A Pragmatic Analysis Of Chinese Verbal Irony From The Perspective Of Echoic Mention Theory

Irony is a common linguistic phenomenon in verbal communication, and pervades our daily life. However, compared with the frequent and wide use of irony, the theoretical study of irony lagged behind. It was not until 1970s that irony finally became a focus approached by psychologists, linguists, and philosophers, with different approaches to irony being proposed. The current research mainly aims to present a detailed analysis of ironic utterances within the relevance-based echoic mention theory. From a relevance perspective, the author hopes to find a more scientific explanation of irony as a result of linguistic choiceWhen it comes to the classification of irony, it is accepted by most scholars that irony can be grouped into three categories: verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony. However, this thesis exclusively concentrates on the study of verbal irony. And in the thesis, the author tries to define verbal irony based on the echoic mention theory. Actually, such definition of verbal irony is adopted in the current study: Verbal irony is the use of words to convey something, echoing someone's thought, utterance, expectation, or cultural norm, dissociating the speaker himself from the echoed materials with accompanying ridicule or scorn, and contains a discrepancy between what is said in literal level and what is meant by the speaker. In uttering ironic utterances, the speaker makes use of linguistic measures, such as the lexical or syntactic measures.According to echoic mention theory, there different types of echoes: direct and immediate echoes, echoes of attributed thoughts, and echoes of general norms and standard expectations. Based on these different types of echoes, the author tries to classify verbal irony into three categories: direct and immediate echoic verbal irony; verbal irony echoing (real or imaginary) attributed thoughts; and verbal irony echoing general norms and standard expectationsAs to the methodology, the present study adopts qualitative analyses with natural data and scientific theory. Besides, descriptive, inductive, classification and exemplification methods are also adopted in this paper. What's more, the present study is based on Chinese ironic instances, and attaches great importance to the recognition of Chinese verbal irony. The data, Chinese ironic instances, are mainly chosen from the contemporary Chinese TV plays, movies and chatting rooms on the internet, and the conversations occurring in daily communication that have experienced by the author. The data are grouped, classified and analysed according to the different types of echoic verbal irony. On the basis of echoic mention theory, in the process of recognizing and interpreting ironic utterances within echoic mention theory, three procedures are involved: a recognition of the utterance as echoic; an identification of the source of the opinion echoed; a recognition that the speaker's attitude to the opinion echoed is one of rejection or disapproval.Compared with the other approaches studying irony, the echoic mention theory of irony is more explanatory and predictive. In doing so, it is good for the development and improvement of the echoic mention theory. According to the analysis, we may come to a better understanding of the reasons why people prefer the indirect way of ironic expression to other more direct ones, and the analysis of ironic utterances occurring in our daily life helps us to reach the depth of understanding of irony and is good for our daily communication. The better understanding of ironic utterances that has been reached according to the analysis of the thesis can help us understand of the ironical utterances in the literary works, and it is useful to the development of the literature education. The author hopes that the present study can inspire further research in this area.