On The English Verbal Irony

[at~eIing a plumper picture of the English verbal irony, this diest~ is dcvoted to a comprehensive study of it by critiquing piecemeal the following major theories of irony formed abroad: the traditional semantic reversal theory, Myem Roy抯 sincere paraplnase Iheoiy Gdce抯 Quality maxim violation theory, Sperbvr and Wilson抯 echoic intetpretation theoiy and Kawakarni抯 discrepancy cognition lheoty A detailed examination of each of these theories brings out justified atisivem to the two fUndamental questions concerning verbal irony: how irony OCCUIS and why Irony is used. Ironic tneatiing is a particular attitudinal inlbrmation of an utterance that arises where there exists a semantic tension and that consists in the solution to this tension somehow perceived in the utterance. lhe perception of this tension involves a recognition of a discrepancy between ptior cogntion, identifiable with one抯 ideals and expectations, and posterior re- cognition of reality. The eml)loyrnent of irony is diversely niotivated and the W in L,eecli抯 interpersonal dtetoric, opetates not only as a ~econd-4 utder principle parasitic on the PP but also as a first-order principle on its own.