At 05:52 PM 7/6/04 -0700, Mark D Lew wrote:
>(who thinks scare quotes are incorrect
I just heard the term "scare quotes" a few weeks ago for the first time,
when Andrew Stiller used it on O-List. When did the previous meaning
(approximately "I'm using your term but I don't really agree with the
usage") turn into a pejorative ("scare quotes")?
Dennis
I picked it up from philosopher Daniel Dennett, who so far as I
know originated it. It is a useful expreession because it is very easy
to overlook scare quotes when reading, and they tend to be used very
sneakily in much formal argument, with the intention of making you shy
away from accepting the enclosed term at face value, without the
author having to actually make a case why you should do so. A
parenthetical "(sic)" used to be used the same way, but
scare quotes are much more subtle and insidious. That said, their use
can be perfectly legitimate--so long as everybody understands what's
being done. Anyway, if you don't call them "scare quotes,"
what do you call them?
Another useful _expression_ of Dennett's is "intuition pump,"
designating an argument that leaves out a crucial reasoning step while
encouraging the reader to bridge the gap via intuition. Politicians
use intuition pumps a lot.
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