inserting quotes (") and slashes (/) ?

[Josh DuBois <duboisj@codeweavers.com>]

Hi - 

   I've used emacs for years and this seems like a newbie question, but 
I can't figure it out or find it in an FAQ: inserting quote characters, 
and also the forward-slash, in emacs, seems to trigger a 'compose 
character' behavior or something.  When I hit '/' I get, at the bottom 
of my screen:

/[ /234=AEO\aceo]

..if I type one of the characters above then some weird control 
sequence is inserted, otherwise I get the slash character I want.  Same 
thing happens for the " character.  

It seems to only happen in LaTeX mode, and then only sometimes.  I can't 
figure out when or why, and / & " say they're mapped to self-insert-
command and tex-insert-quote, respectively, neither of which should do 
what I'm seeing, AFAICT.  I'm running 23.5 on Mac OS X (from a terminal).

I would really appreciate anyone who can point me to the solution.

Thank you!