Irony Understanding In Verbal Communication A Pragma-Cognitive Approach

Previous studies on irony have made some contributions to our present understanding of the full scope of the topic, in spite of their limitations and drawbacks in one way or another. Considering the complicatedness and obliqueness of irony, a multifaceted observation about irony is necessary, which will enable us to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Thus, although no single previous theory claims perfection, they indeed provide valuable insights into the nature of irony. The significance of the previous account of irony lies in their complementarity.Inspired by previous studies, we propose that irony is a form of communicating an evaluative mismatch. The evaluative mismatch, the very essence of irony, is represented on the dimensions of reference, illocutionary force and presuppositions, which was unfortunately neglected in previous research. The irony-specific mismatch, which is triggered by semantic clash, pragmatic insincerity, contextual inappropriateness and presuppositional counterfactuality, constitutes the foundation of irony recognition.In addition, previous research seems to attach greater importance to how the audience manage to sense the irony of the discourse but fails to place equal emphasis on why the ironist uses irony at the risk of being misunderstood. This paper attempts to offer a pragmatic analysis of irony utilizing the Adaptation Theory proposed by Verschueren, which views linguistic phenomenon as a process of choice-making in terms of variability, negotiability and adaptability for the purpose of successful communication and survival in the long run. The communicators choose irony as his/her communicative means to adapt to the language users'mental world, social world and physical world.