Abstract
Scholars addressing verbal irony from linguistic, psychological and philosophical perspectives have developed a set of mechanisms presumed to underlie verbal irony comprehension and usage, and possibly situational irony as well (Colston, 2017). Similar and overlapping features of these mechanisms have also been distilled by overarching accounts attempting to explain verbal irony’s operation in interlocutors (Colston & Athanasiadou, 2017). Whether based on necessary conditions, families of contributor components, functional principles or embodied underpinnings, these narrower and umbrella accounts have been presented as if encompassing verbal irony in its presumed generic pseudo-universal form (Gibbs & Colston, 2007; Colston 2000b; Campbell & Katz 2012).
A related line of work has begun to identify particularized mechanisms in different languages that afford verbal irony performance and comprehension in interesting ways perhaps unique to those languages. Among these are the BEI Construction in Chinese, the system of Honorifics in Japanese, and Verum Focus-Inducing Fronting in Spanish (Yao, Song & Singh, 2013; Okamoto, 2002, Escandell-Vidal & Leonetti, 2014).
It is unclear, however, how these two literatures align. Can work identifying how verbal irony functions more generically account for emerging mechanisms housed within specific languages? Moreover, relatively little work has documented and deconstructed how wide varieties of different languages might achieve verbal irony, relative to the number of languages currently in usage globally.
This paper outlines both the accounts of verbal irony comprehension/usage proposed as applicable to ironic language per se, as well as the particularized mechanisms from individual languages. An assessment of how the individualized language mechanisms align with the broader accounts is provided, and suggestions for future work to further evaluate this alignment are discussed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Mother character is not aware of the planned murder.
- 2.
These different factors may also interact.
- 3.
Interpreters could infer derision, provided contextual cues signal it. But other accounts can explain derision in cases of week or absent contextual support.
- 4.
Again, not necessarily an exhaustive listing, but rather an attempt to capture the general principles at play in verbal irony.
- 5.
Not simultaneous in the sense of instantaneousness, but rather allowing for some moderate sequentiality in onset and duration, but typically containing some overlap in their activation duration.
- 6.
One exception to this principle is when a reversal of sorts takes place when speakers restate an erroneous comment or proposal which stands against the normal or expected encountered situation (Colston, 2000a).
- 7.
The authors do not designate between Mandarin or Cantonese.
- 8.
It is arguable whether the construction, X got itself Y’ed, is really passive. It seems instead an odd mixture of passive and active (e.g., X did something resulting in something getting done to it). But the construction seems to apply to an animate thing better than an inanimate thing—the animate thing at least being able to initiate the “something” events, despite its use in the example with something inanimate. In this way the construction resembles the pattern of passivity marking in Chinese. The construction in English also seems ironizable similarly to how a marked-passive-on-inanimate construction would be in Chinese. It thus hopefully services well as a reasonable English demonstration of sorts, of this ironization process found in Chinese.
- 9.
It is unclear, though, if this pattern in the English ironic interpretation would exactly match that of a parallel construction in Chinese. The form of the ironic interpretation springing from the unnatural syntax in Chinese could be somewhat different.
- 10.
Only the latter of these will be demonstrated briefly here, and only for three languages—so the cross-language prevalence part is not really possible in the present analysis.
- 11.
Such an evaluation would effectively give us a full topography of how verbal irony is done by people.
- 12.
Some other cognitive or memory emphasis effects can compete with primacy (e.g., recency, distinctiveness, etc.). But those aside, being in a primary position aids enhancement relative to being positioned later.
- 13.
Barney the Dinosaur was a character infamous for being sweet and innocent from a 1990s-2000s American children’s television program.
- 14.
This is one reason for the assessment of the prevalence of techniques across different languages, advocated earlier.
- 15.
Of course, this assessment must be taken with caution coming from a non-native speaker.
References
Athanasiadou, A., & Colston, H. L. (Eds.). (2017). Irony in language use and communication. Series: Figurative Thought and Language (Vol. 1). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Attardo, S. (2000). Irony as relevant inappropriateness. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 793–826.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bergen, B. K. (2012). Louder than words: The new science of how the mind makes meaning. New York: Basic Books.
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1978). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, R. L. (1980). The pragmatics of verbal irony. In R. W. Shuy, & A. Shnukal (Eds.), Language Use and the Uses of Language (pp. 111–127). Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
Campbell, J. D., & Katz, A. N. (2012). Are there necessary conditions for inducing a sense of sarcastic irony? Discourse Processes, 49(6), 459–480.
Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1), 121–126.
Colston, H. L. (2000a). “Dewey defeats Truman”: Interpreting ironic restatement. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 19(1), 44–63.
Colston, H. L. (2000b). On necessary conditions for verbal irony comprehension. Pragmatics & Cognition, 8(2), 277–324.
Colston, H. L. (2002). Contrast and assimilation in verbal irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 34, 111–142.
Colston, H. L. (2015). Using figurative language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Colston, H. L. (2017). Irony performance and perception: What underlies verbal, situational and other ironies? In A. Athanasiadou, & H. Colston (Eds.), Irony in language use and communication. Series: Figurative thought and language (Vol. 1), (pp. 19–42). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Colston, H. L., & Athanasiadou, A. (2017). Introduction: The irony of irony. In A. Athanasiadou, & H. Colston (Eds.), Irony in language use and communication. Series: Figurative thought and language (Vol. 1), (pp. 1–16). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Colston, H. L., & O’Brien, J. (2000a). Contrast and pragmatics in figurative language: Anything understatement can do, irony can do better. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1557–1583.
Colston, H. L., & O’Brien, J. (2000b). Contrast of kind vs. contrast of magnitude: The pragmatic accomplishments of irony and hyperbole. Discourse Processes, 30(2), 179–199.
Currie, G. (2006). Why irony is pretense. In S. Nichols (Ed.), The architecture of the imagination (pp. 111–133). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
De Fina, B., Pustin, B. S., & Winkler, I. (producers), & Scorsese, M. (director). (1990). Goodfellas [motion picture]. Los Angeles, CA: Warner Bros.
Escandell-Vidal, V., & Leonetti, M. (2014). Fronting and irony in Spanish. In A. Dufter & A. Octavio de Toledy (Eds.). Left sentence peripheries in Spanish: Diachronic, variationist and comparative perspectives, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Filippova, E. (2014). Developing appreciation of irony in Canadian and Czech discourse, Journal of Pragmatics, 74, 209–223.
Ghazala, H. (2007). Touching upon the translation of the style of irony (English-Arabic). Babel, 53, 22–31.
Gibbs, R. W. (1986). On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115(1), 3–15.
Gibbs, R. W. (1994). The poetics of mind: Figurative thought, language and understanding. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gibbs, R. W., & Colston, H. L. (Eds.). (2007). Irony in language and thought: A cognitive science reader. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Taylor & Francis Group.
Gibbs, R. W., & O’Brien, J. E. (1991). Psychological aspects of irony understanding. Journal of Pragmatics, 16, 523–530.
Giora, R. (1997). Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 8, 183–206.
Giora, R. (2002). On our mind: Salience, context, and figurative language. New York: Oxford University Press.
Giora, R. (2007). “And Olmert is a responsible man”: On the priority of salience-based yet incompatible interpretations in nonliteral language. Cognitive Studies, 14, 269–281.
Giora, R. (2011). Will anticipating irony facilitate it immediately? In M. Dynel (ed.), The Pragmatics of Humour Across Discourse Domains (pp. 19–32), Amsterdam, John Benjamins.
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol 3. Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press.
Grice, H. P. (1989). Studies in the ways of words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haverkate, H. (1990). A speech act analysis of irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 77–109.
Kamei, T., Koono, R., & Chino, E. (Series Eds.). (1996). Gengogaku dai-jiten 6: Jutsugo-hen [The Sanseido encyclopaedia of linguistics, 6: Technical terms]. Tokyo: Sanseidoo.
Kapogianni, E. (2014). Differences in use and function of verbal irony between real and fictional discourse: (Mis)interpretation and irony blindness. Humor, 27(4), 597–618.
Kaufer, D. (1981). Understanding ironic communication. Journal of Pragmatics, 5, 495–510.
Kreuz, R. J., & Glucksberg, S. (1989). How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118(4), 374–386.
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.
Levin, S. R. (1982). Are figures of thought figures of speech? In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Contemporary perceptions of language: Interdisciplinary dimensions (pp. 112–123). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Li, Z. (2004). Hanyu beidongju de yuyi tezheng jiqi renzhi jieshi [The semantic property of Chinese passives and its cognitive explanation]. Jiefangjun waiguoyu xueyuan xuebao [Journal of PLA University of Foreign Languages], 27, 7–11.
Madarneh, M. (2016). Proverbial rhetorical questions in colloquial Jordanian Arabic. Folia Linguistica: Acta Societatis Linguisticae Europaeae, 50(1), 207–242.
Maher, B. (2012). Taboo or not taboo: Swearing, satire, irony and the grotesque in the English translation of Niccolo Ammaniti’s Ti Prendo e ti Porto Via. Italianist: Journal of the Department of Italian Studies, University of Reading and the Department of Italian, University of Cambridge, 32(3), 367–384.
Makino, S., & Tsutsui, M. (1986). A dictionary of basic Japanese grammar. Tokyo: The Japan Times.
Mazara, M. (2013). Irony in the face(s) of politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates. In N. Thielemann & P. Kosta, Approaches to Slavic interaction (pp. 187–212) Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Minami, F. (1977). Keigo no kinoo to keigo-koodoo [Functions of Japanese honorifics and honorific behavior]. In S. Oono, & T. Shibata (Series Eds.), Iwanami kooza nihongo, 4, Keigo [Iwanami’s series of lectures, the Japanese language, 4, Honorifics] (pp. 1–44). Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten.
Okamoto, S. (2002). Politeness and the perception of irony: Honorifics in Japanese. Metaphor and Symbol, 17(2), 119–139.
Okamoto, S. (2007). An analysis of the usage of Japanese hiniku: Based on the communicative insincerity theory of irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 39(6), 1143–1169.
Ruiz Moneva, M. A. (2001). Searching for some relevance answers to the problems raised by the translation of irony. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 14, 213–247.
Searle, J. (1969). Speech acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1979). Metaphor. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 83–111). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981). Irony and the use-mention distinction. In P. Cole (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 295–318. New York: Academic Press.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1986). Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Suzuki, S. (2002). Self-mockery in Japanese. Linguistics: An interdisciplinary journal of the language sciences, 40(1), 163–189.
Tobin, V. (2016). Performance, irony and viewpoint in language. In R. Blair & A. Cook (Eds.), Theatre, performance and cognition: Languages, bodies and ecologies. London: Bloomsbury Methuen.
Tsur, R. (2015). Free verse, enjambment, irony. Style: A quarterly journal of aesthetics, poetics, stylistics and literary criticism, 49(1), 35–45.
Wilson, D. (2006). The pragmatics of verbal irony: Echo or pretense? Lingua: International Review of General Linguistics, 116(10), 1722–43.
Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (1992). On verbal irony. Lingua, 87, 53–76.
Yao, J., Song, J., & Singh, M. (2013). The ironical Chinese bei-construction and its accessibility to English speakers. Journal of Pragmatics, 55, 195–209.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Colston, H.L. (2019). Irony as Indirectness Cross-Linguistically: On the Scope of Generic Mechanisms. In: Capone, A., García-Carpintero, M., Falzone, A. (eds) Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78771-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78770-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78771-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)