On The Recognition Of Verbal Irony

Irony is a very complex linguistic phenomenon both cognitively and psychologically. Traditionally, irony is seen as a figure of speech, an ornament added onto a dull language to make it more amusing, incisive. In recent years, it has gradually attracted the interest of linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and other scholars. They have proposed various theories to explain how people use and understand irony. These theories focus on widely different cognitive (e.g. Sperber, 1984;Sperber &Wilson, 1981,1986,1995), pragmatic (e.g. Grice, 1975,1978), and psychological (e.g. Clark & Gerrig, 1984) aspects of ironic language use. However, a fundamental issue, the recognition of irony, has remained to be answered.This thesis is an endeavor to explain and analyze irony recognition in verbal communication from the pragma-cognitive perspective.Two research questions are developed to define and clarify the purpose of the study: RQ1: What are the properties that distinguish irony from non-ironic utterances, i.e.the nature of ironical utterance? RQ2: How do hearers recognize utterances to be ironical?For the first research question, the present study concludes that irony is in the nature of an intentionally-mocking evaluation of or intentionally-mocking commentary on someone or some state of affairs. Furthermore, the nature of irony provides a necessary condition for the identification of irony because it not only distinguishes irony from other utterances—types of similar features but also conveys the speaker's intention—to mock someone or some state of affairs, etc.The second research question is answered by applying Grice's theory of implicature and Sperber & Wilson's relevance theory. The study shows that the process of a hearer's irony recognition can be divided into three steps:1) Under the joint working of common ground and the setting of the utterance, the hearer forms a cognitive environment, which is the basis for irony recognition. When an ironic communication occurs, the hearer, as the recipient of the message,...