October 19, 2004

Irony discussion

I thought that maybe we could talk about irony here since it seems to be interesting to a lot of people in class. I was a little bit confused with the discussion in the Relevance Theory paper. I will quote 14 and 15 for clarity:

(14) Peter: That was a fantastic party.

(15) Mary::

a. [happily] Fantastic.
b. [puzzled] Fantastic?
c: [scornfully] Fantastic!
Wilson and Sperber "claims that it is ironical BECAUSE it is echoic: verbal irony consists in echoing a tacitly attributed thought or utterance with a tacitly dissociative attitude. Now, change (14) to:

(14') Peter:What did you think of the party?

If Mary responds with (15c) it is still ironic. What is she echoing though in this case? Any ideas? Posted by mill1991 at October 19, 2004 2:53 PM