@article{gari-soler-etal-2026-scare,
    title = "Scare Quotes as Markers of ``Questionable'' Word Usages and Misalignment in Conversation: An Annotation Study",
    author = "Gar{\'i} Soler, Aina  and
      Zevallos Huaco, Juan Carlos  and
      Labeau, Matthieu  and
      Clavel, Chlo{\'e}",
    editor = "Piperidis, Stelios  and
      Bel, N{\'u}ria  and
      van den Heuvel, Henk  and
      Ide, Nancy  and
      Krek, Simon  and
      Toral, Antonio",
    journal = "International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation",
    volume = "main",
    month = may,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Palma de Mallorca, Spain",
    publisher = "ELRA Language Resource Association",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-lrec/2026.lrec-main.927/",
    pages = "11834--11851",
    abstract = "Scare quotes are a subtle yet powerful device: they can mark irony, distance, or disagreement about word meaning or lexical choices. We present a large-scale manual annotation of quoted word usages focused on the scare versus non-scare quote distinction as well as on their role in managing (mis)alignment in conversation. Our analysis reveals that scare quotes can mark problematic word usages, and they are often used to contest or criticize other speakers' word choices. However, non-scare, meta-linguistic usages of quotes are also often involved in explicit efforts toward lexico-semantic alignment."
}