictic shifts. Furthermore, all quotations are supplemented with entextualised metadata, that is source, quotative and other relevant contextual coordinates. These references to the constitutive parts of the quotation and to their felicity conditions contribute to not only intensifying the argumentative value of the other-quotations and their sources, but also to their status as scientific facts put forward in prior discussions. The amount of metadata in the news stories may vary, though. In the news story, the act of quotation fulfils primarily argumentative and interdiscursive functions indicating a recontextualisation of a taken-for-granted contextualisation, as is going to be corroborated in the analysis of the second news story.

The quotation headline “Get back to office, ministers order staff”1111.Get back to office, ministers order staffBig push against civil servants working from homeMatt Dathan Home Affairs Editor (TT 09/08/2021). Content- and quotation-formatting-wise, the printed article is identical with the online version available at https://​www​.thetimes​.co​.uk​/article​/get​-back​-to​-the​-office​-ministers​-order​-staff​-covid​-lockdown​-restrictions​-0kmds36ds (accessed 9 May 2024). However, in the online version the constitutive part of the headline “staff” was replaced with “Whitehall” and the subhead was reformulated containing a scare quotation (A big push is planned against employees working from home, as it is ‘more difficult to build relationships’ from there) thus specifying its perlocutionary effects. The sequential organisation of the online article has also changed, as has the quoted news outlet: it is no longer The Guardian, but the Radio Times. The uptake discussed above has not changed, though. has been classified as an indirect quotation in Example (4). It is signalled with entextualised metarepresentations of quotative (order) and source (ministers). As has been the case with the news story analysed above, the perlocutionary effects and their target of the indirect quotation are entextualised in the subhead (Big push against civil servants working from home). The indirect quotation is the object of talk in the news story, where the quotative and its appropriateness are taken up and discussed. In the news story, the quoter and their affiliation is entextualised (Matt Dathan, Home Affairs Editor) signifying their function as media representative. The quoter entextualises the metarepresented illocutionary force in the quotative “order” and paraphrases it with semantically similar discursive values, such as “big push”, “we will be mandating people to return”. The news story discusses pros and cons of returning to the office during the time of a pandemic and uses quotations from the pro-side, the government, and the con-side, the trade unions and members of the civil service, as well as quotations from another news outlet, The Guardian. The voices of the two sides are brought into the discourse and formatted as direct and indirect quotations, supporting the validity of their arguments and recontextualising those of the others. All direct, indirect, scare and mixed quotations in the news story are signalled: direct, scare and mixed quotations with double typographic quotation marks. They are additionally supplemented with the entextualisation of metarepresented source, quotative and relevant contextual coordinates. The context of scare quotation is fully entextualised and metarepresented in the news story with the scare quotation re-addressed and recontextualised as a direct quotation within the news story. Relevant contextual coordinates are, however, not entextualised for the typographically signalled conventionalised expression “freedom day”.

In the scare-quotation headline “Ministers face mounting anger over A-level results ‘injustice’”1212.Ministers face mounting anger over A-level results ‘injustice’Schools braced for turmoil when grades are published on ThursdaySally WealeEducation correspondent (TG 11/08/2020). The online article is available at https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/education​/2020​/aug​/11​/pressure​-grows​-on​-government​-over​-england​-a​-level​-results​-mess​-coronavirus (accessed 9 May 2024). It “was amended on 12 August 2020 to clarify that individual pupil appeals in Scotland must still be made by schools on their behalf.” In the online version the headline has also been changed and the scare quotation ‘injustice’ has been replaced with the scare quotation ‘mess’ (Pressure grows on ministers over England A-level results ‘mess’), while the uptake discussed above has not changed. This also applies to the formatting of the quotations. For its original version and layout see https://​twitter​.com​/guardian​/status​/1292946832364994560​?lang​=de (accessed 9 May 2024). the scare quotation is signalled typographically with single quotation marks, singling out the quoted from its linguistic context, stating that ministers face mounting anger over A-level results. Neither source nor quotative are entextualised, but the quoter, the education correspondent Sally Weale, and the perlocutionary effects of the scare quotation are entextualised in the subhead (Schools braced for turmoil when grades are published on Thursday). The headline triggers the presuppositions that there has been anger at A-level results before, and that the A-level results have been referred to as ‘injustice’ in prior discourse. The interdiscursive referencing of ‘injustice’ is taken up in the news story, where it is pluralised, intensified, paraphrased, and recontextualised as “injustices”, “huge injustices” and recycled with the discursive values “grossly unfair” or “a mess”, all of them entextualised in the context of mixed quotations and direct quotations from experts, for instance a mixed quotation with the source Sir Michael Wilshaw, former head of Ofsted. Research from other academic sources is summarised without entextualising ‘injustice’, but rather illustrating it with quantified results.

The mixed-quotation subhead “No ‘shocking injustices’, education secretary vows”1313.Free appeals for pupils over poor exam gradesNo ‘shocking injustices’, education secretary vowsSteven Swinford Deputy Political EditorRosemary Bennett Education Editor (TT 15/08/2020). The online version contains one additional elaborating sentence. The rest is content- and quotation-formatting-wise identical with the print version available at https://​www​.thetimes​.co​.uk​/article​/free​-appeals​-for​-pupils​-over​-poor​-a​-level​-grades​-xpjfzzmt6 (accessed 8 May 2024). has been described as a mixed quotation in (8). It refers anaphorically to the headline (Free appeals for pupils over poor exam grades) and recontextualises “free appeals” as reestablishing justice, triggered by the double negatives, the quantifier ‘no’ and the negative prefix ‘in’ in ‘injustices’. The scare quotation embedded in the indirect quotation is typographically signalled with single quotation marks, singling it out from the rest of the indirect quotation which is entextualised as a rejection of a statement from another discourse, in which the exam-grade situation and pupils’ legal options had been described as unfair. Both source (‘education secretary’) and quotative (‘vows’) are entextualised as is the metarepresented quoter, the education editor Rosemary Bennett and the deputy political editor Steven Swinford. What is different to the quotation headlines examined above is that the perlocutionary effects of the mixed quotation (free appeals for pupils over poor exam grades) are entextualised in the headline to which they refer anaphorically. In the news story both headline and subhead are assigned the status of an object of talk. The news story is more of a narrated argumentation furnished with direct, indirect quotations and mixed quotations in which source, quotative and relevant contextual coordinates are entextualised. What is more, the embedded quotation signalled with single quotation marks is fleshed out in the news story several times, and its source, the education secretary Gavin Williamson, is entextualised with their proper name. In the news story direct and scare quotations are typographically signalled with double quotation marks. As has been the case with the conventionalised expression “freedom day” above, the contextual coordinates of the conventionalised expression “commonsense” formatted as a scare quotation is also not entextualised in the news story.

5.Discussion

In a discourse-pragmatic framework based on a parts-whole configuration, quotation headlines are a constitutive part of the discourse-as-a-whole. The framework allows for a more comprehensive analysis of the interface between the constitutive parts and the whole and provides new insights into the formatting and linguistic signalling of quotation headlines, their discursive functions and uptake in the context of the printed quality press.

A discourse-pragmatic conceptualisation of the act of quotation goes beyond the constitutive parts of quoter, quotative, and quoted, and possible faithfulness claims. It additionally accounts for its felicity conditions, in particular the entextualisation of source, in- and output conditions, sincerity rule and contextual embeddedness at particular stages in the discourse. In news discourse, the quoter has a particularised function, representing their own voice — if singled out and entextualised with full name and affiliation — and at the same time that of the media collective. What is more, an entextualisation-based approach to the analysis of the metarepresentation of unbounded context and unbounded discourse allows for teasing out the quoter’s attitude towards source, quotative, quoted and the relevance of their contextual embeddedness. For this reason, the quoter may count as some kind of meta-quoter who entextualises and metarepresents the constitutive parts of the act of quotation including its felicity conditions with production formats and other contextual coordinates. It is the quoter’s entextualisation of source, quotative, quoted, and contextual coordinates which fulfil a more important discursive function in the news discourse than that of source and quoted only.

In data sets, preferences for direct and scare formats have been filtered out: direct quotations are more frequent in The Guardian with scare quotations coming in second across both time spans, and scare quotations are more frequent in The Times with indirect quotations coming in second for both time spans. All quotation formats under investigation have been signalled both typographically and linguistically: direct, indirect, and scare quotations are signalled both linguistically and typographically with single quotation marks, colons, colons and single quotation marks, or empty spaces and a new line. There is less variation in the entextualisation, or rather non-entextualisation of the communicative act’s constitutive parts as only the indirect format requires the entextualisation of metarepresented source and quotative; the mixed format underlies the same constraint, if the indirect format embeds a direct format.

Quotation headlines have more particularised functions than quotations in the news story and in other discourse domains, where they generally fulfil interpersonal, argumentative, and interdiscursive functions with respect to the construction of discourse common ground, personalisation of discourse identities, evaluation, and stance. Their particularised function in news discourse headlines is to draw readers’ attention not only to a metarepresented communicative act from another discourse in another context, which has been felicitous in that discourse and that context, but also to the quoter’s entextualisation of that communicative act in accordance with the discursive constraints of the headline. What is interesting is the observation that quotation headlines generally use single quotation marks to signal a discursive extract typographically as the communicative act of quotation. In the body of the news story, however, quotations tend to be signalled with double quotation marks.

Quotation headlines are related to the news story which they frame. They narrow down the contents of the news story by indicating what the story is going to be about. In the data at hand, quotation headlines have been taken up in the news story and their implicit contextual coordinates and felicity conditions have been addressed and made explicit in the news story. As for their uptake in the news story, all formats are taken up, recontextualised with the entextualisation of their contextual and discursive embeddedness throughout the data sets. For scare quotes the full quotation is provided in the news story, verifying its validity. Irrespective of their formatting — except for scare quotation — quotation headlines generally imply that the news story is going to address and recontextualise a taken-for-granted contextualisation of source, quoted, and relevant contextual coordinates by showing that due to a more comprehensive recontextualisation, the prior contextualisation does not hold any longer. Scare quotation shifts the focus from an entextualised metarepresented whole to that of one or more of its constitutive parts. It is these constitutive parts which have been singled out as not having been contextualised appropriately and therefore would require to be re-addressed and recontextualised.

The Guardian’s preferred format has been direct quotation, and The Times’ preferred format scare quotation. A possible conclusion that The Guardian may prefer full-fledged reports on context and The Times reports on singled out constitutive parts would need to be corroborated with more analyses of the two — and possibly other — news outlets.