“Scare” quotes by Johannes Angermuller
Guest: Johannes Angermuller
Recorded : Friday 22nd May, 2026, online.
Published : Tuesday 22nd September, 2026.
Recording language: English
Keywords
scare quotes, voice, discourse analysis, political language, media, communication, social semiotics, irony, denigration, stance
Summary
Sophia welcomes linguist Johannes Angermuller to talk about scare quotes. Sometimes termed air quotes or even sneer quotes, Merriam-Webster defines scare quotes as “quotation marks used to express especially skepticism or derision concerning the use of the enclosed word or phrase.” A deceptively simple but politically potent discursive tool, scare quotes can distance speakers and writers from the words they use, question their legitimacy, or subtly signal irony, doubt and disapproval. Sophia and Johannes discuss how scare quotes operate across political, academic and everyday discourse — and what those tiny inverted commas can reveal about stance, ideology and power.
Recorded in May 2026 and released only now, following Sophia’s move to China to take up a new academic position, this episode brings Season One to a close.
Sommaire
Sophia reçoit le linguiste Johannes Angermuller pour parler des guillemets de distanciation (scare quotes). Parfois appelés air quotes, ou même sneer quotes en anglais, ils sont définis par Merriam-Webster comme des « guillemets utilisés notamment pour exprimer le scepticisme ou la dérision à l’égard du mot ou de l’expression qu’ils encadrent ». Outil discursif d’une simplicité trompeuse mais à la portée politique considérable, les guillemets de distanciation permettent aux locuteurs et aux auteurs de prendre leurs distances avec les mots qu’ils emploient, d’en contester la légitimité ou de signaler subtilement l’ironie, le doute ou la désapprobation. Sophia et Johannes examinent leur fonctionnement dans les discours politique, universitaire et quotidien — et ce que ces minuscules signes typographiques peuvent révéler sur le positionnement énonciatif, l’idéologie et les rapports de pouvoir.
Enregistré en mai 2026 et diffusé seulement aujourd’hui, à la suite du départ de Sophia pour la Chine où elle a pris ses nouvelles fonctions universitaires, cet épisode vient clore la première saison.
Chapters (machine generated)
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the semiotics of scare quotes
01:59 Different purposes and functions of scare quotes
03:57 Scare quotes in political discourse and media
05:53 Semantic and pragmatic implications of scare quotes
07:59 Voices, distancing, and social power
09:58 Cultural and linguistic variations in scare quotes
12:00 Scare quotes in popular culture and history
14:00 The role of scare quotes in academic and everyday language
16:04 Reflections on the power and potential of scare quotes
Johannes Angermuller is a linguist and sociologist whose research lies at the intersection of discourse studies, pragmatics and the sociology of knowledge. Internationally recognised for his work on discourse, subjectivity and social positioning, he has developed a sociopragmatic approach to the ways speakers and writers construct positions, identities and relations of power through language. His research spans academic, political and intellectual discourse and draws particularly on French traditions of enunciative pragmatics and discourse analysis alongside German and international traditions in the social sciences.
He has held academic positions in Germany and the United Kingdom, including a professorship in the Sociology of Higher Education at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and a Research Professorship in Discourse at the University of Warwick. His work has also involved extensive research and collaboration in France, and his academic trajectory reflects a longstanding engagement with French intellectual and linguistic traditions.
His books include Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis: Subjectivity in Enunciative Pragmatics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Why There Is No Poststructuralism in France: The Making of an Intellectual Generation (Bloomsbury, 2015), and, with Philippe Blanchard, Careers of the Professoriate: Academic Pathways of the Linguists and Sociologists in Germany, France and the UK (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). His work has been published in several languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Turkish.
Angermuller has also played an important role in developing discourse studies as an international and interdisciplinary field. With Dominique Maingueneau and Ruth Wodak, he edited The Discourse Studies Reader: Main Currents in Theory and Analysis (John Benjamins, 2014), bringing together major traditions in discourse research across the humanities and social sciences. His publications address subjects ranging from poststructuralism and French Theory to political discourse, academic careers, higher education, post-truth, subject positions and the relationship between language, knowledge and power.
Personal professional page : https://www.johannes-angermuller.net/francais/index.html
Transcript (machine generated)
Sophia Burnett (00:08)
I'm really pleased that Johannes Angermüller is with me to talk about a particular sign. Hello Johannes!
Johannes (00:16)
Hi Sophia, good to see you. Well, good to hear you here.
Sophia Burnett (00:19)
could you us already which sign you've chosen and it speaks to you in
Johannes (00:23)
let's go for this,
let's go for the scare quote. I think this is a
very interesting sign because it reminds us of the many voices which with which we speak.
Sophia Burnett (00:31)
That's an interesting, the many voices with which we speak. this idea that there's not one single voice in human communication, that there are all these layers to it, especially when we start looking at pragmatics and things like that.
Johannes (00:46)
Exactly.
Sophia Burnett (00:47)
Okay. So is there an example of a scare quote that...
speaks to you particularly or, because I'm thinking of, first Trump administration when he was using scare quotes to talk about things that he was using it for plausible deniability, talking about Obama,
setting wires, in the Oval Office in the White House, you know. So he's scare quotes to distance himself from these claims. So is that how you are talking about? scare quotes, right.
Johannes (01:21)
Yeah, it's really about creating proximity or well, in this case distance. And I think scare quotes are extremely malleable, you can use them for all kinds of different purposes. And you can cite a person, you can emphasize something you can express irony, perhaps you can
say something which
you don't mean to say.
Sophia Burnett (01:45)
Yeah, in America, I think they're called sneer quotes as well.
Johannes (01:50)
Really? Okay, I haven't heard that,
Sophia Burnett (01:51)
like to sneer. there is that element of
sarcasm.
Johannes (01:55)
scare quotes is already quite quite dramatic. And I think
Sophia Burnett (01:59)
Hmm.
Johannes (01:59)
other other languages have very different words for this. think in French, it's guillemets you can say Anführungszeichen in German
Sophia Burnett (02:08)
Okay,
but is that like the, because in the French, 'guillemets' that's just quotes, isn't it? That's just like,
Johannes (02:14)
Yes.
Sophia Burnett (02:15)
But scare quotes is a different deployment of this.
Johannes (02:18)
Well, but isn't it
using a quote for I mean, for highlighting something as being extremely foreign or non authentic in terms of the speaker who expresses a distance.
Sophia Burnett (02:32)
Yeah, it can be used for that. So you have very much a sense of denigration of the word that's encased in scare quotes.
Johannes (02:41)
I understood it as a way of really kind of presenting something which is really not you speaking. is, look at that strange language and I'll put it in scare quotes.
Sophia Burnett (02:54)
Hmm. Yeah. mean, that's
Johannes (02:56)
Wouldn't you agree?
Sophia Burnett (02:57)
distancing. Yeah. Yeah. I think there is, there is obviously that usage of scare quotes is
Johannes (03:03)
How would you define it?
Sophia Burnett (03:04)
distancing. How would I define scare quotes? Hmm.
I don't know, because preparing for this, was like very rapidly thinking about
instances
Johannes (03:13)
you
Sophia Burnett (03:15)
of scare quotes that I come across and
There's quite a few subtle variants of the scare quote. So there's the political discourse scare quote, which
kind of implies something. you know, you have people who have all these theories, know, these conspiracy theories. So typically in that kind of discourse, the word they,
could be put into scare quotes and used by the speaker.
Johannes (03:43)
The word day.
Sophia Burnett (03:45)
they
Johannes (03:46)
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sophia Burnett (03:49)
what is going to happen with whatever political thing. which affords the speaker great largesse, doesn't it? Because
it's just a placeholder for anything that the listener could have on their mind. the government, some kind of other institution, the FBI, the Feds, 'They' suddenly becomes much bigger than the small word. And the person uses it.
with this sort of the way Trump did, the example from before. So using it with this
deniability in mind, so later on, that person can say, well, no, I didn't mean, I didn't mean the feds, of course, I didn't mean the feds, I meant blah, blah, blah. so there are different usages of It's like early,
don't know, early food, unregulated advertising for food. Cookies containing, 100 % in scare quotes "chocolate". I don't think they can do that anymore, but, definitely scare quotes were used as something to indicate, like you said earlier,
the inauthenticity of something as well.
Johannes (04:58)
and the non-normality,
the outlandish character of something, right?
Sophia Burnett (05:06)
Yeah, it could be.
So it's a semiotic that people are very aware of, I think, to the extent that it was used in fiction, quite a long time ago, was used in Citizen Kane. when Kane is accused by the press of having an affair with
a singer and "singer" was put in scare quotes because this is also still today a way in which the press uses scare quotes to distance themselves from political action.
they'll use it to say things like offence on peace if they don't want to get into trouble taking political sides, you know. So it's, yeah.
Johannes (05:46)
right, it's somebody else speaking
here and it's not me, it's not the journalist, it's not the paper.
Sophia Burnett (05:53)
Yeah, yeah. Or it's somebody else speaking or it's like, "as I understand it", sort of thing, given the information at hand. I don't know if you know, Graham Hancock.
Johannes (06:07)
No, I don't.
Sophia Burnett (06:08)
So he's this kind of very strange fellow. He's got all these wonderful, fantastical theories about archaeology and history.
And
he's done all these series on Netflix and stuff. They're great to watch because it's wonderful to watch, but it's just rubbish really. It's scientifically quite rubbish. He talks about mainstream archeology and
I can't really remember if he uses his hands to do scare quotes when he says that, but there's something in the phonology of how he produces those words that it's almost, one can see scare quotes in how it says it, know, sort of the denigration of it,
Johannes (06:54)
So
do you understand scare quotes as implying the gesture as well? mean, do you do this kind of movement with with the fingers or is it is it just what you write on paper?
Sophia Burnett (07:06)
Well, it can be just written down, but I think with the rise of so much media being easily accessible and so many people communicating, there is this inclination towards people actually expressly saying quote unquote. Now I can understand that because if you're a politician,
in a podcast studio with Joe Rogan, for example, and you don't know how that video is going to be edited. If you don't sort of expressly say quote unquote, it could be that your words could be transformed,
Yeah, the meaning of your communication could be misconstrued.
Johannes (07:49)
Sure, yeah.
Sophia Burnett (07:51)
Hmm.
Johannes (07:51)
And we easily get lost in all these different voices that we need to distinguish between.
Sophia Burnett (07:57)
what do you mean by get lost?
Johannes (07:59)
mean, sometimes it's not that easy to understand who's speaking really. And people, they, they cite other people they speak with and through other people and, and sometimes we don't, I mean, it's left open and people can, can speculate a bit and then something which is just hearsay becomes something which is perceived as a
as an established truth and that's of course because these voices are misallocated in a way.
Sophia Burnett (08:26)
So by voices, perhaps for the listener, if you could explain this notion of voices just quickly, if you don't mind.
Johannes (08:36)
Yeah.
So the idea is that every utterance has has of course a speaker. But in many cases, there's not only one speaker present as it were, but the speaker relates to to other voices. And that's why the utterance normally applies a number of different voice or inundative layers and
This is something of course that depends on the way that different aspects are presented through typographic traces like scare quotes
Sophia Burnett (09:04)
So I understand the idea of a separate voice on one's own being sort of imported within regular quotes.
Johannes (09:15)
regular quotes.
Sophia Burnett (09:16)
Just quotation
Johannes (09:19)
Okay.
Sophia Burnett (09:20)
marks. I see what you were saying before about saying that scare quotes are used to mobilize somebody else's voice, but whilst keeping a distance from them. Is that what you meant?
Johannes (09:34)
Yeah, I mean, I think in the case of scare quotes, you would normally really highlight something and present it as foreign to your position.
So you
Sophia Burnett (09:45)
Right.
Johannes (09:46)
would mobilize two voices. You would of course have your own voice, the authorship, your final kind of responsibility. But at the same time, you let others speak like...
the other pull it aside with their absurd ideas and by using scare quotes, you make it really clear that it's not your kind of idea. So in fact, you give
Sophia Burnett (10:08)
Hmm.
Johannes (10:09)
some voice to the other side by using scare quotes because you let another person, as it were, speak.
Sophia Burnett (10:17)
Hmm. I suppose then it's semantic reframing as well of the word that's targeted. in the United States, this idea of, social security and things like that, what we consider to be basic human rights in Europe now, you know. So I can imagine
right-winger in the States saying, something about.
social welfare and somebody else could retalk, they could come back saying you shouldn't be afraid of "communism" in scare quotes.
because that kind of, that isolates that scary word and because there's been an inflation in the sort of representation of these
socialist ideologies. So for basically for many Americans, just basic social welfare as being "communist", Or having communist inclinations. so that word could be re-classed, couldn't it, with the scare quotes.
Johannes (11:21)
Yeah, but it's not semantic, I guess it's really, it's attributing a different origin of speaking to this word. So you attribute it to the other in your discourse. It is not you speaking, it's something, somebody else speaking and you cite the other person for what the other person has said.
But it's not semantic,
Sophia Burnett (11:45)
Mmm.
Johannes (11:45)
I think. I mean, it's very fundamental for any kind of understanding of what's the idea, the message of the utterance I think it's just the way that the voices are orchestrated in the discourse.
Sophia Burnett (12:00)
Yeah, I mean, it does mess with the indexicality though, doesn't it? Because if somebody says you
Johannes (12:05)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (12:06)
shouldn't be afraid of communism, scare quotes, then that's redefining communism. Or it's mocking someone for saying that they think that basic social welfare is being communist.
It indexes something different to the actual word and in that sense it plays around with the semantics of it.
Johannes (12:27)
Sure, yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely it's connected and it's very difficult not to see how any kind of semantic phenomenon has some pragmatic applications. And obviously, who is speaking has a huge impact on what is said.
Sophia Burnett (12:46)
Absolutely, Yeah, because its context is a bit like dog whistles, you know, I feel that as
Johannes (12:53)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (12:54)
scare quotes function in a very similar way, because they rely on the social semiotics, and they rely on the not the shared knowledge of that sort of notion that you're skirting around. So if I say, Oh, that guy, he's a movie producer.
and he's not available today for coffee because he's rehearsing scare quotes.
Johannes (13:20)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (13:20)
Yeah, scare quotes with a young actress. that rehearsing just becomes highly euphemistic.
So
Johannes (13:29)
Sure.
Sophia Burnett (13:30)
it no longer means there is semantic distortion. It no longer means rehearsing. We all understand what it means
Johannes (13:39)
Yes.
Sophia Burnett (13:41)
because of various tropes around.
the movie industry or theatre and producers and older men and young actresses. So, we have all that sort of shared information about those persona. So, yeah, the implicature is huge or can be huge, it?
Johannes (14:00)
Yes. So it's really about the implicit knowledge we have about the situation, about the genre, about the typical people that would normally participate in the debate. And yeah, that's why our world knowledge is very important for this kind of phenomenon.
Sophia Burnett (14:19)
Yeah, so it's quite a powerful semiotic really. I think people, I mean, have you used scare quotes in academic writing? I know that some people do and they're not entirely convinced of their own.
Yeah?
Johannes (14:35)
Well, I've worked
on on these things quite a lot. And, and so you can ask yourself, I mean, you can use a scare quote, like he's rehearsing with the young actress. But then, of course, it's clear that that very example is given as another quote. So you can go on kind of
'mettre en abyme' the whole thing as many times as you want and it's great fun. can really play around with it and every time it changes its meaning.
Sophia Burnett (15:05)
Yeah, I think, you know, there's, there are plenty of old movies that toyed with euphemisms in that way without necessarily making them explicitly scare quotes. In pop culture references is like, I think a nineties movie.
was it called? It was a Dr. Evil, like Austin Powers, there we go. And he used them wrong. He used scare quotes. You know, on the wrong words and it was immensely funny. Yeah, like laser.
Johannes (15:34)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I remember. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's a good example for, I mean, and
then of course, awesome power powers become this becomes this iconic figure which people can can bring in with a scare quotes. I mean, this is I mean, this is great fun.
Sophia Burnett (15:54)
So
that just shows how how powerful scare quotes are at sort of repositioning the words and, redefining words.
Johannes (16:04)
Yeah, and
I think what I did in my own work is I, when I started my career, I used scare quotes too often to kind of
Sophia Burnett (16:13)
Mm-hmm.
Johannes (16:14)
position myself in a very complex scenario with many different voices and different schools and ideas and
Sophia Burnett (16:22)
Mmm.
Johannes (16:22)
references coming from all kinds of different places. And of course, mean, academic discourse is about
securing a place and defending your place, also reflecting on how you construct your own place in relationship to the many other places. And yeah, I think I have a tendency to of using scare quotes in my own work. And it doesn't make it much more comprehensible, I think it's
not necessarily a good thing. People just want to hear what you think, I think, in most cases, they don't want to reflect on all these other are there that make possible your own voice.
Sophia Burnett (17:03)
yes, to an extent. I know the French system is still very much attached to the literature. So quoting,
Johannes (17:12)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (17:13)
you know, which is a good thing, if it's not to excess, I think it's a good thing. yeah, didn't, you see, we're back at the same point where I think we're talking about two very slightly different things.
So like scare quotes in academic literature. that's going to be, if I qualify, for example, something in a specific way, right? And I put scare quotes around it. So for example, could say, I think, you know, scare quotes.
allow for the, cause a semantic reconfiguration, right?
Johannes (17:52)
Yep.
Sophia Burnett (17:52)
If I'm not too sure that, I'm scared of getting heat for that from other academics. I could put semantic reconfiguration inside scare quotes. Yeah.
Johannes (18:05)
Yes, exactly. And
I think people in academia, they always try to hide themselves behind those other references and authorities. so
Sophia Burnett (18:20)
Well.
Johannes (18:21)
people sometimes they lose track of their own voice, which is terrible, of course.
Sophia Burnett (18:26)
Hmm, yeah, but I suppose in a way like scare quoting one's own voice in academia for just very specific words that I suppose it allows it allows one to be braver than one might be otherwise, you know.
because everybody's scared of saying something ludicrous, aren't they? I mean, that's the big,
Johannes (18:50)
Yeah, yeah.
Sophia Burnett (18:51)
it's the big fear in academia that you just get carried away with your own hypotheses and you just say something outlandish.
Johannes (18:59)
But that's terrible, isn't it?
Sophia Burnett (19:06)
yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think it's good that people are kept slightly in check.
Johannes (19:11)
want to hear outlandish things and
it's all so smoothened and kind of controlled and you don't really
Sophia Burnett (19:20)
Hmm.
Johannes (19:21)
see that many instances of people speaking really on their own behalf and I think scare quote is a symptom of a tendency to hide yourself.
Sophia Burnett (19:28)
Hmm.
Yeah, possibly. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think it's very different schools and very different sort of ecosystems of academia. think, you know, of course,
Johannes (19:38)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (19:39)
we're in humanities and social sciences. Probably when you're in the hard sciences, you really don't want to be saying anything outlandish, Although, I don't know.
A lot of progress was made by quite outlandish minds, wasn't it, back in the day. But yeah, I've gone off the thread. But you know, in the States, have science even is put into scare quotes like global warming, you know, all the MAGA caps, they would use scare quotes.
to say "global warming" or "climate change" because for them it's not a reality, it's fake.
Johannes (20:18)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (20:19)
So, I think it's very much hand in hand with the post-truth world of the United States.
Johannes (20:25)
Yeah, I mean, it's where you can see that language is so important in terms of how people are made responsible for what they say or not. And scare quotes, of course, is
Sophia Burnett (20:36)
Mmm.
Johannes (20:37)
one of these many devices that we have in order to be ourselves or not.
Sophia Burnett (20:47)
Hmm. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah. And it's quite understandable in an age where public figures especially can be canceled so rapidly for personal opinion. Well, used to be canceled so rapidly for personal opinion. It's taken quite the turn recently, hasn't it? So, yeah.
Johannes (21:07)
Yeah.
Sophia Burnett (21:09)
but that may be, because the United States has historically been more legally reactive, hasn't it, to things. So I suppose there's slightly more wariness, in, in any kind of public statements, than per...
perhaps in the UK or something. I don't know. I'm going out on an there.
Johannes (21:30)
there's an ideology of free speech, which I think we don't have as much in Europe, which basically boils down to the idea that if people are not allowed to say anything they want, then it's censorship.
And I think that's a big problem.
we need some idea of restrictions in discourse if we want to communicate in a civilized way. We need to
follow certain rules of politeness or rational debate. And of course, there's also the question of how to make sure that's not a few people that can can say everything but that there's some sort of equality of participation between people. And
Sophia Burnett (22:14)
Mm.
Johannes (22:15)
And I think a scare code can be a mark of resistance where there's a very strong voice that dominates in public discourse. And people have no other choice than to kind of reenact that voice by referring to it and repeating it. But at the same
Sophia Burnett (22:35)
Hmm.
Johannes (22:35)
time, putting it at a distance.
Sophia Burnett (22:37)
Yeah, very good. Yeah, exactly. I think you're spot on with that. particuar analysis. Yes, it is a means of reappropriating voices that are perhaps outlandish or even hurtful,
Johannes (22:55)
I mean, we always speak to other people when we speak in public, or even in a small kind of private situation. We never speak just to ourselves. And so we always negotiate the presence of the other. And sometimes the other is overwhelming or threatening or
too dominant and then I think we like to keep them at bay and
Sophia Burnett (23:19)
Hmm.
Johannes (23:20)
then we use scare quotes
And maybe it's really very typical for our times where, I mean, discourse multiplies all the time and we understand that human society is very discursive. And so we reflect on the way we talk about things to each other.
in very advanced ways. and so, yeah, we bring in the other the voice of the other, through these escape scare quotes, or through other citations, references, and, and at the same time, I think scare quotes are interesting, because they even I mean, the word conveys the idea of a certain emotion of some dramatic relationship.
some emotional comment polarization. So I think that's very much our age.
Sophia Burnett (24:11)
Yeah, yes it is. perhaps we've... Peut-être on a fait le tour du scare quote?
Johannes (24:17)
Okay, of course.
Sophia Burnett (24:19)
I think there's possibly more to say on it, but I don't want to keep you too long.
the flu.
Johannes (24:25)
Yeah, I've been maybe
Sophia Burnett (24:26)
Yeah.
Johannes (24:27)
less dynamic than I should have
Sophia Burnett (24:31)
No! It's lovely that you're taking part. I'm just trying to think if there's anything very obvious that hasn't been said, but I don't think so.
Johannes (24:41)
Haha
Sophia Burnett (24:43)
I'm very grateful and I hope you recover soon.
Johannes (24:46)
So yeah, I will.
Sophia Burnett (24:48)
And yeah, that was great talking about scare quotes. I'm sure that it's a semiotic that people will notice in the coming weeks if they've listened to this particular episode.
Johannes (24:59)
Sure, yeah, was lovely getting back in touch with you and
I hope that everything turns out well for you.
Sophia Burnett (25:03)
Okay, me too.
