scare quote

Scare quotes is a term for a particular use of quotation marks. In this application, quotation marks are placed around a single word or phrase to indicate that the word or phrase does not signify its literal or conventional meaning. In contrast to the nominal typographic purpose of quotation marks, the enclosed word(s) may not necessarily be quoted from another source.

History

Use of the term scare quotes appears to have arisen at some point during the first half of the twentieth century. Occurrence of the term in academic literature appears as early as the 1950s.^[1][2]

Usage

Writers use scare quotes for a variety of reasons. When the enclosed text is a quotation from another source, scare quotes may indicate that the writer does not accept the usage of the phrase (or the phrase itself)^[3], that the writer feels its use is potentially ironic, or that the writer feels it is a misnomer. This meaning may serve to distance the writer from the quoted content.

If scare quotes are enclosing a word or phrase that does not represent a quotation from another source they may simply serve to alert the reader that the word or phrase is used in an unusual, special, or non-standard way or should be understood to include caveats to the conventional meaning.^[4]

Alternatively, material in scare quotes may represent the writer's concise (but possibly misleading) paraphrasing, characterization, or intentional renaming of statements, concepts, or terms used by a third party. This may be an expression of sarcasm or incredulity. Or it may be a rhetorical technique attempting to frame a discussion in the writer's desired terms: a circumlocution or a means of apophasis or innuendo.

The term scare quotes may be confusing because the word scare implies provocation, yet the term covers emotionally neutral usage as well. In many cases an author uses scare quotes not to convey alarm, but to signal a semantic quibble.

Non-acceptance of terminology

Quotation of another's words

Example 1:

• The invention of coinage by the Lydians lies really in this innovation, which, however simple it may seem to us now, was then of deep political significance. When once a state currency was instituted, the private coinages fell out of use, for no individual banker could compete with the guarantee of the state, and the state would not tolerate imitation of its own types. We may therefore take it that the successive stages in the "invention" of coinage were somewhat as follows: first, the occasional practice of stamping certain weights of metal with marks by which they could be identified; this probably continued in private use for a long period before it was adopted by a state, perhaps first by Lydia; and finally the adoption all over the Greek world of a series of state coinages. The convenience of the "invention" was so obvious as to justify the statement of Herodotus that the Lydians were the first nation of shopkeepers.^[5]

—A Guide to the Exhibition Illustrating Greek and Roman Life, British Museum, 1908

In this passage the writer uses scare quotes around the word invention to express the opinion that Herodotus is incorrect in ascribing to the Lydians the role of the inventors of coinage. The writer does not begin enclosing the word invention in quotation marks until he begins to express skepticism that its usage was appropriate. In this case, unlike many other applications of scare quotes, the enclosed word is an actual quotation from another source.

Example 2:

• Kazakhstan's famous "130-year-old"—Headline on BBC News web site^[6]

The quotation marks around 130-year-old indicate that the newspaper is reporting but not endorsing the claim.

Other cases

Examples:

• creation "science" or Creation "Museum"
• "normal" people

A writer may choose to use scare quotes because the enclosed word is part of common phrase (such as creation "science") and the writer disapproves of the term. A writer who uses creation "science" and Creation "Museum" is suggesting that creationism is pseudoscience and that a museum promoting it is not a real museum. A writer may put the word normal in quotation marks because of its connotations. Normal carries the connotation that something is proper or not defective. A writer who puts normal in quotation marks insinuates that normal is just a point of reference, that it refers to deviation from the average. The writer might be showing that what is normal is not superior in that situation. Alternately the author might be saying that no person can really be called normal in any meaningful way.

Negative

The effect of using scare quotes is often similar to prepending a skeptical modifier such as so-called or alleged to label the quoted word or phrase, to indicate scorn, sarcasm, or irony.^[7] Scare quotes may be used to express disagreement with the original speaker's intended meaning without actually establishing grounds for disagreement or disdain, or without even explicitly acknowledging it. In this type of usage, they are sometimes called "sneer quotes".

Examples:

• Liberal: We've heard about these conservatives and their tax "relief".
• Conservative: The liberals have proposed yet another form of "common-sense" gun control.

Neutral distancing

Enclosing a word or phrase in quotes can also convey a neutral attitude on the part of the writer, while distancing the writer from the terminology in question. The quotes are used to call attention to a neologism, special terminology (jargon), or a slang usage, or to indicate words or phrases that are descriptive but unusual, colloquial, folksy, startling, humorous, or metaphoric. They may indicate special terminology that should be identified for accuracy's sake as someone else's, for example if a term (particularly a controversial term) pre-dates the writer or represents the views of someone else.^[7] A special case of this use of quotes is in the use–mention distinction.

Example:

• Moctezuma II was reported to have had two wives and many concubines, by whom he had a total of 150 children. The king of Texcoco was said to have had more than two thousand "wives" by whom he had had 144 children, 11 born of his chief wife.^[8]

—Bruce G. Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations (2003)

In the above passage the writer uses scare quotes to indicate that the reported two thousand inamorata of Nezahualpilli, poet-astrologer-king of the Mesoamerican state of Texcoco, should not be understood to have been his wives in the same sense that the word wife is used elsewhere.

Some writers prefer italics for this neutral usage, even though italics may easily be mistaken for emphasis. (This has been humorously labeled "scare italics".^[9])

Conversely, neutral quotes may indicate that the word or phrase in quotes has changed in meaning since its usage in the specific instance, especially if the word or phrase has gained a controversial or pejorative meaning.

Example:

• Billy Joe's story is analyzed in Professor John Howard's history of gays in Mississippi entitled Men Like That: A Queer Southern History as an archetype of what Howard calls the "gay suicide myth".

Howard's use,^[10] which refers to the academic meaning of the word myth, is unrelated to the more recent conservative "gay suicide myth" theory that gay teen suicide rates are over-reported so that gays can claim unrealistic discrimination and obtain special treatment.^[11]

Style guidelines

Style guides generally recommend the avoidance of scare quotes in impartial works, such as in encyclopedia articles or academic discussion.

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), 15th edition^[12][13] acknowledges this type of use but cautions against overuse in section 7.58: "Quotation marks are often used to alert readers that a term is used in a nonstandard, ironic, or other special sense [...] They imply 'This is not my term' or 'This is not how the term is usually applied.' Like any such device, scare quotes lose their force and irritate readers if overused."

Formatting

Scare quotes (and other quotation marks used in a special sense) are usually given in the same style (single or double) as those used elsewhere in a work.^[14]

In linguistics

Single quotation marks are used in linguistics to mark a gloss as separate from either the metalanguage, which is used in the descriptive or theoretical prose, or the object language, which is rendered in italics. The following sentence illustrates this:

• The Latin word homo means 'man'.

This sentence is about a word in the object language Latin, which appears in italics, and about its counterpart in the gloss language English, enclosed in single quotation marks. The metalanguage, also English, is unaltered.

In speech

In spoken conversation, a stand-in for scare quotes is a hand gesture known as air quotes or finger quotes, which mimics the appearance of quotation marks. The speaker may alternatively say "quote ... unquote" around the words that he/she wishes to quote ironically^[15] (though this might also be used in cases that are not instances of scare quotes).

See also

• Use–mention distinction

References