Scare quotes (also called shudder quotes,
[Pinker, Steven. ''The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century''. Penguin (2014) ] sneer quotes, and quibble marks) are
quotation marks that writers place around a word or phrase to signal that they are using it in an
ironic
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into ...
, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense. Scare quotes may indicate that the author is using someone else's term, similar to preceding a phrase with the expression "
so-called";
they may imply skepticism or disagreement, belief that the words are misused, or that the writer intends a meaning opposite to the words enclosed in quotes. Whether quotation marks are considered scare quotes depends on context because scare quotes are not visually different from actual quotations. The use of scare quotes is highly discouraged in formal or academic writing.
History
Elizabeth Anscombe
Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (; 18 March 1919 – 5 January 2001), usually cited as G. E. M. Anscombe or Elizabeth Anscombe, was a British analytic philosopher. She wrote on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, ...
coined the term ''scare quotes'' as it refers to punctuation marks in 1956 in an essay titled "Aristotle and the Sea Battle", published in''
Mind''. The use of a graphic symbol on an expression to indicate irony or dubiousness goes back much further: Authors of ancient Greece used a mark called a ''
diple periestigmene'' for that purpose. Beginning in the 1990s, the use of scare quotes suddenly became very widespread.
[Haack, Susan, editor. ''Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays''. University of Chicago Press (2000) , p. 202.] Postmodernist
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of modern ...
authors in particular have theorized about
bracketing
In photography, bracketing is the general technique of taking several shots of the same subject using different camera settings. Bracketing is useful and often recommended in situations that make it difficult to obtain a satisfactory image with ...
punctuation, including scare quotes, and have found reasons for their frequent use in their writings.
In 2014, ''
Slate'' declared
hashtags to be "the new scare quotes" in the sense that both are used for "announcing distance". Just like scare quotes, hashtags such as
#firstworldproblems or
#YOLO signal that the phrase is not one's own.
Usage
Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. They can imply doubt or ambiguity in words or ideas within the marks, or even outright contempt.
[Trask, Robert Lawrence. ''Say what You Mean!: A Troubleshooter's Guide to English Style and Usage''. David R. Godine Publisher (2005) p. 228.] They can indicate that a writer is purposely misusing a word or phrase or that the writer is unpersuaded by the text in quotes, and they can help the writer deny responsibility for the quote.
''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' writes: "to put terms like 'identity politics' or 'rape culture' or, yes, 'alt-right' in scare quotes is ... to make, in that placement, a political declaration." In general, the punctuation expresses distance between the writer and the quote.
[
For example: The scare quotes could indicate that the word is not one the writer would normally use, or that the writer thinks there is something dubious about the word ''groupies'' or its application to these people. The exact meaning of the scare quotes is not clear without further context.
The term ''scare quotes'' may be confusing because of the word ''scare''. An author may use scare quotes not to convey alarm, but to signal a semantic quibble. Scare quotes may suggest or create a ]problematization
Problematization is a process of stripping away common or conventional understandings of a subject matter in order to gain new insights.This method can be applied to a term, writing, opinion, ideology, identity, or person. Practioners consider t ...
with the words set in quotes.
Criticism
Some experts encourage writers to avoid scare quotes because they can distance the writer and confuse the reader.
Editor Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics.
Biography
Marcus wa ...
, in a talk at Case Western Reserve University, described scare quotes as "the enemy", adding that they "kill narrative, they kill story-telling . . . They are a writer's assault on his or her own words." Scare quotes have been described as ubiquitous, and the use of them as expressing distrust in truth, reality, facts, reason and objectivity.Jonathan Chait
Jonathan Benjamin Chait () (born May 1, 1972) is an American pundit and writer for '' New York'' magazine. He was previously a senior editor at ''The New Republic'' and an assistant editor of '' The American Prospect''. He writes a periodic c ...
wrote in ''The New Republic'', "The scare quote is the perfect device for making an insinuation without proving it, or even necessarily making clear what you're insinuating."[Jonathan Chait]
"Scared Yet?
''The New Republic'', 31 December 2008.
In 1982, philosopher David Stove
David Charles Stove (15 September 1927 – 2 June 1994) was an Australian philosopher.
Philosophy
His work in philosophy of science included criticisms of David Hume's Inductive scepticism. He offered a positive response to the problem of ...
examined the trend of using scare quotes in philosophy as a means of neutralizing or suspending words that imply cognitive achievement, such as ''knowledge'' or ''discovery''.[Stove, David (1982). "Part 1, Chapter 1"]
''Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists''
Oxford: Pergamon Press. Archived fro
on 2 February 2015. Reprinted as ''Anything Goes: Origins of the Cult of Scientific Irrationalism'' (1998). Macleay Press. .
In speech
In spoken conversation, a stand-in for scare quotes is a hand gesture known as ''air quotes
Air quotes, also called finger quotes, are virtual quotation marks formed in the air with one's fingers when speaking. The gesture is typically done with both hands held shoulder-width apart and at the eye or shoulders level of the speaker, with ...
'' or ''finger quotes'', which mimics quotation marks. A speaker may alternatively say "quote" before and "unquote" after quoted words, or say " quote unquote" before or after the quoted words,
See also
* Evidentiality
In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement; that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and if so, what kind. An evidential (also verificational or validational) is the particul ...
* Hedge
* Irony punctuation
Irony punctuation is any form of notation proposed or used to denote irony or sarcasm in text. Written English lacks a standard way to mark irony, and several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and most frequently atte ...
* Quotation
A quotation is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is introduced by ...
* ''Sic
The Latin adverb ''sic'' (; "thus", "just as"; in full: , "thus was it written") inserted after a quoted word or passage indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated exactly as found in the source text, complete with any e ...
''
* Air quotes
Air quotes, also called finger quotes, are virtual quotation marks formed in the air with one's fingers when speaking. The gesture is typically done with both hands held shoulder-width apart and at the eye or shoulders level of the speaker, with ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scare Quotes
Punctuation
Rhetoric
Doubt