In:What makes a Figure: Rethinking figurativity
Edited by Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 19] 2025
► pp. 271–304
Chapter 10Irony, intersubjectivity and construal
The case of a Greek construction found in Greek Twitter about others
Published online: 28 October 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.19.10kef
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.19.10kef
Abstract
The chapter reconsiders irony as a perspectival phenomenon that involves the simultaneous presence of two
perspectives on a single situation, which is the object of
conceptualization, and analyses it as a mechanism that simulates the surprise that the speaker experiences when he or
she is encountered with another, alternative perspective on a situation that seemed straightforward to him or her. To
illustrate this mechanism the chapter investigates the ironic effects that accompany a Greek construction, encountered
within the context of Greek Twitter, about a third party’s (other than the producer of the tweet or addressee) doings
or sayings. The construction includes a Greek indefinite pronoun ‘o álos/ i áli’ (the otherM/F). Its use is shown,
after search in the Corpus of Spoken Greek of the Institute of Modern Greek Studies, in the Corpus of Greek Texts and
Sketch Engine, to be a viewpointed choice of referential form and as such it requires the consideration of
subjectivity and intersubjectivity as proposed by Langacker (1987, 2008) and Verhagen (2005, 2009). The selected data, that is the tweets instantiating the specific
construction, are examined by using the analytical tool of thoughtscpapes (Van
Duijn & Verhagen, 2018, 2019) that enables us to scrutinize
complex configurations of multiple viewpoints that are simultaneously present in discourse.
Keywords: thoughtscapes, perspective, viewpoint, discourse representation, identities
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 2.1Irony: Viewpoint and contrast
- 2.2Thoughtscapes
- 3.Methodology and corpus
- 4.Data
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusions: Some thoughts on irony
Acknowlegments Notes References
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