The Pragmatic And Cognitive Account Of Irony

Irony is a common linguistic phenomenon in verbal communication. However, compared with the frequent and wide use of irony, the theoretical study of irony lagged behind. Since Aristotle, more research has been done on metaphor than on irony. As a matter of fact, irony, just like metaphor, pervades our daily life. It can also be taken as a fundamental aspect of our conceptual system. It was not until the 1970s that irony finally became a focus approached by psychologists, linguists, and philosophers, with different approaches to irony being proposed..This paper first sketches out two influential approaches: the pragmatic model and the echoic interpretation theory. Then a comparative study is made of the two approaches. The points compared are the key notions involved in interpreting communication (irony, in this particular paper). From the comparison, we can see that in many aspects the relevance-based echoic theory seems more promising than the traditional pragmatic account. An attempt is made to analyze the cases of irony occurring in a Chinese literary work-Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary within the framework of the echoic interpretation theory. The application of the echoic theory to the analysis of the particular Chinese literary work helps readers to reach the depth of understanding and serves as a good start for further research on some other literary works, both English and Chinese.