Are You Being Ironic Or Not ?

Scare quotes. Let's talk about quotes, scary and friendly, all right?

yes, let's.

Quotation marks are not decorative. They do not render your prose fancier. They actually mean stuff. EITHER they mean that you are citing direct discourse; i.e. that what is contained within them is spoken by someone other than the narrator of the rest of the text OR they mean that the term contained within them is being used ironically. Hence the text "welcome to our establishment" either means that someone other than the sign-posting management is saying that text, which would be weird, or that the sign-posting management is saying "welcome to our establishment" but does not really mean to extend a welcome, which would be both weird and also not particularly nice. Nor would the latter be a sensible course, capitalist-business-running-wise.

Now we here at the grammar underground are familiar with the intentional fallacy, and we don't mean to get into a whole big thing about it with you, but we feel safe in claiming that neither of these is probably what the sign-posting management means when it puts this text into quotation marks.

Of course, if you're going to get all snippy about it, we would feel comfortable writing instead that neither of these is probably what the sign-posting management "means" when it puts this text into quotation marks.

are you happy now?

Let us add that there might be a bit of ambiguity in our colleague's remarks. What she's talking about, we believe, is a sign such as the following:

"Welcome To Our Establishment" "Serving Fine Tennessee Fried Chicken" "Since 1789" "Open Daily"

Are THESE People Being Ironic Or Not?

Comments:

From nicole - 4/24/04 12:42 AM

From pseudonym - 4/23/04 5:06 PM

From pepe [128.135.126.248] - 4/23/04 4:13 PM

From flying nun [128.135.126.248] - 4/23/04 4:12 PM