Scare quotes as deontic modals

Abstract

The aim of this article is to propose a formal semantic account of scare quotation (SQ). I present data showing that SQ, though flexible, is subject to regular and so far largely unnoticed limitations following from the infelicitous use of irony as well as the division between at-issue and not-at-issue content parts. While these effects can hardly be accounted for by assuming that the ironic aspect of SQ involves negation, they are in harmony with basic properties of deontic modality. I formulate a deontic modal account of SQ which not only predicts the complex behaviour of SQ, but also sheds much new light on the formal nature of irony.