A Study Of Irony In Internet Language

The irony is a complex linguistic interaction. The irony of study can be tracedback to ancient Greece. Many scholars throughout history developed this oldresearch, and made it becoming riper. The research of irony escaped from therhetoric limitation, and experienced the stages from pragmatic to cognitive linguistic.Finally the research of irony starts from perspective of the cognitive-pragmatic way,which is a great progress in the study of irony. Today, the technology of the internetdevelops fast. More and more people participate in the computer communications.Internet communications take much more attention. In such cases, the irony willshow some special characters. Base on the Corpus analysis method, show somethingabout the irony.This paper divides five chapters. The first chapter elaborates the background,aim and Significance, target and questions of this research. Also introduce theResearch ideas and research methods of this paper. And the review of approaches toirony is from Rhetoric, pragmatic, cognitive, cognitive-pragmatic aspectsrespectively. In the end, conclude that using cognitive-pragmatic method isreasonable. Chapter two defines the irony, and then it presents the ironic types. Thenreviews the previous approaches to irony and comment them. Chapter threeintroduces the frame theory which named the relevance account and echo account.Using the echo account can clearly explain the comprehension of irony, and the ironyis echoic. Chapter four shows that the addressor provides ironic cues with the ironicutterance in the internet communications. And these ironic cues always includelaughter, emotional symbol and so on. The motivations of the irony users aredifferent. This part made the conclusion that the common ground, contextualinformation plays a role in irony recognition. Chapter five uses the echoic theory tointerpret ironic instances. The conclusion outline the content and Significance.The previous irony research concentrate in the face-to-face communication andliterature, rarely involve the irony in the internet communication. In the informationsociety, network language is complex; it will cost a lot of effort to research. Theresearches of the irony will rich the study of network language, and promote thedevelopment of cognitive linguistics.