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In:Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, experimental and practical perspectives
Edited by John Barnden and Andrew Gargett
[Figurative Thought and Language 10] 2020
► pp. 175–210

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An argumentative approach to the affective aspects of irony production

 | University of Cagliari
Published online: 17 December 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.10.07erv
Abstract
The chapter presents irony as a form of the reductio ad absurdum argument having a specific emotional charge, which cannot be found either in literal arguments or in other arguments containing figurative language. The claim of the chapter is that irony production depends on the ironist’s ability to convey the emotional charge together with the point she invites the addressee(s) to infer. An empirical study is presented aiming (1) to understand whether and when participants produce (non-sarcastic/sarcastic) ironic vs. literal arguments having a positive vs. negative emotional charge and (2) to check whether and when participants revise their own (non-sarcastic/sarcastic) ironic vs. literal arguments when they are at the addressee’s side, in both critical and praise irony conditions.
Article outline
  • 1.Irony as an indirect argument
  • 2.The affective and evaluative aspects of irony
  • 3.Blurring the boundaries of irony’s affective aspects
  • 4.The empirical study
    • 4.1Specific background to the study
    • 4.2Hypotheses
    • 4.3Participants
    • 4.4Materials
    • 4.5Rating studies
    • 4.6Method
    • 4.7Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (172)
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Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Ervas, Francesca & Roberta Fadda
2025. Affective Theory of Mind and linguistic intimacy in irony production: a developmental perspective. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 380:1932 DOI logo
Ervas, Francesca & Zsuzsanna Schnell
2024. Irony Across Cultures: A Contrastive Analysis of Conceptualizations and Social Functions. In Studying Verbal Irony and Sarcasm, ► pp. 279 ff. DOI logo
Ervas, Francesca, Maria Grazia Rossi, Amitash Ojha & Bipin Indurkhya
2021. The Double Framing Effect of Emotive Metaphors in Argumentation. Frontiers in Psychology 12 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. The Multimodal Performance of Conversational Humor [Figurative Thought and Language, 13], DOI logo

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