The Explanatory Power Of Conceptual Integration Theory On Irony

Irony is a special language phenomenon which is widely used in our daily communication. Owing to its uniqueness and popularity, irony has drawn many scholars' attention. Initial researchers began from the perspective of rhetorics, and later extended gradually to psychology and linguistics especially cognitive linguistics. Different approaches in modern linguistics have shown us a full picture of irony, including its definitions, mechanisms of its generation and comprehension. However, we find that none of these theories can account for the online meaning construction of irony due to the deficiency of each study and the complexity of irony.Conceptual Integration Network (CIN) is the core notion of Conceptual Integration Theory (CIT) and a basic CIN model includes four mental spaces:two input spaces, one generic space and one blend. In the present research, a qualitative method is adopted. After selection and classification of the collected data, different types of CIN are established. Some elements of the two input spaces can form counterparts through cross-space mappings and be projected selectively into the blend. Then the blend has new elements which do not exist in the input spaces. In the process of completion, the background frame helps to get the mismatches between the two inputs. During the process of running the blend, the projected elements in input spaces reconstruct to get the ironic meanings. The research focuses on mirror network, single-scope network and double-scope network because they are of great explanatory power on the online meaning construction of irony.The application of CIT to irony study can offer us a unique viewpoint to the research in this field. Moreover, the application of CIT to natural language discourses can provide a general examination of its explanatory power, with an effort to find its strengths and weaknesses and further to reinforce the strengths and improve the weaknesses for better explanatory adequacy.