Abstract. Inconsistency handling in expressive description logics is an important problem because inconsistency may naturally occur in an open world. In this paper, we present the quasi-classical semantics for description logic SHIQ, which is based on quasi-classical logic. This semantics can be used to deal with inconsistency and it is reduced to the standard semantics when there is not an inconsistency. Compared with four-valued semantics, it strengthens the reasoning capability in the sense that it satisfies some important inference rules such as Modus Ponens. Finally, we analyze the computational complexity of the problem of consistency checking based on the quasi-classical semantics.