A relevance-theoretic perspective on humorous irony and its failure
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Agnieszka Piskorska
Agnieszka Piskorska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. Her interests lie in relevance-theoretic studies of communication tinged with affective elements, including humor and irony. She has edited or co-edited a number of publications related to Relevance Theory, e.g.Relevance Theory: More than understanding (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
Abstract
This paper adopts the relevance-theoretic account of irony to describe the features of humorous irony and to elucidate the nuances of its failure. In connection to the humorous potential of irony, a number of properties it shares with some types of humor are discussed, such as exploiting incongruity, being targeted at a victim, being creative, carrying an element of surprise, involving metarepresentational abilities, and establishing a bond between the speaker and hearer. It is further observed that ironic utterances produced for the purpose of generating humor and increasing rapport between interlocutors may fail to achieve this aim to various degrees and due to a number of causes. Analyses of several examples indicate that the various causes of ironic misfires can be traced to failures of the inferential processes postulated by Relevance Theory as responsible for communicating irony: identifying a dissociative propositional attitude, representing the content of the proposition echoed, and attributing it to a source. Besides, it is claimed that humorous irony is used not only to communicate an attitude but also to have it accepted by the hearer, which is why the latter's rejection of the speaker-envisaged ironic attitude counts as another type of irony failure.
About the author
Agnieszka Piskorska is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. Her interests lie in relevance-theoretic studies of communication tinged with affective elements, including humor and irony. She has edited or co-edited a number of publications related to Relevance Theory, e.g. Relevance Theory: More than understanding (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Munich/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic approaches to (non)humorous irony
- On sarcasm, social awareness, and gender
- Where is the humor in verbal irony?
- Differences in use and function of verbal irony between real and fictional discourse: (mis)interpretation and irony blindness
- Isn't it ironic? Defining the scope of humorous irony
- The Clash: Humor and critical attitude in verbal irony
- A relevance-theoretic perspective on humorous irony and its failure
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Linguistic approaches to (non)humorous irony
- On sarcasm, social awareness, and gender
- Where is the humor in verbal irony?
- Differences in use and function of verbal irony between real and fictional discourse: (mis)interpretation and irony blindness
- Isn't it ironic? Defining the scope of humorous irony
- The Clash: Humor and critical attitude in verbal irony
- A relevance-theoretic perspective on humorous irony and its failure
- Book Reviews
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
- Book Review
