Characterising Irony
A Systematic Approach to Literary and Linguistic Texts
- 240 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
This book offers a systematic, bottom-up account of irony across both everyday contexts and literary and linguistic texts, using an empirically rigorous approach in distinguishing between central irony, non-central ironies, and non-ironies and highlighting a new way forward for irony research.
The volume considers the current landscape of irony, in which the term is used with increasing frequency with the knock-on effect of a loosening of its meaning. Pattison addresses this challenge by applying a systematic form of analysis, rooted in frameworks from pragmatics and complementary disciplines, to a database of over 500 irony candidates from a wide range of sources. The book uses these examples to illustrate the features of central ironies as well as the attributes used to differentiate between central ironies, non-central ironies, and non-ironies. These attributes are mapped across four key domains, including: difference and opposition; the role of context; how ironies are signaled; and speaker attitude and intention. Taken together, the volume puts forth a credible account for more clearly characterizing examples of irony and equips researchers with a comprehensive step-by-step method for undertaking future research.
This book is key reading for scholars in stylistics, pragmatics, literary studies, and psycholinguistics.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Defining irony
- 2 What is irony?
- 3 Characterising ironies
- 4 Pilot database analysis of central ironies
- 5 Towards a systematic and precise analysis of irony candidates
- 6 Clarifying the boundary between irony and non-irony
- 7 Analysis of non-central ironies
- 8 Conclusion
- Index