Quoting out of context
Reproducing a real quotation with the surrounding words removed, so that the speaker appears to have said something they did not mean.
A quotation carries the authority of the speaker's own words, and the device keeps the words while discarding the meaning. The sentence before, the clause after, the question being answered, the "but" that followed: any of these can invert a statement, and their absence is invisible to the audience, who sees only the quotation marks and trusts them.
Matthew McGlone named the practice "contextomy" and traced it in political advertising, film blurbs, and religious polemic. Its distinctive quality is deniability: the words are genuine, so the quoter can claim accuracy while conveying its opposite. Exploits Anchoring and Authority Bias.
Historical examples
Darwin wrote that to suppose the eye could have been formed by natural selection "seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree," and then spent the following pages explaining how it could have been. The first sentence has been quoted alone, as an admission, in anti-evolution literature for more than a century; "quote mining" got its name from the practice.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859, chapter 6; McGlone, Matthew S. "Contextomy: The Art of Quoting Out of Context." Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 4 (2005): 511–522.
The Lees documented Father Coughlin's use of fragments from encyclicals, statesmen, and opponents, detached from their setting and set to work against positions their authors held. The technique was among those the Institute for Propaganda Analysis classed under card stacking, of which it is the most precise form.
Lee, Alfred McClung, and Elizabeth Briant Lee. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
In advertising and commerce
Film advertisements have quoted "a triumph" from reviews that read "a triumph of style over substance," and "hilarious" from sentences that said the opposite. In 2001 a studio was found to have invented a critic outright. The blurb is the device's commercial home, and the Connecticut attorney general's action against the invented critic is its best-known regulation.
McGlone, Matthew S. "Contextomy: The Art of Quoting Out of Context." Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 4 (2005): 511–522; "Sony Settles with State over Fake Movie Critic," Los Angeles Times, 12 March 2002.
Find a quotation being used against someone. Find the original source. Read the sentences on either side. Does the quotation still mean what the user says it means?
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
"The minister admitted the plan was 'a disaster.'" The full sentence: "If we did nothing, it would be a disaster, which is why the plan exists."
What to notice. The words are real; the removed clause reverses their meaning.
A poster quotes a critic: "...astonishing..." The review called the film "astonishing in its incompetence."
What to notice. Ellipses hide the words that gave the fragment its actual sense.
"Even their own expert said the data 'cannot be trusted.'" She said it about a rival's data set, not theirs.
What to notice. The quotation is accurate and the referent has been switched.
Sources
- McGlone, Matthew S. "Contextomy: The Art of Quoting Out of Context." Media, Culture & Society 27, no. 4 (2005): 511–522. doi:10.1177/0163443705053974
- Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859.
- Lee, Alfred McClung, and Elizabeth Briant Lee. The Fine Art of Propaganda. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939.
- Boller, Paul F., and John George. They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. ISBN 978-0195055412