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In:What makes a Figure: Rethinking figurativity
Edited by Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 19] 2025
► pp. 248–270

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Chapter 9
Understanding ironic echoing

Published online: 28 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.19.09dem
Abstract
Irony is one of the figures of speech that has received comparatively less attention than others in pragmatics and cognition. Relevance theorists account for verbal irony in terms of echoic mention (Sperber, 1984), which, in complementary work within Cognitive Linguistics, has been treated as the result of a cognitive operation acting in cooperation with other operations to give rise to ironic meaning (cf. Herrero, 2009; Ruiz de Mendoza, 2017a; Galera, 2020). As a development of this previous work, the present chapter examines the notion of ironic echo based on multiple analytical perspectives: its representational accuracy, its total or partial nature, its degree of complexity, and its denotational or attitudinal character. This multifaceted approach allows a clear dividing line to be drawn between ironic echoing and other forms of interpretive (or non-descriptive) echoing (e.g., implicational, parodic) with a view to understanding both the internal and external aspects of this phenomenon.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.A brief note on methodology
  • 3.Previous work on ironic echoes
    • 3.1The ironic echo in inferential pragmatics
    • 3.2Ironic echoing and cognitive modeling
      • 3.2.1Echoing and contrasting operations
      • 3.2.2Implicit echoing
      • 3.2.3Echoic complexity
      • 3.2.4Echoing as pretended agreement
  • 4.Ironic echoing and inferencing
  • 5.Non-ironic echoing
    • 5.1Parodic echoing
    • 5.2Implicational echoing
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (46)
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