Scare quotes
Gene Zitver
commenting on the dishonest and lazy use of scare quotes in political writing.
I don't know if their use is any more prevalent now than it was in GO's day,
but this piece by Alan Jacobs (from The Weekly Standard, I'm afraid) made me
realize how insidious they can be:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/548bpdrs.asp
The prime example Jacobs offers is one of the hawks' favorite punching bags,
Robert Fisk (whose name has become a legend and a verb in certain blogging
circles). Fisk has taken to putting quotes around the word "liberate" and its
variants when writing about what the US and the UK are doing in Iraq:
The Americans "liberated" Baghdad yesterday. . . .
Forgetting, too, that the "liberators" were a new and alien and
all-powerful occupying force with neither culture nor language nor race
nor religion to unite them with Iraq. .
But tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the
"liberating" kind. . . .
Nor did the Americans look happy "liberators." . . .
Of course, the Americans knew they would get a good press by "liberating"
the foreign journalists at the Palestine Hotel. . . .
President Bush will come here and there will be new "friends" of America
to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those
who "liberated" them.
OK, the not-so-subtle message here is that Fisk doesn't believe the Americans
liberated (or if you prefer, "liberated") Iraq. Which of course he's entitled
not to believe. But instead of simply sneering at the use of the word to
describe what happened, shouldn't he tell us what he thinks happened?
Do Fisk and others use scare quotes because, as Orwell wrote in _PATEL_, "they
save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves"?
And the use of scare quotes can be even more absurd. Jacobs cites a piece by
Mary Riddell in The Observer, in which she says Tony Blair wants the British
people to:
Ignore the nastiness [of the war] and think instead of the brave "rescue"
of Private Jessica Lynch from the hospital ward where she was being
treated with all available medical skill.
As Jacobs notes, she probably meant to put the quotes around "brave," which at
least would have made a modicum of sense even if it was unfair.
I don't want to single out dovish writers for this practice (as Jacobs does).
Hawkish writers don't hesitate to put the word "peace" in quotes ("peace"
demonstration, "peace" activists, etc.) without bothering to explain.
Anyway, I apologize for my previous misuse of scare quotes, and I'll try to be
more vigilant about it in the future.
Gene
Martha Bridegam
Gene Zitver wrote:
> ....Do Fisk and others use scare quotes because, as Orwell wrote in _PATEL_,
> "they
> save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves"?
...
Reminds me of something TJ Clark said in an art history lecture in the 1980s about
the period leading up to a cultural shift. He was talking about Impressionism but
the point seemed to apply more generally. IIRC he was saying that there are
periods in cultural life when people can't quite find the words to say what they
want to say -- they only have words that they find inadequate, that they can't use
whole-heartedly any more, so they put them in ironic quotation marks. Later,
perhaps, they figure out what it is they really wanted to say.
I think the painting he was lecturing on was Renoir's of himself among many others
dancing at the Moulin de la Galette. He argued that Renoir was presenting himself
as a happy ordinary bourgeois doing a happy ordinary thing, but viewing the scene
with an artist's detachment at the same time. I'm not sure how this fit his point
exactly, but it was an interesting point.
/M
Alan Hogue
>I think had Orwell lived longer, he eventually would have got around to
>commenting on the dishonest and lazy use of scare quotes in political writing.
>I don't know if their use is any more prevalent now than it was in GO's day,
>but this piece by Alan Jacobs (from The Weekly Standard, I'm afraid) made me
>realize how insidious they can be:
>http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/548bpdrs.asp
>
>
snip
>
>OK, the not-so-subtle message here is that Fisk doesn't believe the Americans
>liberated (or if you prefer, "liberated") Iraq. Which of course he's entitled
>not to believe. But instead of simply sneering at the use of the word to
>describe what happened, shouldn't he tell us what he thinks happened?
>
>Do Fisk and others use scare quotes because, as Orwell wrote in _PATEL_, "they
>save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves"?
>
>
>
snip
>
>Anyway, I apologize for my previous misuse of scare quotes, and I'll try to be
>more vigilant about it in the future.
>
>Gene
>
>
Good point. I will too.
Alan H.
Alan Allport
news:20030415133955...@mb-fd.aol.com...
> I think had Orwell lived longer, he eventually would have got around to
> commenting on the dishonest and lazy use of scare quotes in political
writing.
Why are they called scare quotes?
Alan.
bayle
"Martha Bridegam" <brid...@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:3E9C4C37...@pacbell.net...
So what was Clark like as a lecturer? I've tried his books but they've
always seemed a little too ideological and not enough art historical for my
taste.