An Analysis Of Verbal Sarcasm In Vanity Fair

In our daily communication, sarcasm can be seen everywhere. As a special languagephenomenon, it has drawn the attention of many scholars both at home and abroad since theancient times. The research of the sarcasm began in Aesthetics, then in Rhetoric, Psychology,Physiology, Philosophy, Sociology, etc. For example, Lu Xun makes definitions of sarcasmfrom the perspective of Aesthetics in 1935; In Modern Chinese Rhetoric Zhang Gong (1963)looks sarcasm as a kind of Rhetoric. In recent years, the development and maturity of somenew theoretical bases, such as semantics, linguistics and pragmatics, have deepen our horizonand put forward some new points of view. Many scholars have analyzed this languagephenomenon from the perspective of linguistics. However, in the previous study, scholarsmainly put emphasis on humor and irony. Many Scholars, such as Grice (1975), begin theirresearch in verbal irony from various perspectives. Sperber and Wilson (1995) propose theirIronic Echoism under the framework of Relevance Theory. Nevertheless, we should bear inmind that various techniques can be used to realize sarcasm. For example, a commonnarration could show us the speakers’sarcastic intention. We often say lengchaorefeng”inChinese and it is also an embodiment of sarcastic techniques. In our daily lives, differentsarcastic techniques can lead to different feelings. Sometimes we feel either tortuous or tactful,be scold or not scold; Sometimes the writer hits the nail on the head and punctures crucially,incisively and vividly. Sometimes the readers will taste the plots again and again. Differentsarcastic techniques result in different reader response. In the previous domestic and foreignresearch fields, few papers have analyzed the various techniques in sarcasm and theconsequent effects from the perspective of Relevance Theory. We compare sarcasm withsatire, irony, verbal irony, humor and other relevant concepts first. Based on this, the paper discusses the generation, understanding and communication process of sarcasm from theperspective of Relevance Theory proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1986,1995).Relevance Theory believes that communication process is essentially the expression ofspeakers and the interpretation of listeners. The core of the communication is relevance.Sperber and Wilson think that relevance is a relationship between the contextual effect andefforts made by listeners. People need to pay some efforts to get enough contextual effect. Foran individual, relevance degree depends on the context effect and the processing efforts.When people make deductions, the less cognitive efforts the listeners pay, the bettercontextual effect is and the stronger the relevance is. Conversely, the more cognitive effort,the poorer contextual effect and the weaker relevance. From the perspective of RelevanceTheory, the most basic hypothesis is that any human communication and cognitive activitiesare associated with relevance. In the communication process, the speakers’purpose is that thelisteners can correctly understand their communicative intention. At the same time, thelisteners also hope that the expressions of the speakers have the optimal relevance. Sarcasminvolves two aspects--techniques and effect. That is also a process of expression andreasoning. In the framework of Relevance Theory, sarcasm can be interpreted reasonably.Vanity Fair (1847) is written by W. M. Thackeray (1811-1864), a well-known Britishnovelist in the nineteenth century. In his works, sarcasm gets its perfect embodiment. In thenovel, the characters, plots and various contradictions are intricate. The author uses a spicytone to shape the typical images of characters and clear the complex relationships. Applyingall sorts of sarcasm techniques, the author depicts a picture of vanity fair in real life incisivelyand vividly. By this way, he can mobilize the readers’moods so that readers can sometimesfeel angry, sometimes laugh, sometimes become nervous, sometimes meditate, sometimeshave empathy with the characters. In the works, the readers can appreciate the perfecttechniques of sarcasm. In Vanity Fair, we can see some common techniques of sarcasm, suchas irony, metaphor, exaggeration, contrast and narration etc. On the surface, the techniquesseem the same with rhetoric. Although the rhetoric of research and pragmatics have closerelationships, the limitations of rhetoric is that rhetoric sees sarcasm as a way to use language,not as a behavior and does not reveal the illocutionary acts of sarcasm. The paper interpretssarcasm fully from the perspective of Relevance Theory.