Who is the victim? When the addresser of the echoed utterance and the target of the irony differ
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Galia Hirsch
Galia Hirsch has conducted her post-doctoral research at the Smart Institute of Communication and the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her PhD thesis, at the department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bar Ilan University, where she is now a full-time lecturer, explored the differentiation between irony and humor through a comparative pragmatic analysis of literary texts in Hebrew, Spanish and English, primarily investigating differences in the use of explicitation strategies in translations.
Abstract
The goal of this contribution is to explore the relationship between the target of certain ironic instances and the source of their echoic mentions (Sperber and Wilson, “Irony and the use-mention distinction,” in Peter Cole’s Radical Pragmatics, Academic Press, New York, 1981; Wilson and Sperber, “On verbal irony,” Lingua 87, 1992), discussing specific cases in which the originators of the ironic utterances or opinions echoed could not be conceived as victims of the irony. As most accounts of irony claim, it necessarily involves criticism, in which case it should have a victim or a target. Sperber and Wilson’s Echoic Mention Theory suggests that an ironical remark will have as natural targets the originators of the utterances echoed. Following their account, the target of the irony should be the addresser of the echoed utterance. However, in our corpus of ten full-length literary works and excerpts from the Israeli media, we have found ironic occurrences, which seemed to express at least some sort of criticism if not more, where the echoic source would not make a plausible target for the irony. It may be suggested that the reason for the discrepancies is that these utterances also present cues for humor or traces of parody.
About the author
Galia Hirsch has conducted her post-doctoral research at the Smart Institute of Communication and the Department of Communication and Journalism, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her PhD thesis, at the department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bar Ilan University, where she is now a full-time lecturer, explored the differentiation between irony and humor through a comparative pragmatic analysis of literary texts in Hebrew, Spanish and English, primarily investigating differences in the use of explicitation strategies in translations.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the participants of the Research and Discussion Group on Irony conducted at the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies, Bar Ilan University, under the supervision of Prof. Elda Weizman for the inspiring shared sessions, and especially Dr. Pnina Shukrun-Nagar for providing interesting examples from the Israeli media. I would also like to thank Prof. Rachel Weissbrod and Dr. Talli Cedar for their input to this paper and others. I would like to give special thanks to Prof. Elda Weizman for her comments on this paper and the patient guidance, encouragement and advice she has provided me throughout the years.
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©2017 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Invisible minimalism
- Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News
- Who is the victim? When the addresser of the echoed utterance and the target of the irony differ
- Patient participation in action: patients’ interactional initiatives during interdisciplinary goal-setting meetings in a rehabilitation clinic
- A rose is more than a rose … the diatextual constitution of subjects and objects
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Invisible minimalism
- Representing ordinary people: experiential interview fragments in CCTV News
- Who is the victim? When the addresser of the echoed utterance and the target of the irony differ
- Patient participation in action: patients’ interactional initiatives during interdisciplinary goal-setting meetings in a rehabilitation clinic
- A rose is more than a rose … the diatextual constitution of subjects and objects
