papal quote

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

Sue,

I think the entire Ratzinger passage under question is a long quote. 
Ratzinger actually quotes an edition by Professor Theodore Khury quoting 
words by Manuel II Paleologus quoting the Qu'ran quoting Mohammed on 
(supposedly) "holy war" and other issues. So, there are several layers of 
ideological cloaking there ;-) .

>The recent exchanges regarding the papal speech make me wonder about
>two cultural features worth comparing across languages:
>
>1. What is the social meaning of a quote?  If a religious person quotes, 
>without
>directly marking the quote as being one he disagrees with, do people assume it
>is a statement of belief? How does one make use of an objectionable quote
>and disengage from it?

Why should it matter whether the speaker is a religious person or not? To 
me, it's a matter of the function of authoritative quotation. I suppose 
that "objectionability" is an empirical, situated issue, so "disengaging" 
from its contents is, too. How? One of the procedures is what Ratzinger 
did, by an implicit appeal to context: 'even though I quoted Manuel II 
Paleologus, that's not what *I* meant, as we are not in Byzantium'. Were 
hearers not to 'object' to one's quote, I suppose this appeal to 
contextuality could be suspended, as contextual conditions for the 
acceptance of the quote as such would be assumed to be comparable to those 
holding when the original words were uttered.

>2. What form does an apology take?  is the propositional content supposed to
>be about what one did oneself or about the "victim."
>An apology is a speech act that must be culturally particular.

I would say in my culture the propositional content condition of an apology 
is that it must be about the "I": 'I apologize, I'm sorry'. Otherwise I 
would call it a regret, that is, a representative, not expressive speech 
act, which could also predicate about the "I": "I regret" or "It's to be 
regretted that". The "victim" can be contained in the predicate, but not in 
the subject.

-celso