An Analysis Of Pragmatic Functions Of Verbal Irony With Echoic Mention Theory

Irony, which is one of common linguistic phenomena in verbal communication,is widely analyzed by the litterateurs, psychologists, philosophers and linguists. Mostof them such as Haverkate (1990) believe that verbal irony is one of the mostimportant forms of irony, and plays a significant role in dramas, movies, TV serialsand even in the modern interpersonal communications. The echoic mention theoryproposed by Sperber and Wilson (1981) is one major breakthrough in the analyses ofverbal irony theories. They consider that all verbal irony is echoic, and the speakerexpresses his own negative, critical attitude to the attributed utterance by the echoicmention. By analyzing the pragmatic functions of ironic utterances in American TVserial Gossip Girl under the framework of echoic mention theory, this thesis attemptsto scientifically interpret how the pragmatic functions of verbal irony are illustrated,and tries to resolve two questions: Do the positive attitudes/functions of verbal ironyexist? Can the echoic mention theory apply to interpret the positive functions ofverbal irony?This thesis applies the quantitative analysis as follows: firstly, collecting theironic utterances from the protagonists (e.g. Serena, Blair and Dan) in Gossip Girl IV;secondly, making extracts of the subtitles and categorizing them from the aspect ofpragmatic function; thirdly, counting the frequency of pragmatic functions used in thedata; at last, analyzing the data and drawing a conclusion. Meanwhile this thesisemploys the qualitative analysis, which would mainly be performed as the analysis ofthe pragmatic functions especially the positive functions with the echoic mentiontheory, of which positive functions are politeness, humor, instruction and groupsolidarity, while negative ones are criticism, mockery and negative emotion.Nevertheless, the author has following major findings in the analysis:1) thenegative functions of verbal irony takes the leading role, while the positive functionsalso plays a considerable supporting role in the modern ironic utterances;2) there arenot only the negative functions of verbal irony such as criticism and mockery, but also the positive functions like humor;3) the echoic mention is applicable for theanalysis of verbal irony, which further affirms its strong explanatory of verbal irony.The author hopes this thesis is beneficial to the daily communication, andhelpful for us to recognize and comprehend verbal irony in language teaching, so asto promote the understanding of language and people’s appreciation capacity ofvarious artworks such as dramas, movies and TV serials.