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2 - Irony as Opposition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2018

Joana Garmendia
Joana Garmendia
Affiliation:
University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
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Summary

Verbal irony has classically been conceived as the act of saying something and meaning the opposite. Grice's approach offers a pragmatic reconstruction of this classical and often pre-theoretical conception of irony. Grice sees irony as a case of figurative meaning --together with metaphor and hyperbole. When being ironic, the speaker makes as if to say the literal meaning of the utterance, flouts the maxim of Quality ("Do not say what you believe to be false") and implicates the contradictory meaning. Grice also touched on the basic elements of ironic communication: ironic speakers always express an attitude; being ironic has something to do with pretending; and there seems to be an ironic tone of voice. Even if it is one of the main approaches to irony, Grice's account has obvious limitations: we can be ironic even when we do not flout the maxim, and when we do not intend to communicate the opposite. In this chapter I also introduce three neo-Gricean approaches which try to develop Grice's ideas in different directions: irony as an insincere speech act (Amante and Haverkate); irony as an asif-phenomenon (Garmendia); and irony as indirect negation (Giora).
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Irony , pp. 17 - 41
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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References

Grice, H. P. 1967a/89. Logic and conversation. In The Logic of Grammar, ed. Davidson, D. & Harman, G., 1975, 64–75. Encino: Dickenson.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1967b/89. Further notes on logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics 9: Pragmatics, ed. Cole, P., 1978, 113–27. New York: Academic Press. Reprinted in Grice (1989), 41–57.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Garmendia, J. 2015. A (neo-)Gricean account of irony: an answer to relevance theory. International Review of Pragmatics 7: 40–79.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. 2012. Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Attardo, S. 2000. Irony as relevant inappropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 793–826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Rodríguez-Rosique, S. 2013. The power of inversion: irony, from utterance to discourse. In Irony and Humour: From Pragmatics to Discourse, ed. Ruiz-Gurillo, L. & Alvarado-Ortega, M. B., 17–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar

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  • Irony as Opposition
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.002
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  • Irony as Opposition
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.002
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Irony as Opposition
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.002
Available formats
×