Cross-linguistic perspectives on irony and sarcasm

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Michael Haugh and Yasuko Obana

Kwanser Gakuin University

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Abstract

The study of irony has a long tradition stretching back to Ancient Greek comedy, but in pragmatics much of the work has been focused on how ironic utterances are processed (e.g. Fein, Yeari and Giora 2015; Gibbs 2012; Gibbs and Colston 2007). However, the emphasis on the comprehension of irony has arguably left questions about the proper scope of irony and how it relates to sarcasm somewhat more open (Wilson 2013). Recent work suggests that more attention needs to be paid to the theorisation of different types of irony (Bailin 2015; Dynel 2013; Gardamenia 2015; Kapogianni 2016), and, critically, that there may be important cross-linguistic differences in how irony and sarcasm are conceptualised (Adachi 1996; Taylor 2016). The aim of this panel is to bring together researchers interested in exploring potential cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the various (verbal) practices through which irony and sarcasm arise, the various processes underpinning the comprehension of irony and sarcasm, and the implications of these for theorising irony and its relationship with sarcasm.

 

Participants:

1. Marta Dynel: “Negotiating irony in interaction”

2. Eleni Kapogianni: TBC

3. Magda Stroinska and MacKenzie Salt: “Detecting and understanding sarcasm and irony in people with frontotemporal dementia and Autism Spectrum Disorder”

4. Yasuko Obana and Michael Haugh: “Japanese honorifics and sarcasm”

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Reference

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Bailin, Alan (2015). On the characteristics of verbal irony. Semiotica 204: 101-119.

Dynel, Marta (2013). Irony from a neo-Gricean perspective: on untruthfulness and evaluative implicature. Intercultural Pragmatics 10: 403-431.

Fein, Offer, Menahem Yeari and Rachel Giora (2015). On the priority of salience-based interpretations: The case of sarcastic irony. Intercultural Pragmatics 12: 1-32.

Gardamendia, Joana (2015). A (neo)Gricean account of irony: An answer to relevance theory. International Review of Pragmatics 7: 40-79.

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr (2012). Are ironic acts deliberate? Journal of Pragmatics 44: 104-115.

Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr and Herbert L. Colston (eds.) (2007). Irony in Language and Thought. New York: Psychology Press.

Kapogianni, Eleni (2016). The ironic operation: Revisiting the components of ironic meaning. Journal of Pragmatics 91: 16-28.

Wilson, Deirdre (2013). Irony comprehension: A developmental perspective. Journal of Pragmatics 59