A Pragmatic Study of Irony in communication
1138 T. M.
― Goals of This Thesis ―
- to make the structure of an ironical utterance clear as a speech act from the viewpoint of pragmatics.
- to examine how a hearer recognizes an ironical utterance.
- to find out conditions to detect ironical utterances from various sorts of utterances.
― The Concept of Evaluation Hypothesis ―
An ironical utterance consists of five essential elements. They are "a speaker," "a hearer," "a speaker's evaluation," "a hearer's evaluation" and "an evaluation that is shown by the literal meaning of a speaker's utterance." In this thesis, "evaluation" is defined as follows:
Evaluation is description of degree of a speaker's feeling or attitude toward a phenomenon that is mentioned through an ironical utterance.
Then, the structure of an ironical utterance is shown as follows (the chart is omitted.):
S: a speaker's evaluation
S': an evaluation that is shown by the literal meaning of a speaker's utterance
H: a hearer's evaluation
In Evaluation Hypothesis, (S), (S') and (H) are variable. How each of them is fixed or varied can show the process of a hearer's recognition of an ironical utterance. When an ironical utterance is understood, there is "Downward Adjustment Operation" in the process. In "Downward Adjustment Operation," (S') is lowered to reduce the gap between (S) and (S').
― Two Conditions to Recognize An Ironical utterance ―
- Downward Adjustment Operation
- dissonance between the literal meaning of an utterance and the situation, in which the utterance is made.
Here, an ironical utterance is defined as follows:
a speech act that makes a hearer have an unpleasant feeling by conveying a speaker's negative evaluation.