The Research Of High-level Chinese Leaners’ Understanding Of Irony Expressing Intimacy

Irony,as a linguistic phenomenon highly dependent on context,has attracted wide attention.So far,research of irony has mainly focused on its definition,understanding mechanism and pragmatic function,but it has remained basically at the general level of irony,without a detailed study of its specific sub-categories.Intimate irony is a common but special type of irony in Chinese,which is often used to express intimacy.The research on it is limited to the description of its pragmatic functions,and the research on second language acquisition is relatively fewBased on previous studies,this paper divides intimate irony into four categories After that,this paper empirically examines whether native speakers and non-native speakers have different understanding abilities of intimate irony.If the difference is significant,it further explores the influencing factors of non-native speakers’understanding of the ironyFocus is put on two issues:(1)whether there are differences between native speakers and non-native speakers of the same Chinese proficiency in understanding the four types of intimate irony;(2)if there are differences,what are the factors(gender,age and cultural circle)influencing the understanding of high-level Chinese learners towards the four types of intimate irony.Based on the above problems,this paper takes 20 foreign students from Chinese advanced classes of China University of Petroleum(Beijing)and 20 third-grade pupils whose mother tongue is Chinese as the research objects.The two groups are divided into experimental and control group,and the experiments are carried out in 2*4 and 3*4.This study first uses Independent Sample T-Test and Multivariate Intergroup Variance Analysis in SPSS25.0 to analyze the data,and then explores the current situation of learners’ intimate irony learning and the reasons for the differences in their comprehension through interviews.The main results of this study are as follows(1)On the premise of holding similar Chinese proficiency,adult non-native speakers have higher comprehension of intimate irony than juvenile native speakers.Besides,both the two groups of subjects have a higher understanding of the intimate irony expressing ridicule and shyness,while those who express concern hold the lowest understanding(2)The ability of Chinese learners to understand intimate irony is related to their age Chinese learners aged 30-40 have a higher understanding of it than whom aged 20-30(3)In general,women have a stronger understanding of intimate irony,but men’s understanding of intimate irony expressing ridicule is higher(4)The ability of Chinese learners to understand intimate irony is related to their cultural circle.From the whole,Chinese learners from the Chinese cultural circle have a higher understanding of intimate ironyBased on the results above,this paper puts forward several suggestions for intimate irony teaching.