Irony

This paper presents a contrastive approach to the presence of two distinct types of verbal irony in real (natural, unscripted) versus fictional (scripted) discourse, with a special focus on irony blindness, i.e. the inability to recognize ironic utterances. Irony strategies are categorized into two general types, based on the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning (Type 1: meaning reversal and Type 2: meaning replacement). First, the differences between these two types are discussed in terms of use, interpretation, and misinterpretation. It is found that the first type of irony strongly prevails in natural discourse, while the second type is considerably more present in fictional discourse than it is in natural discourse. At the same time, the first type of irony appears to be more at risk of misinterpretation in natural discourse, as opposed to the second type, which seems to be a safer (even though less frequently selected) option. These findings are then further analyzed in light of the discussion concerning fictional (comedic, in particular) irony blindness and the construction and role of the irony blind characters. Interestingly, the causes of fictional irony blindness are found to correlate more strongly with the (more humorous) misinterpretation of the second type of irony.

2014

Journal for Cultural Research, 2008

SHS Web of Conferences, 2018

The concept of structural irony is traditionally associated with an implication of alternate or reversed meaning that pervades a work. A major technique for sustaining structural irony is the use of a naïve protagonist or unreliable narrator who continually interprets events and intentions in ways that the author signals are mistaken [1, 45].This paper sets out to investigate structural irony as the organizational principle in English literary discourse. After a survey of different views of structural irony, an attempt is made to verify that the pragmalinguistic techniques, viz. the play on double meaning, echoic mentioning of the word or phrase, the use of emphatic structures in free indirect speech, and repetition of patterns of behavior, are employed in constructing structural irony. The results of the analysis conducted on the material of short stories and novels of English-speaking authors will be presented in order to demonstrate that structural irony can be constructed by com...

2020

In this work I present some theoretical considerations about what I deem to be a permanent and ever-present feature of verbal irony, namely, inferred contradiction, which has to be distinguished from plain, direct (non-inferred) contradiction as well as from indirect negation, for a contradiction which is directly expressed cannot be interpreted as ironical (since it lacks a crucial component: inference), and an indirect negation may or may not be ironic (depending on the situation), and thus cannot be considered a permanent feature of the phenomenon. In spite of the fact that many scholars have proposed different theories in order to capture the essence of this intricate and complex phenomenon, not all of them have managed to find a feature or characteristic that applies to or is found in all possible occurrences of irony. I briefly discuss the tenets of some of the best-known of these theories, namely the Classical theories (Socrates, Cicero, Quintilian), the Echoic-Mention Theory (later Echoic Theory), the Echoic Reminder Theory, the Pretence Theory and the Relevant Inappropriateness Theory, trying to show that in all the types of irony emerging from these proposals (e.g. echoic irony, pretence irony, etc.) it can be observed that the irony is triggered by inferred contradiction. The one theory that –according to my view and knowledge– seems to capture its whole essence to date is Attardo’s (2000) Relevant Inappropriateness Theory, to whose proposal I adhere, but I argue at the same time that inferred contradiction is another feature of irony (which goes hand in hand with relevant inappropriateness) that should be considered in any theoretical approach to irony. I also try to show how the feature of inferred contradiction is found in all the types of verbal irony identified by different authors (e.g. Alba-Juez’s 1995 negative, positive and neutral irony, Leech’s 1983, 2014 conversational irony, etc.), and thus conclude that this is a feature of irony that should be taken into consideration as a distinguishing and identifying characteristic of the phenomenon. KEY WORDS: verbal irony, inferred contradiction, irony theory, theories and types of verbal irony.

Semiotica, 2015

During the last forty years there have been a number of attempts to understand verbal irony in relation to specific kinds of speech acts (negating, echoing, pretending, alluding). This article argues that these theories can account for certain subsets of ironic phenomena but not others precisely because of their focus on substantive kinds of speech acts rather than more general relational semiotic properties. The article proposes two conditions based on relational semiotic properties. These conditions, it is argued, allow for a unified account of ironic phenomena and a better understanding of irony in relation to other tropes.