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4 - Irony as Pretence

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

Irony has been classically related to pretending. Clark and Gerrig develop this idea in their Pretense theory of ironic communication. According to this account, a speaker, when being ironic, pretends to be an injudicious speaker speaking to an ignorant audience, and meanwhile expresses a hostile or derogatory attitude towards what she pretends. The hearer who understands the irony will recognize the pretense, the pretended speaker's injudiciousness, the pretended audience's ignorance, and the derogatory attitude. With this take on the issue, Clark and Gerrig link the notion of irony to traditionally related ideas as mimicking, making believe or acting. In this chapter I analyze this theory and explain its strengths and weaknesses. I also focus on explaining the differences between the echoic and pretense accounts of irony. Furthermore, I present three authors that propose different theoretical versions of a pretense based account of irony: Currie, Recanati and Walton. The three of them claim that ironic speakers pretend, but the idea of pretense is formulated differently. To finish with, I present a hybrid account which includes both echo and pretense: Kumon-Nakamura, Glucksberg and Brown's Allusional Pretense theory of irony.
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Irony , pp. 65 - 87
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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References

Clark, H. H. & Gerrig, Richard J. 1984. On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1): 121–26.Google ScholarPubMed
Sperber, D. 1984. Verbal irony: pretense or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1): 130–436.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. 2006. The pragmatics of verbal irony: echo or pretense? Lingua 116: 1722–43.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. 2012. Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, G. 2006. Why irony is pretense. In The Architecture of the Imagination, ed. Nichols, S., 111–33. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S. & Brown, M. 1995. How about another piece of pie: the allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124(1): 3–21.Google Scholar
Recanati, F. 2004. Literal Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Recanati, F. 2007. Indexicality, context and pretense. In Pragmatics, ed. Burton-Roberts, N., 213–29. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Walton, K. 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, K. 2017. Meiosis, hyperbole, irony. Philosophical Studies 174(1): 105–20.Google Scholar

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  • Irony as Pretence
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.004
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  • Irony as Pretence
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.004
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 Pretence
  • Joana Garmendia, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao
  • Book: Irony
  • Online publication: 06 March 2018
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316136218.004
Available formats
×