A Scenario-Based Approach to Irony. Structure, meaning and function stars

Abstract

This doctoral thesis is the first integrated study on irony that includes aspects of this phenomenon previously discussed in disciplines such as literary theory, rhetoric, psycholinguistics, linguistics, and the philosophy of language. The integration is based on the consideration of irony as the result of a system of inferences arising from the clash between an epistemic scenario and an observable scenario. This system of analysis accounts for both verbal irony and situational irony. Based on the meticulous analysis of a hundred examples drawn from literary and non-literary sources, the thesis offers a detailed study of ways of articulation of both types of scenarios, as well as the realization strategies of both. It also offers a novel classification of types of ironist and interpreter for verbal irony, as well as types of ironic situation and ways of perceiving it in the case of situational irony. It correlates the different types of ironist and interpreter in order to determine the degrees of felicity (conditions of adequacy of the ironic statements). Finally, the dissertation gives an overview of the diverse ironic uses that are recorded both in rhetoric and in the history of literature, and accounts for them from the point of view of the theory of cross-scenario clashes. A distinction is made between basic uses and re-adapted uses of irony, and emphasis is made on the need to systematically control socio-cultural and historical factors in determining the nature of the uses and their idiosyncrasy. As lines of future research, an expansion of the initial research corpus is proposed following criteria of internal and external homogeneity of the sources. Another proposal is the possibility of experimentally controlling some of the discoveries made on the basis of linguistic analysis, especially as pertains to the phenomenon of complex echoes, which contribute to different communicative impacts of ironic statements. A study that is also necessary is that of the constructional foundation of some ironic uses, which must be related to the study of linguistic indicators of irony, some of which have been treated in the present study as factors that realize central elements of the epistemic scenario. In addition to this, the thesis highlights the need to delve into the question of the maximization of ironic impact, which is to be put in relation to the determination of felicity conditions for the different ironic uses.