To be fair, I don’t ever remember being taught the term “scare quotes” or even getting any formal education on their use, using quotes around a word to imply a different meaning. I think it’s one of those things I learned through use and example and never learned in school. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the official term for them in other languages aren’t very well known or ever really used either.
In Spanish dialogue isn’t usually written in quotes, we use dashes*. The use of quote marks as a marker of “there is something strange about this word” is explained and seen many times, what most years don’t do is go into a specific study of “the many reasons why you might mark a word using quote marks”. The other main use of quote marks is for non-dialogue quotes, and those are rarer than rephrasing:
the minister said that the accusations were under investigation <— most common
vs
the minister said, and I quote, “the accusations are under investigation” <— this, and exactly like this, could be heard from a reporter
vs
the minister said: “the accusations are under investigation” <— rare
- Quote marks were more common in older texts (XVIII, XIX centuries) than they are now, but even then, I’ve seen more old books with dashes than quotes.
I think some people are confusing “scare quotes”, which have a specific meaning, and regular quotation marks which simply signify that you’re quoting someone.
Hebrew uses “Scare Quotes” in almost exactly the same way that English does (including “Air quoting” the relevant word in speech).
And they’re usually called “Merkha’ot” (not used for anything else in Modern Hebrew – “End markers” I guess?) instead of “Gersha’im” (lit. “two tags” - a single quote, ', is "geresh") which is the word generally used for regular quotes.
Yeah but what we’re really talking about is things like:
the “minister” said the accusations are under investigation (you doubt the legitimacy of him holding office)
the minister said the “accusations” are under investigation (you think the accusations are more like baseless rumors)
the minister said the accusations are under “investigation” (yeah, right, they’ll look into it real carefully and say there’s nothing to it)
A bit off-topic: This use of quotation marks is so pervasive (and has been for so long) that I vividly recall my second-grade teacher asking the class what quotation marks were used for. I raised my hand and then tried to explain the concept which decades later I learned could be described by the term “scare quotes.” As a seven-year-old, I couldn’t express the concept. I fumbled for words, even though I knew how they were used, from things I’d read…basically, when the writer wanted to express that he was writing a word, but didn’t really think it was the right, or most honest, word to use. Something like that!
Anyway, the teacher interrupted my fumblings to say, “Well…actually, we use these marks when we’re writing what someone said… In other words, when we are quoting them.” I though to myself, “Hmmm…that might be an interesting secondary use of those marks, but I know they’re more often used for the vague purpose I’m having trouble putting into words.” This was in 1977!
A particularly invidious (if that’s the right word) is when newspaper reporters, in a non-editorial column, insert their own little editorial comment, under cover of simply doing their job by notating that the spoken “speech” or “thinking” the person is verbatim.
And I did talk about that in a previous post. The post you quoted was re. “talking in class about quote marks and their usages”, in response to a remark from the OP.
In China they use [[double brackets]] for ‘scare quotes’. They do not have a term for scare quotes per se in either Chinese or Japan, so newspapers in Japan, China and Taiwan never use the term, but in China and perhaps also in Taiwan, writers will use double brackets as in [[scare quotes]] to signal to the reader that they are scare quoting the term. The Chinese Communist Government in Beijing and its propaganda arm often uses the double brackets code as a way of belitting the regime’s opponents, such as the Dalai Llama or Taiwan’s president or parliament. in Chinese CHina will call Taiwan’s democrat Congress as [[Taiwan’s legisture]] to signal that China does not believe Taiwan is an independent nation, which of coure it ‘‘is’’. Scare quotes intended.
Do they use *Italics *in Italy?
The earliest online reference for the use of the term “scare quotes” was in a 1946 book about California, by U.S. writer Carey McWilliams. Reference says: [They have
been in use in American letters since 1946, when the term – with a
hyphen then, “scare-quotes” – made it into a nonfiction book about
California by Carey McWilliams. Newsweek used it for the first time in
print in 1993 in an article about artist Roy Lichenstein. The Oxford
English Dictionary gives a reference to some professor in Britain
using the term in 1956 in an academic paper.]
I come into the thread to say what’s in this discussion. When I’ve proof read my wife’s papers which have been translated from Japanese into English, I need to get rid of the scare quotes for the reasons given in that discussion.
A Japanese woman, aged 45, writes to me from Japan today re all this:
*Hello Funnyman,
Yes, it’s true. We Japanese often use such dots to signify scare quotes!
Especially for Japanese subtitles in movies!
We used to use these dots more frequently, before, when we were writing letters by hand. Today people use email more often rather than handwritten letters so it is changing and it is possible that young generations do not know about the use of
- Mitsuko in Tokyo*
I’ve read that Ulysses, published 1922, was the first book in English to use dashes rather than quotes for dialogue.
Never occurred to me to check it. Will look into it, but right now I can’t think how.
USA expat in Japan over 30 years tells me re the DOTS used in movie subitles and magna in Japan
“They take the place of italics in English.”
and PS to LEO BLOOM, with a name like THAT, Leopold Bloom and MOLLY Bloom. no wonder you are keyed in to Ulysses!
Curious formatting, that. I just found it gathering dust in my iBooks collection. It seems like a line of dialog begins with an em–dash, but there is no closing to the quoted part, it goes right into “, he loudly exclaimed.” or somesuch. Joyce was such a free-spirit (should I have scare-quoted that?)