Irony Of The Cognitive Pragmatics

Irony is a universal phenomenon of natural languages used in our daily communication. The study of irony first originates in the field of rhetoric. Later, many analyses have been made on irony in the fields of philosophy, psychology, pragmatics and especially cognitive pragmatics. The paper gives an introduction to Relevance Theory and points out that all the verbal communications is carried out under the guidance of the principle of relevance which also guides the recognition and interpretation of ironical utterances. The thesis comes to the conclusion that the cognitive criterions of irony and irony understanding are"counter-expectation","commentary or evaluation"and"mismatch"which are also the essential properties of irony; Relevance is the general principle governs the interpretation of irony ; the cognitive context is the precondition of the comprehension of ironical utterances. The paper finally comes to the conclusion that the interpretation of ironical utterances is a multidimensional process of interactive inferential-derivational comprehension with the involvement of the theories of pragmatics, cognitive linguistics and aesthetic linguistics.