1. Scare-quotes in MICUSP: Some preliminary observations

Authors: Nieri Avanessian and John Swales
Date: July 2010
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Kibbitzer 1

Scare-quotes in MICUSP: Some preliminary observations
by Nieri Avanessian and John Swales

The standard uses of quotation marks to refer to the words of other writers, to mark dialogue or quoted speech, or to indicate linguistic examples are widely taught to students in writing classes and outlined in detail by style guides. Indeed, the first of these uses is often stressed in material about plagiarism (and how to avoid it).

However, there are other uses of quotation marks that are not standard in the same way. These are commonly called scare-quotes, but we will simply call them s-quotes in this Kibbitzer. One common type of s-quote has a so-called function, as in this example from a MICUSP Education paper:

[…] crooked superintendents sometimes take a new teacher’s first paycheck as “payment” for having helped the teacher secure his or her position. (EDU.G2.01.1)

As you can see, the writer wants to indicate (ironically) that it is not really a payment. A second common use is to indicate that the writer recognizes that a word or phrase is outside formal academic style. Here is another example from a MICUSP Education paper:

Learning about what causes the large and dangerous flashes of lightning they see during thunderstorms will be “cool” and engaging. (EDU.G0.06.3)

This type we can call a style s-quote. There are also some less common types that we discuss below. At this point, it is interesting to note that most materials designed to help students with their writing either mention s-quotes only in passing (or not at all), and/or advise students not to use them—even though we can easily find s-quotes in published academic writing! And here we can note that these written s-quotes are often used in a similar fashion and in a similar context to the “air quotes” or “finger quotes” that people use to distance themselves from a term or expression they are introducing into their speech.

Because so little seemed to be known about student use of s-quotes, we decided to investigate this phenomenon in the newly-available Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP). Since this investigation would have to be conducted manually, it would obviously take many hours to look through all 829 papers, adding up to about 2.3 million words (excluding references, etc). So, a four-person team was assembled consisting of Laura Aull, Nieri Avanessian, Katharine Barcy and John Swales, each member taking responsibility for combing through several of the 16 disciplines represented in the corpus. We also met weekly for several months to discuss progress and to try and resolve difficult cases. In the end, the approximately 2,500 s-quotes we found were classified into five categories: so-called/safe (with sneer/snarky as a subcategory); style; term; coinage; and uncertain/mixed.

• So-called: to distance oneself from more common uses of the word(s) without necessarily indicating criticism:
  […] the students need to rely on other things outside of “experts” or textbooks […] (EDU.G0.01.1)
  Sneer/Snarky: to critique common uses of the word(s), often using sarcasm:
  Weitzman’s firm takes the “nice” way out, starving them for as long as they’ll take it (ECO.G0.04.2)

• Style: to signal off-register language or the use of fixed “general English” expressions:
  […] colloquially this term has become synonymous with the idea of a “take home message” that the author of a text is attempting to impart on the reader (ENG.G0.02.1)

• Term: to mark off a disciplinary or cultural term without direct citation:
  […] the result of refining the concept of “Assembly-line” […] (IOE.G1.05.2)

• Coinage: to coin or invent a term for one’s own use:
  In addition, I incorporate a measure of “other debt” as debt with non-regular payments, such as debts to an individual or to an employer. (ECO.G2.03.1)

• Mixed/uncertain: to avoid having to force s-quotes into one-category or another, and also to categorize instances of misuse and otherwise uncategorizable usages:
  The Forest Service attempted to “bullet proof” its NEPA documents […] (NRE.G2.05.1).

In the last case, we do not know whether this is actually some direct quotation from the Forest Service (and so not an s-quote) or is a phrase that the writer had chosen to capture his or her understanding of the situation.

The number of s-quotes found was then normalized onto a base of 10,000 words, so that proper comparisons can be made. First, we looked at the distribution of s-quotes in terms of discipline. As you can see in CHART 1, the average number of s-quotes is generally higher in the social sciences and humanities than in natural or hard sciences. However, there were no disciplines which displayed no s-quotes, and in ten out of sixteen disciplines, over 50% of papers included s-quotes. In other words, s-quoting is quite common in MICUSP.

CHART 1: Normalized S-Quote Frequencies by Discipline (per 10,000 words)

Next, data analyzed in terms of academic level showed a steady increase in usage of s-quotes (CHART 2). However, here we need to point out that big increase in use by G3 has probably been caused by a small number of papers with extremely high use of s-quotes (in one case around 100).

CHART 2: Normalized S-Quote Frequencies by Level (per 10,000 words)

Finally, data analyzed in terms of nativeness showed that many non-native speaker (NNS) writers use s-quotes in a broadly similar manner and in comparable frequencies to the native speaker (NS) majority, although on average a greater proportion of NS writers use them than do non-native speakers of English.

When we realized that s-quotes were quite common in MICUSP, we decided that we needed to have a better understanding of student perceptions about these uses of quotation marks. A simple questionnaire was given to students in a range of classes at the University of Michigan (3 NNS graduate writing courses and 2 NS undergraduate advanced composition courses). Overall, the questionnaire results showed that the term “scare quotes” was essentially unknown to all these groups of students, even though the students also showed considerable tacit understanding of this rhetorical device.

In conclusion, our analysis of the MICUSP data shows that the students use s-quotes to show insider knowledge of the conventions and expectations of the disciplines they are studying, as well as to demonstrate their perceptions of deviations from the academic register. In this respect, their use is little different from that of their professors! Both groups clearly understand its employment as a rhetorical device. But here we need to remember that only “A” papers were collected for the Michigan corpus. It is also clear that a few students (including some non-native speakers) overused s-quotes. (It is not necessary to use s-quotes every time you refer to a concept like “’correct’ English”.) More generally, this study suggests that more explicit attention to this rhetorical device should be a part of NNS and NS instructional materials and university classrooms.

Our sub-title to this Kibbitzer is “Some preliminary observations”, and here we have focused on some general trends. Further work is needed on the distribution of the sub-types of s-quotes across disciplines, academic levels and writer NS or NNS status. We also need more detailed investigations of, for example, why s-quote usage is so high in Sociology and so low in Philosophy. It would also be useful to look into possible “misuses” of s-quotes and cases where s-quotes might have been used with advantage, but were not. But these findings will have to wait for another Kibbitzer.