The "right" definiution of " 'scare' quotes"

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:34 AM -0400 8/4/00, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>Still, if Jesse and Lynne Murphy (not to mention the NEW OXFORD ENGLISH
>DICTIONARY, which I have just consulted) says I'm "wrong" about the
>definition of "scare" quotes, then I will just have to revise my mental
>lexical entry. I have always used the term SCARE QUOTES to refer to any
>quotation marks that do not appear actually to quote anybody, without speculat
>ing as to the motive of the writer. I guess my overgeneralized interpretation
>of the term stems from the very fact that there "is" no distinct, widely
>known American term for purely emphatic quotation marks (except maybe
>"emphatic quotation marks"?). That and the fact that using quotation marks
>purely for emphasis seems pretty scaring to me. And the fact that it is often
>not possible to tell the "scare" quotes from the "emphatic" quotes (can
>anyone tell me which of the sets of quotation marks in my this paragraph are
>"scare" quotes and which are "emphatic" quotes???--I must say, I like my
>deviant usage even if it is "wrong").
>
>So the sign-painter who wrote "HANDICAP" PARKING on the sign in my local
>supermarket parking lot is not using scare quotes--unless she means to imply
>that the parking place so designated is for anyone who might use one of those
>special parking passes, whether actually qualified by disability or not?
>
I think the key is that the wielder of scare quotes is sophisticated
enough to (purport to) know the accurate use of a given term and uses
the quotes to indicate that the term in question is not to be taken
at face value (it's a cousin of the similarly metalinguistic
"[sic]"), while the user of what we're calling emphatic quotes is too
unsophisticated to NOT know that quotes are not ("correctly") used
for marking emphasis.

larry