Marking figurative meaning of word In English figurative meaning of word usually marked with quotation marks like this: > The motherboard is sometimes considered the "brain" of a computer. I know that in Japanese quotation marks usually used for emphasis. But do they also used to mark figurative meaning or some other method is used?

Yes, Japanese quotation marks (``) can be used to enclose non-literal or figurative expressions.

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Double corner brackets (``) and Western-style double-quotes (`“ ”`)are also commonly used for this purpose. This article seems good.

But please don't think take this as a hard rule. As a matter of fact, Japanese people use brackets fairly loosely. Quotation marks are not strongly associated with sarcasm, either. See the following questions.

* don't seem to be 'quotation marks' in news article titles, what do they mean?
* Do Japanese people use quotation marks for emphasis?



(By the way, the "brain" of a PC is usually a CPU, isn't it?)