Book contents
- Irony
- Key Topics in Semantics and Pragmatics
- Irony
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irony as Opposition
- 3 Irony as Echo
- 4 Irony as Pretence
- 5 Attitude Expression in Irony
- 6 Clues of Irony
- 7 Sarcasm and Humour
- Examples Used in Text
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
3 - Irony as Echo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2018
Book contents
- Irony
- Key Topics in Semantics and Pragmatics
- Irony
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Irony as Opposition
- 3 Irony as Echo
- 4 Irony as Pretence
- 5 Attitude Expression in Irony
- 6 Clues of Irony
- 7 Sarcasm and Humour
- Examples Used in Text
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Sperber and Wilson, authors of Relevance Theory, defend the idea that irony is a case of echoic language. According to this view, a speaker, when being ironic, echoes a thought or an utterance that she attributes to someone other than herself at the current time. She also expresses a dissociative attitude towards that which she echoes. This is a strong alternative to the classical conception of irony as a figurative case, in which we have a pair of contradictory meanings. In this chapter, I analyze the details of the Echoic account of irony, and detect its shortcomings and strong points. This account acknowledges the possibility of being ironic and positive, and offers an explanation for positive ironies. It also focuses on differentiating echo and pretense --the first is considered to be essential in irony, whereas the latter is not. The difficulties that this theory faces come mostly from the notion of echo itself: it is a slippery notion that might not be easily applicable to every instance of verbal irony. Finally, I present two different developments of the Echoic account: Kreuz and Glucksberg’s Echoic Reminder theory, and Curcó’s proposal.
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- Irony , pp. 42 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018
References
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