An Analysis Of Verbal Irony From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

As a pervasive linguistic phenomenon, irony is widely used in our verbal communication. However, the theoretic study of irony is far from enough. Numerous scholars propose theories from the fields of rhetoric, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, etc., whereas there is still no a mature theoretic system to support the verbal irony (a main type of irony) study due to its complexity. This thesis is a tentative study of verbal irony with a series of cases to elaborate the irony application. By comparing Grice’s traditional account of irony with Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theoretic account of irony, it will prove the rationality of the latter so as to solve the problems of how to analyze the generation, recognition and comprehension of irony under the guidance of relevance theory.This thesis firstly presents a general introduction. Irony not only prevails in our daily communication but also prevails in literature works. As a result, the verbal irony study becomes to be a hot topic in various fields. Besides, in this chapter the significance and aims of this study are discussed to solve the following questions:1) the basic concept of irony including its definition, classification and main research approaches in the previous study;2) the reasons why relevance theory are more adaptable to be used in the irony analysis;3) the motives of using irony and the factors which influence the generation, recognition and comprehension of verbal irony.Chapter Two casts a reviewing glance at the literature of verbal irony research with the aim of answering the first question discussed in the previous chapter. It not only describes some general concepts of irony, but also makes a brief review to the previous study of verbal irony at home and abroad. As far as the research approaches of irony are concerned, most of them are interpretative dominating descriptive approaches. From the diachronical dimension, the theoretic study of verbal irony is mainly divided into the classical or modern theoretic account of irony. The focus of this thesis is designated as using modern theoretic account—the Gricean theory and Sperber&Wilson’s relevance theory on verbal irony.Chapter Three is the theoretical framework of this thesis. Firstly it gives a detailed introduction to Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory, including its formation, development, general concepts and important principles. According to relevance theory, one of the important pragmatic theories, the verbal communication is a ostensive-inferential process. In the book Relevance:Communication and Cognition, Sperber and Wilson makes a further analysis on irony from the perspective of relevance theory-irony implies some certain echoic interpretive relations between speaker’s attributed thought and utterances. While Grice believes irony is a communication concept based on the Cooperative Principle, and the irony speakers violate the maxim of quality in Cooperative Principle in that what they say may be opposed to what they actually mean. By comparing these two theories, the author concludes the rationale of relevance theoretic account of irony and the deficiencies of Grice’s theory in verbal irony analysis.Chapter Four is the research methodology. This thesis adopts a qualitative-dominated method with its data and sources mainly coming from literature works and other papers. And some cases are created by the author according to the personal experience.Chapter Five is the main body of this thesis. The author stands respectively at the angle of verbal irony speakers and hearers to study verbal irony. This chapter contains four key points.1) The essence of verbal irony within the framework of relevance theory-irony is an evaluative and echoic interpretive use.2) The processes of verbal irony generation and the motives to use verbal irony:its generation is up to dual factors-external and internal factors, the motives are mainly to express humor, satire or politeness and intimacy.3) The recognition of irony under the guidance of relevance theory. The recognition of irony depends on three conditions:the utterance as echoic, the source of the opinion echoed and the speaker’s attitude to the opinion echoed.4) The comprehension process of irony and the factor which influence irony comprehension.Chapter Six is the conclusion of this thesis. The author points out the advantages and rationale of relevance theoretic account of irony. However, there are still some limitations of relevance theory itself and the research limitations in this thesis,In the end the author provides some suggestions for the further study, which encourages analyzing irony from this new angle.