A Pragmatic Comparative Research On Metaphor And Irony

Metaphor and irony are long-standing and vivid linguistic phenomena in daily life and literature. They are considered to be the top important two among eight common figures of speech in English language. As two distinctive figures of speech, metaphor stresses similarity while irony emphasizes opposite. This antithesis must cause comparability between them.To testify this viewpoint, this thesis has explored the relations between two tropes from philosophical basis and thinking patterns. The author assumes that metaphor and irony share much in philosophical basis. Under the strong influence of the objectivism and logical positivism, metaphoric study and ironic study did not get enough attention. Some objectivists thought that they could not be used to describe the world objectively because they may cause ambiguity and imprecision; instead, they can only be restrained to literary writings. Logical positivists viewed metaphor and irony as without cognitive significance because they lack the crucial criterion for meaningfulness—verification conditions. Those are reasons that why they used to be studied only in rhetoric or literature and regarded as deviations of literal expression. However, metaphor and irony link objective world where we live and the language we use. They provide new perspectives of knowing the world as two different thinking patterns. Metaphor is similarity association while irony is considered as contrast association.From their inner relations, we can conclude that metaphor and irony enjoy many comparable aspects. On one hand, as rhetoric devices, what they have first in common is in expressing ways. They are non-literal uses of language and efficient ways to show a speaker's communicative intention indirectly. Although metaphor and irony differ with each other in rhetoric, they both violate same communicative norms and the felicity condition of Speech Act Theory in pragmatics. They violate the four maxims of Cooperative Principle in order to express the speaker meaning indirectly. Meanwhile, they do not obey the sincerity condition that is a paradigm condition for the four felicity conditions of speech act. Besides, there are several similar situations of using them. It is true that using metaphor and irony is more polite than the use of direct expressions in some contexts. Nevertheless, rhetorical effects should be taken into consideration because metaphor and irony can make speeches more interesting, more outstanding and more impressive. Among all the similar factors that influence their uses and comprehensions, an outstanding one is context, which contains linguistic context and non-linguistic context. Linguistic context refers to the interrelation between paragraphs and texts. Nonlinguistic context includes communicative context, which refers to the surrounding environment, the nature of events in the communication and cultural context, which means the natural environment, social and cultural background. Furthermore, the author aims to prove that metaphor and irony enjoy the same importance in human's cognitive process. Irony represents a way of thinking---the reversed thinking, and the use of irony, just as the use of metaphor, presents a strong cognitive quality. They both help us know the world and form our language.Although traditional rhetoric researches on figurative language did not emphasize the differences between metaphor and irony, the author assumes that they differ at least in their pragmatic functions,propositional contents and understandings. Metaphor is used to explain or describe the world while irony is a good way to show a speaker's attitude and opinions on certain subject; Metaphor emphasizes similarity while irony stresses opposite, which must causes differences in their propositional contents; Understanding metaphor and irony needs different cognitive effort and their understating processes are distinctive. Although there are various understanding models of metaphor, they all mentioned that we understand metaphor based on similarity. In irony, however, the understanding must entail contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility between what is said and what the speaker intends. Then we need a second-order inference about the speaker's thoughts that is not necessary in metaphor. In metaphor, it is only necessary to understand the elements being linked and discover the match between them. Therefore, understanding irony needs more cognitive effort.Until now, the researches on metaphor and irony have contributed much to metaphoric study and ironic study, but there still leaves a margin to the study of their combination—metaphoric irony. Metaphoric irony is the interaction of two rhetoric devices. Therefore, it must have distinct characteristics of its own. One of the important aims of this thesis is trying to make a more comprehensive study on metaphoric irony in order to get a clearer view on the features and natures of metaphor and irony. In terms of Giora's Graded Salience Hypothesis (2002), the author argues that the metaphoric meaning is first determined, then the ironic one. Besides, the Mental Spaces Theory is applied to show the understanding process of metaphoric irony clearly. Then a Space Intersection Structuring Model of metaphoric irony is proposed with detail explanations. This model is based on the Conceptual Blending Theory, which offers a general model of meaning construction. Metaphor and irony are two kinds of association, so there must be two different mental spaces. For this reason, this model entails two phases that are intersected based on the acquisition of metaphoric meaning. Two different mental spaces are linked in two blending processes that depend on projection and dynamic simulation to promote novel conceptualizations. This model is used to explore the invisible activities in man's thinking action when facing metaphoric irony and present them into simulated visual processes vividly. It helps us clarify how the salient metaphoric meaning becomes the understanding basis of the less salient ironic meaning.