Gratuituous quotation marks as in
(1) Try our "new" southwestern beef sandwich!
aren't strictly speaking incorrect, they merely create a false implicature. (1) literally only says-or-whatever* that the sandwich is called 'new'. And this is true. It is, however, not as informative as it would be if the quotation marks were removed, which would say-or-whatever not only that the sandwich is called 'new', but that it is new.
I'm committed to the idea that it can be very bad to implicate a falsehood--as bad as asserting a falsehood. But that mostly applies to deliberate deception. When you implicate a falsehood through overenthusiastic punctuation, that's not as bad.
*I'm trying to be neutral concerning whether "Try our new beef sandwich" asserts, presupposes, or what that the beef sandwich is new. I suppose I can't abide the thesis that it's merely implicated.
Posted by Matt Weiner at February 23, 2005 12:36 PMHmm, if the quotation marks are removed, does it really say-or-whatever the sandwich is called "new"? I would have thought that sans quotes, it only says the sandwich is new.
True, such a sign would itself constitute one instance in which the sandwich gets called "new". But I don't think that is automatically sufficient to make it true that the sandwich is called "new" as I would normally understand that.
Posted by: Anders Weinstein at February 23, 2005 01:02 PMAlso, the gratuitous quotes can certainly be incorrect in some cases e.g
try our "delicious" sandwich
The quotation marks in (1) aren't there to quote anything, they're there for emphasis. They aren't strictly speaking incorrect if by "strictly speaking" you mean "construing them in such-and-such a way, even though there's no good reason to do so".
Posted by: ben wolfson at February 23, 2005 01:24 PMAnders--in that case it says-or-whatever something that is very likely to entail that the sandwich is called "new"--if the sandwich is new, then someone is likely to call it new for that reason (and in fact the sign does call it new for that very reason). In #2, the problem is not with the quotes--the sentence would be equally false(-or-whatever) without them.
Ben--that's just how the quotation marks are intended, not what they mean. (What's the emoticon for thumbing your nose at someone?)
Posted by: Matt Weiner at February 23, 2005 02:38 PMI somehow suspected you'd have a comeback along those lines.
Posted by: ben wolfson at February 23, 2005 03:06 PMOn 2, suppose the sandwich is in fact delicious but no one has called it such (it looks horrible, and no one has yet dared take a bite). The sentence with quotes strikes me as comparable to "try our so-called 'delicious' sandwich": it misfires if the sandwich is not so-called. But the sentence could be true without the quotes.
On 1, it may be that something that is X is likely to get called by a word for X, but is that alone sufficient to make it an implicature?
Posted by: Anders Weinstein at February 23, 2005 07:36 PM