On the characteristics of verbal irony
-
Alan Bailin
Alan Bailin (b. 1951) is an associate professor at Hofstra University <alan.bailin@hofstra.edu>. His research interests include figurative language, semiotic and semantic/pragmatic analysis of linguistic comprehension, readability, and the critical assessment of research. His publications include “The evolution of academic libraries: The networked environment” (with A. Grafstein, 2005); “Online library tutorials, narratives, and scripts” (with A. Peña, 2007); “Ambiguity and metaphor” (2008); andThe critical assessment of research: Traditional and new methods of evaluation (with A. Grafstein, 2010).
Abstract
During the last forty years there have been a number of attempts to understand verbal irony in relation to specific kinds of speech acts (negating, echoing, pretending, alluding). This article argues that these theories can account for certain subsets of ironic phenomena but not others precisely because of their focus on substantive kinds of speech acts rather than more general relational semiotic properties. The article proposes two conditions based on relational semiotic properties. These conditions, it is argued, allow for a unified account of ironic phenomena and a better understanding of irony in relation to other tropes.
About the author
Alan Bailin (b. 1951) is an associate professor at Hofstra University <alan.bailin@hofstra.edu>. His research interests include figurative language, semiotic and semantic/pragmatic analysis of linguistic comprehension, readability, and the critical assessment of research. His publications include “The evolution of academic libraries: The networked environment” (with A. Grafstein, 2005); “Online library tutorials, narratives, and scripts” (with A. Peña, 2007); “Ambiguity and metaphor” (2008); and The critical assessment of research: Traditional and new methods of evaluation (with A. Grafstein, 2010).
©2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Gender equality in Swedish child health centers: An analysis of their physical environments and parental behaviors
- The semiotics of emotion and narrative therapy in the case of Montaigne
- On the concept of translation: A perspective based on Greimassian semiotics
- Burqa and the human umwelt
- A memorable thirteen-word sentence
- On the characteristics of verbal irony
- Tying in comment sections: The production of meaning and sense on Facebook
- Multimodality in Canadian print advertising: Different functional connections between headlines and visual texts of advertisements in English and French consumer magazines
- Language, communication, and speech: Human signs in global semiosis
- The calligram and the title card
- Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products
- Otherness as a paradigm in anthropology
- Chasing the myth: A Harley-Davidson story(telling)
- Communicology and human conduct: An essay dedicated to Max
- Saussure's équivalence sémiologique in the case study of Czech sonants
- A semiotic study on modality in Chinese Criminal Law and its English version
- Color, shape, and sound: A proposed system of music notation
- Reading Deleuze through the lens of Hermeticism
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Gender equality in Swedish child health centers: An analysis of their physical environments and parental behaviors
- The semiotics of emotion and narrative therapy in the case of Montaigne
- On the concept of translation: A perspective based on Greimassian semiotics
- Burqa and the human umwelt
- A memorable thirteen-word sentence
- On the characteristics of verbal irony
- Tying in comment sections: The production of meaning and sense on Facebook
- Multimodality in Canadian print advertising: Different functional connections between headlines and visual texts of advertisements in English and French consumer magazines
- Language, communication, and speech: Human signs in global semiosis
- The calligram and the title card
- Harnessing the unconscious mind of the consumer: How implicit attitudes predict pre-conscious visual attention to carbon footprint information on products
- Otherness as a paradigm in anthropology
- Chasing the myth: A Harley-Davidson story(telling)
- Communicology and human conduct: An essay dedicated to Max
- Saussure's équivalence sémiologique in the case study of Czech sonants
- A semiotic study on modality in Chinese Criminal Law and its English version
- Color, shape, and sound: A proposed system of music notation
- Reading Deleuze through the lens of Hermeticism
