Scare quotes as scare tactics: The use of quotation in ultraconservative Polish discourse

Abstract

The paper examines the role of quotation in shaping social attitudes and reinforcing norms and values within the discourse on issues such as abortion, hate speech, and LGBT+ rights of the Polish ultraconservative organization Centrum Życia i Rodziny. The aim of the paper is to classify and analyze the use of different varieties of quotation, with a particular focus on the distancing and expressive functions of scare quotation. It also examines instances of non-standard uses of name-informing, direct, and mixed quotation, and how these can be transformed into scare quotes and employed as a rhetorical strategy to support or delegitimize ideological stances and elicit action or emotional responses from the reader. Through corpus-based qualitative analysis, the paper attempts to identify the possible goals and motivations behind the use of quotation – especially scare quotes – and illustrate its strategic use in discourse.

Keywords

abortion delegitimization direct quotation distancing hate speech LGBT rights mixed quotation persuasion pure quotation scare quotes

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