The function of square quotes in hard news: Metadiscoursal and generic perspectives

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the issue of scare quoting in British hard news reports. It examines two types of scare quotes distinguished by voice origin – scare quotes originating with the internal voice and scare quotes attributed to an external voice (Dillon 1988, Schneider 2002, Predelli 2003, Bednarek 2006, Meibauer 2015, Nacey 2012). Scare quotes originating with the internal voice are comparable to code glosses (Hyland 2005, 2007) and they reflect the writer’s assumptions about the reader’s expectations regarding various aspects of the enclosed words, including meaning, register and style. Such scare quotes tend to co-occur with explicit verbal metadiscourse, partial quotes and contextualising authorial discourse with which they create functionally homogenous sections. Scare quotes attributed to an external voice overlap with partial direct quotes but the former are overlayed with an authorial attitude towards the enclosed words or the reported speaker; attitude is induced by the interaction between scare quotes and context, especially generic/discourse patterns such as contrast and repetition. The authorial comment signalled by code glossing and attitudinal quotation marks is implicit and thus in line with hard news generic conventions. The functions of scare quotes bear relevance to the novelty and negativity of reported events and are also reflected in the distribution across the generic structure (Urbanová 2013).