An experiment

I am trying to work something out, and a small experiment would help me. I’m not sure how useful use it could be, as a straw poll on a backwater blog probably wouldn’t count as admissible evidence for the thing I’m trying to write. But it’ll be interesting, to me at least.

I would be hugely grateful if you could take just a couple of minutes to do it and post your answers as a comment - it would be very helpful to me.

Below is a list of excerpts containing quoted speech. I am interested in whether you think the bit in inverted commas is reporting something that already has been uttered in some way (spoken or written), or is uttering something for the first time. e.g.

In 1963 President Kennedy famously said “ich bin ein Berliner.”

(A. Historian, 2000)

If you think “ich bin ein Berliner” was already said by Kennedy in 1963 and then repeated by A. Historian in 2000, you should answer ‘yes’ or ‘repeat’. Disregard the fact that I am also repeating the words on this blog – that does not count as a repetition: did the writer (or speaker) mean it as a repetition or not? Another example:

“You are now entering Free Derry.”

(Mural in Londonderry / Derry, 1969)

Do you think the words in inverted commas were said as a repetition or stated for the first time in 1969, there in Derry? If said for the first time, then say ‘no’ or ‘first time’.

Disregard translation issues - the original language doesn't matter.

This should be really quick to do – especially if you answer as immediately and intuitively as you can, which would be ideal. It’s all about the words in inverted commas – have they already been said, yes (repeat) or no (first time)?

p.s. - if possible, please try to avoid looking at the answers people have already given! Thanks.

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1. Antony Beevor, Berlin, 2002

“History always emphasizes terminal events,” Albert Speer observed to his interrogators just after the end of the war.

2. Oliver Cromwell addressing the Rump Parliament, 1653

“Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!” 

3. Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho, 1991

“That’s bone,” I point out, “And the lettering is something called Silian Rail.”

4. Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell & the English Revolution, 1970

“We found the common soldiers much unsettled,” the Commissioners reported to the Commons on 17 May 1647, with some understatement.

5. George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons, 2011

“The Mother of Dragons must don the tokar or be forever hated,” warned the Green Grace, Galazza Galare.

6. Barry Miles, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, 1997

Groucho [Marx] loved embarrassing people and when he found that Alice didn’t take drugs, he immediately said to the waiter, “Dope! Do you have any dope for my friend? He needs dope.”

7. Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877

“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

8. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves & the American Revolution, 2005

“No sight upon earth,” wrote the reporter for the Morning Chronicle, “could be more pleasingly affecting to the feeling mind than the joy which shone at that instant in these poor men’s sable countenances.”

9. John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, 1974

“You were ill,” Guillam insisted.

10. Suetonius Lives of the Caesars, 121 AD

Some have written that when Marcus Brutus rushed at him, he [Caesar] said in Greek, “You too, my child?”

11. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, 1937

“Good Morning!” said Bilbo, and he meant it.

12. US Declaration of Independence, 1776

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

13. Peter Lamarque, The Philosophy of Literature, 2009

Few readers would suppose that the … famous first sentence of Pride and Prejudice had the unequivocal endorsement of Jane Austen: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

14. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice.

15. Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, 1865

“In luck again, Gaffer?” said a man with a squinting leer.

16. Bryn Harris, Wild and Whirling Words, 2013

"Thank you so much for doing this experiment!"