As if irony was in stock

The linguistic treatment of verbal irony1 has more often than not focused on novel, ad hoc ironies. Research in the last decade, however, suggests that there is a considerable number of utterances that are either schematic or lexically filled and interpreted as ironic by convention. By analyzing three of these, i.e. Tell me about it, XP pro BE not (A Michelangelo he is not) and stand-alone insubordinate as if (As if anyone could pronounce that), the present paper will show that these expressions are best analyzed as constructions (Goldberg 1995, 2006). The paper will further show that the Viewpoint account of irony (Dancygier 2017; Tobin & Israel 2012) describes the data at hand most adequately.

‘Well, that’s just great!’: an empirically based analysis of non-literal and attitudinal content of ironic utterances

This study contributes to the ongoing debate about the informational status of attitudinal content with a focus on verbal irony. Specifically, we investigate where the different meaning components involved in ironic utterances are positioned in the dichotomy between primary and secondary content of utterances. After an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of ironic meaning components and their linguistic expression, we show, based on experimental data, that ironic, non-literally asserted content is “less” at-issue than non-ironic, literally asserted content. Crucially, our findings also suggest that an ironic utterance’s non-literally asserted content is more at-issue than the attitudinal content expressed with an ironic utterance. No difference is observed between attitudinal content manifested as ironic criticism and content manifested as ironic praise. Our findings support the notion of at-issueness as a graded criterion and can be used to argue that verbal irony in general seems to be difficult to reject directly and treated as at-issue.

‘Well, that’s just great!’: an empirically based analysis of non-literal and attitudinal content of ironic utterances

This study contributes to the ongoing debate about the informational status of attitudinal content with a focus on verbal irony. Specifically, we investigate where the different meaning components involved in ironic utterances are positioned in the dichotomy between primary and secondary content of utterances. After an analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of ironic meaning components and their linguistic expression, we show, based on experimental data, that ironic, non-literally asserted content is “less” at-issue than non-ironic, literally asserted content. Crucially, our findings also suggest that an ironic utterance’s non-literally asserted content is more at-issue than the attitudinal content expressed with an ironic utterance. No difference is observed between attitudinal content manifested as ironic criticism and content manifested as ironic praise. Our findings support the notion of at-issueness as a graded criterion and can be used to argue that verbal irony in general seems to be difficult to reject directly and treated as at-issue.

Irony and Perspective-Taking in Children: The Roles of Norm Violations and Tone of Voice

In order to understand most, if not any communicative act, the listener needs to make inferences about what the speaker intends to convey. This perspective-taking process is especially challenging in the case of nonliteral uses of language such as verbal irony (e.g., “Thanks for your help!” uttered to someone who has not provided the expected support). Children have been shown to have difficulties with the comprehension of irony well into the school years, but the factors that hamper or facilitate children’s perspective-taking in irony comprehension are not well understood. This study takes as its starting point the relevance-theoretic echoic analysis of verbal irony, and focuses on two of irony’s distinctive features as defined by this theory: (i) the normative bias and (ii) the characteristic tone of voice. In this study, we investigated the comprehension of irony in children aged 3–8. We manipulated these two factors, namely, the violation of different types of norms and the use of different tones of voice – to see how they affected children’s processing and interpretation of irony. Using an irony comprehension task that combined picture selection and eye-tracking, we found that the type of norm violation affected 4-to 5-year-olds’ offline understanding of irony, with a better performance on moral compared with social norm violations. Tone of voice had an effect on gaze behavior in adults, but not children, although a parodic, pretense-oriented tone of voice tended to lead to more looks to the angry compared with the happy emoticon at the offset of the ironical utterance, potentially facilitating children’s irony understanding. Our results show that the understanding of irony can be detected on explicit measures around age 6 – with the emergence of second-order perspective-taking abilities – but that a sensitivity to some of irony’s features can be detected several years earlier. Finally, our study provides a novel input to the debate on the existence of a so-called literal stage in pragmatic development, in particular regarding 3-year-olds’ differential performance on the offline and online measures of irony understanding, suggesting that they are not naively mistaking ironical utterances for “ordinary” literal ones.

Jane Austen’s Comic Vision and Her Use of Irony

Irony in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what on the surface appears to be the case or to be expected differs radically from what is actually the case. In other words, the basic feature of irony is a contrast between reality and appearance. It can be categorized into different types, including verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony. These types of ironies are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. Jane Austen uses all these ironies in her novels to show the comic vision of her life. She has used it as a neutral discoverer and explorer of incongruities.

¿Para qué ironizamos? Reflexiones de adolescentes de 12 y 15 años sobre las funciones de la ironía verbal

ES Para establecer las razones por las que un hablante elige un enunciado irónico por encima de uno literal es necesario evaluar la mente del hablante y su intención al emplear la ironía verbal en un contexto comunicativo específico. Con base en lo anterior, el objetivo de este estudio es analizar la manera en que adolescentes de 12 y 15 años reflexionan sobre las funciones de la ironía verbal en dos tipos de enunciados irónicos: agradecimiento y ofrecimiento. Treinta y dos adolescentes se enfrentaron a diferentes situaciones comunicativas que finalizaban con un enunciado irónico, y mediante un guion de preguntas se indagó sobre las funciones que los participantes atribuían a cada enunciado irónico y sobre el tipo de conocimientos en los que basaban sus reflexiones. Los resultados muestran diferencias debidas a la edad en la cantidad y calidad de las reflexiones presentadas por los participantes. Palabras clave: DESARROLLO LINGÜÍSTICO TARDÍO, IRONÍA VERBAL, REFLEXIÓN METALINGÜÍSTICA, FUNCIÓN DE LA IRONÍA, TEORÍA DE LA MENTE EN To establish the reasons behind a speaker’s choice to use an ironic expression over a literal one, it is necessary to evaluate the speaker’s mind and his/her intention to employ irony in a specific communicative context. Taking this into account, the purpose of this study is to analyse the way in which adolescents ages 12 and 15 reflect on the functions of verbal irony in two types of ironic expressions: ironic thanking and ironic offering. Thirty-two subjects were faced with different communicative situations ending with an ironic remark and were asked about the functions they attributed to each remark and on what sort of knowledge they based their responses. Results show age-based differences in the amount and quality of the reflections presented by the participants. Key words: LATER LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, VERBAL IRONY, METALANGUAGE, FUNCTIONS OF IRONY, THEORY OF MIND IT Per stabilire i motivi che spingono un parlante a usare un enunciato ironico al posto di uno letterale, è necessario valutarne la mente e le intenzioni nell’usare l’ironia verbale in un determinato contesto comunicativo. Con queste premesse, il presente studio si propone di analizzare in che modo adolescenti di 12 e 15 anni riflettono sulle funzioni dell’ironia verbale in due tipi di enunciati ironici: ringraziamento e offerta. Dopo essere stati messi di fronte a diverse situazioni comunicative che si chiudevano con un enunciato ironico, a 32 adolescenti è stato chiesto di rispondere a una serie di domande sulla funzione che ciascuno/a di loro attribuiva a ogni enunciato e di dire in base a cosa avevano optato per quella funzione. I risultati mostrano differenze in base all’età nella quantità e nella qualità delle riflessioni fatte dai/dalle partecipanti. Parole chiave: SVILUPPO TARDIVO DEL LINGUAGGIO, IRONIA VERBALE, RIFLESSIONE METALINGUISTICA, FUNZIONE DELL’IRONIA, TEORIA DELLA MENTE

Спричиненість іронічної вербальної реакції на маніпуляцію позитивом

Causes of Ironic Verbal Response to Positive ManipulationThis article analyses verbal expressions of ironic reaction to the manipulative use of compliments and speech markers of favourable attitude to the addressee. It is based on Ukrainian-language material. The study focuses on one particu­lar type of response to the manipulative tactic of increasing the interlocutor’s significance, a glaring example of positive manipulation strategy. The tactic under consideration essentially consists in communicating information which is favourable to the interlocutor by means of compliments, praises and utterances conveying a positive attitude, employed with a view to changing the interlocutor’s behaviour or their mental state in the manipulator’s interest.The article considers verbal irony as a reaction to positive manipulation in formal and informal settings, taking into account differences in the degree of familiarity between the interlocutors, their age, gender, status, social roles and the type of relations between them.The study identifies the main reasons of ironic reactions to positive manipula­tion: exaggerated positive evaluation or excessively positive attitude to the addressee; unsuccessful choice of the subject of positive evaluation or the form of the com­pliment; marking the compliment with surprise or doubt that the addressee has certain positive qualities; the nature of the communicative situation or the content of utterances which accompany positive manipulation; requests which contradict values, norms of social conduct or intentions of the addressee; violation of distance during the conversation, in particular ignoring the level of familiarity, status and age hierarchy; negative experience of previous communicative encounters with the manipulator.The study also identifies the subjects of evaluation and the topics of manipu­lative compliments which provoke ironic reaction on the part of the addressee. It pinpoints the content of utterances with covert ironic reaction to manipula­tive praise or manipulative expression of favourable attitude. As established, the dominant semantic type of manipulative utterances which cause ironic reactions in situations of inter-gender interaction are the compliments which characterise the interlocutor’s appearance.Przyczyny ironicznej reakcji werbalnej na manipulację pozytywną Niniejszy artykuł analizuje ironiczną reakcję werbalną adresata na manipu­lacyjne użycie komplementów i elementów wyrażających przychylne nastawie­nie. Opierając się na materiale w języku ukraińskim, skupia się na określonym typie reakcji na taktykę manipulacji polegającą na podnoszeniu znaczenia rozmówcy i stanowiącą jaskrawy przykład strategii pozytywnej manipulacji. Istota rozważanej taktyki polega na przekazywaniu informacji, które stawiają rozmówcę w korzystnym świetle: zastosowanie komplementów, pochwał i wypo­wiedzi wyrażających pozytywne nastawienie ma na celu zmianę zachowania rozmówcy lub jego stanu psychicznego w interesie manipulatora.Artykuł omawia ironię słowną jako reakcję na manipulację pozytywną w sytuacjach formalnych i nieformalnych, biorąc pod uwagę różnice w stopniu wzajemnej znajomości oraz wieku, płci, statusie, rolach społecznych i rodzaju relacji pomiędzy rozmówcami.Analiza materiału pozwoliła na ustalenie głównych przyczyn ironicznych reakcji na manipulację pozytywną: przesadnie pozytywna ocena lub przesadnie pozytywne podejście do adresata; nieudany wybór przedmiotu pozytywnej oceny lub formy komplementu; obecność elementu zaskoczenia, że adresat ma określone pozytywne cechy, lub wątpliwości, czy je ma; charakter sytuacji komu­nikacyjnej lub treść wypowiedzi towarzyszących manipulacji; wyrażenie przez manipulatora oczekiwań sprzecznych z wartościami, społecznymi normami postępowania lub intencjami adresata; naruszenie dystansu podczas rozmowy, w szczególności ignorowanie stopnia zażyłości, statusu i hierarchii wiekowej; negatywne doświadczenia z poprzednich interakcji z manipulatorem.Omawiany materiał pozwolił także wskazać przedmioty oceny i tematy komplementów, które wywołują ironiczną reakcję adresata, oraz scharakte­ryzować treść wypowiedzi, które zawierają zawoalowaną ironiczną reakcję na manipulacyjne pochwały lub elementy wyrażające przychylne nastawienie. Jak ustalono, dominującym elementem semantycznym wypowiedzi manipu­lacyjnych, które wywołują ironiczne reakcje w interakcji między rozmówcami przeciwnej płci, są komplementy odnoszące się do wyglądu rozmówcy.