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) ] or sneer quotes) are
quotation mark
Quotation marks are punctuation marks used in pairs in various writing systems to identify direct speech, a quotation, or a phrase. The pair consists of an opening quotation mark and a closing quotation mark, which may or may not be the sam ...
s 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 with what is actually or expected to be the case. Originally a rhetorical device and literary technique, in modernity, modern times irony has a ...
, 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 sometimes 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, philosophi ...
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 mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...
''. 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 encompasses a variety of artistic, Culture, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting ...
authors in particular have theorized about
bracketing punctuation, including scare quotes, and have found reasons for their frequent use in their writings.
In 2014, ''
Slate
Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous, metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade, regional metamorphism. It is the finest-grained foliated metamorphic ro ...
'' declared
hashtag
A hashtag is a metadata tag operator that is prefaced by the hash symbol, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services–especially Twitter and Tumblr–as a form of user-generated tagging that enable ...
s 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.
Megan Garber in ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 185 ...
'' 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
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...
quibble. Scare quotes may suggest or create a problematization 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 (né Gerstley; 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.
Biogra ...
, 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 Chait () is an American pundit and writer for ''The Atlantic''. He was previously a senior editor at ''The New Republic'' and an assistant editor of ''The American Prospect'' and wrote for '' New York'' magazine. 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 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. .
Scare quotes can be replaced by writing text to make the insinuation explicit.
In speech
In spoken conversation, a stand-in for scare quotes is a hand gesture known as '' air quotes'' 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
A hedge or hedgerow is a line of closely spaced (3 feet or closer) shrubs and sometimes trees, planted and trained to form a barrier or to mark the boundary of an area, such as between neighbouring properties. Hedges that are used to separate ...
* Irony punctuation
* Quotation
A quotation or quote 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 intro ...
* ''Sic
The Latin adverb ''sic'' (; ''thus'', ''so'', and ''in this manner'') inserted after a quotation indicates that the quoted matter has been transcribed or translated as found in the source text, including erroneous, archaic, or unusual spelling ...
''
* Air quotes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Scare Quotes
Punctuation
Rhetoric
Doubt