The Adaptation Approach To Verbal Irony In Chinese Contexts

As a ubiquitous form of language, frequently used in everyday discourse, verbal irony has been extensively discussed from different perspectives. The present paper is expected to reconsider the linguistic phenomenon from a pragmatic perspective, in an attempt to solve some of the problems the previous studies about irony have and thus to provide a more plausible explanation of ironic utterances.Having discussed how irony is distinguished from nonirony, the present study takes Verschueren's adaptation theory as the conceptual framework. Since most of the previous studies are based on the instances in Western cultures and few have ever touched Chinese for reference, this research is mainly centered on contemporary Chinese TV series and movies for data collection.From a functional perspective on language use, the study first presents a discussion of a series of functions that are involved in ironic interactions and these functions are classified into two main types: negative ones (e.g. criticism, sarcasm, etc) and positive ones (e.g. face-saving, humor, intimacy, etc); in fact, in many cases different functions are mingled with each other in one ironic utterance, bringing a marvelous effect for the situation. As for the fundamental research question of why people choose the indirect way of ironic expressions rather than direct ways, based on the detailed analysis of the collected data, the study attributes the choice of verbal irony mainly to the speaker's negative emotions, his/her motivation, the interlocutors' hierarchical relationships/their close or intimate relationships, etc. What's more, since indirectness preserves face, the irony nature of implicit display naturally leads to the ambiguity strategy in speakers' ironic expressions for the purpose of preserving the relationships between interlocutors. In short, the choice of irony in given contexts is a good adaptation to the interlocutors' social and mental world.The study of many Chinese ironic utterances which are taken by way of self-depreciation/self-denigration, a form which is rarely practiced in Westerners' talk, reveals that the Chinese traditional culture is another important adaptation factor in language choice in addition to some other factors mentioned above. According to the...