Scary quotes

Yesterday, your host and Mrs. SC spent much of the day at Disneyland. Before going, we stopped for breakfast at the Original Pancake House, where the following sign was noted by the cash register:

Sorry, "no" credit cards.

It was thus appropriate to come home and see that Geoff Pullum had written about scare quotes thusly:

When a full professor who works in some field like linguistics or philosophy puts a word or phrase in scare quotes, it's about the word or phrase: it's an indication that it may be the wrong one, an expression that ignorant and careless writers elsewhere have used but which really should be eschewed. Professors (well, professors of subjects like linguistics, logic, and philosophy, anyway) write from a standpoint of feeling linguistically fairly secure.

But when a staff member of lower perceived status uses the same device, the semantics is the same — the quote marks mean that this word or phrase may not be strictly correct — but pragmatically it's quite likely to indicate a very different situation, one in which the user feels insecure about whether the right word or phrase has been chosen.

It would seem that Prof. Pullum's typology of scare quotes is a bit incomplete. It's hard to read the sign as using quotation marks to indicate that somebody (the owner?) is actually being quoted, since they're only around a single word and not the whole phrase. Not that it's terribly clear why they'd have felt the need to write "Sorry, no credit cards" as though it was a quote from someone anyway.

But assuming it is a scare quote, they certainly don't mean that it's the wrong word, so it's not the professorial usage. And there's not exactly any uncertainty about whether or not it's the right word -- unless perhaps they were hesitating between "no" and "fuhgeddaboutit". So it's not Prof. Pullum's "staff member" use, either ([that's a regular quote, not a scare quote -- ed.]).

Then again, at least Prof. Pullum's distinctions correspond to intelligible meanings. 18 hours after the fact, your host still can't figure out what the quotes around "no" actually add to the meaning of the sentence.

Comments

[language hat]

That's not a scare quote, it's just an ordinary misuse of quotes to give emphasis, such as you can see in shop windows everywhere. As such, it doesn't fall within the purview of Pullum's classification. Scare quotes are used to cast doubt on the word(s) quoted.

[polyglot conspiracy]

Oh, how I wish, I WISH, this sign said

Sorry, say "no" to credit cards

instead.

There's a sign here in Charlottesville that similarly reads:

"Best" Cards in Town!

You're like, "Well, WHO said they're the best? I need proof!"

And, yes, like quotes around things on menus (which, if I remember correctly, The Original Pancake House is guilty of using), there's no meaning added there. I'm thinking there must be something trendy about quotes, in a decorative sense, and that's why people use them in this way.

Also there's a very very very small possibility that the "no" is ironic, so that credit cards really are allowed and the sign is a joke. You should go up to the counter and pull out a credit card, and when they point you disapprovingly to the sign, say, "But it says 'no' credit cards," using airquotes.

[Semantic Compositions]

LH: You're right that they're not really scare quotes. I just found myself asking what they could possibly mean.

PC: I really wish I could try that idea of yours about pulling out the credit card. But they have an extremely antiquated cash register that looks like it might predate transistors, never mind computerized registers. It would be hard for me to keep a straight face while pretending that I thought that thing might even possibly work with credit cards.

[eric morse]

PC: Here's a story that underlines your thinking that folks see quotes as trendy...
I designed the cover for a fitness DVD. The producer asked me to put "Four Stars! The ultimate all-body workout!" at the top (The 4 stars were actual stars, to make it look like a movie review). I asked him to whom I should credit the quote. He said no one actually said it (like, duh). I asked him where the 4 stars came from, and he said it was just a way to show his product was really good. Since he was writing the check, the discussion ended there.

[Jonathan K. Cohen]

This may be an unduly lit-crit reading, but could the "No" in the sentence be intended to be read as appearing in the less-mediated voice of the proprietor? A sort of interpellative?

BTW, I love the OPH, and if there weren't such vast lines on weekends, I would probably eat there every other week. As it is, my wife and I haven't been there in a year.

[Ryan]

I'm in agreement with LH, but interpreting them as scare quotes can lead to some unintended (on the part of the sign-writer) hilarity.

I heard from a friend that his co-worker put this note on a computer that needed to be on all the time:

Do "not" turn off this computer.

I told him to go turn it off, because that was obviously what the co-worker wanted, right?