In:The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter
Edited by Manuel Jobert and Sandrine Sorlin
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 30] 2018
► pp. 3–21
Chapter 1Introduction
The intricacies of irony and banter
Published online: 25 April 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.30.01job
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.30.01job
Abstract
This introductory chapter starts with a brief presentation of what triggered our interest in the joint study of irony and banter. We then delve into the theoretical intricacies of these two discursive practices. We review the major theoretical frameworks that have contributed to our understanding of these practices and pinpoint some crucial issues. We conclude with an overview of the different viewpoints expressed and adopted in the following chapters.
Article outline
- 1.Origins and objectives
- 2.What is an ironical utterance?
- 2.1Beyond the classical trope
- 2.2Subcategories
- 3.Competing theories
- 4.Defining banter
- 4.1A cultural approach
- 4.2Linguistic approaches to banter
- 5.Book contents
Notes References
References (65)
. 2000b. Irony markers and functions: Towards a goal-oriented theory of irony and its processing. RASK: Internationalt Tidsskrift for Sprogog Kommunikation 12: 3–20.
Barbe, Katharina. 1993. Isn’t it ironic that…? Explicit irony markers. Journal of Pragmatics 20: 578–590.
. 1995. Irony in Context [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 34]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Clark, Herbert & Gerrig, Richard. 1984. On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1): 121–126.
Colston, Herbert & O’Brien, Jennifer. 2000. Contrast and pragmatics in figurative language: Anything understatement can do, irony can do better. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1557–1583.
Colston, Herbert L. 2007. Salting a wound or sugaring a pill: The pragmatic functions of ironic criticism. In Irony in Language and Thought. A Cognitive Science Reader, Raymond W. Gibbs & Herbert L. Colston (eds), 319–338. New York NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Crystal, David & Quirk, Randolph. 1964. Systems of Prosodic and Paralinguistic Features in English. The Hague: Mouton.
Crystal, David. 1969. Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dews, Shelly, Kaplan, Joan & Winner, Ellen. 2007. Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony. In Irony in Language and Thought. A Cognitive Science Reader, Raymond W. Gibbs & Herbert L. Colston (eds), 297–317. New York NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
. 2010. Ironie et négation. In Ironie et un peu plus. Hommage à Oswald Ducrot pour son 80ème anniversaire, Vahram Atayan & Ursula Wienen (eds), 169–179. Berne: Peter Lang.
Dynel, Marta. 2008. No aggression, only teasing: The pragmatics of teasing and banter. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 4(2): 241–261
(ed.). 2011. The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 210]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
. 2013. Irony from a neo-Gricean perspective: On untruthfulness and evaluative implicature. Intercultural Pragmatics 10: 403–431.
. 2016. Pejoration via sarcastic irony and sarcasm. In Pejoration [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 228], Rita Finkbeiner, Jörg Meibauer & Heike Wiese (eds), 219–239. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gibbs, Raymond W. 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language and Understanding. Cambridge: CUP.
2002. A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated. Journal of Pragmatics 34: 457–486.
. 1997. Discourse coherence and the theory of relevance: Stumbling blocks in search of a unified theory. Journal of Pragmatics 27: 17–34.
. 2011. Will anticipating irony facilitate it immediately? In The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains, Marta Dynel (ed.), 19–31.
Giora, Rachel & Fein, Ofer. 1999. On understanding familiar and less familiar figurative language. Journal of Pragmatics 31: 1601–1618.
Giora, Rachel, Fein, Ofer, Laadan, Dafna, Wolfson, Jon, Zeituny, Michal, Kidrons, Ran, Kaufman, Ronnie & Shaham, Ronit. 2007. Expecting irony: Context vs. salience-based effects. Metaphor and Symbol 22(2): 119–146.
Holmes, Janet. 2000. Politeness, power and provocation: How humour functions in the workplace. Discourse Studies 2(2): 159–185.
Keltner, Dacher, Young, Randall C., Heery, Erin A., Oeming, Carmen & Monarch, Natalie D. 1998. Teasing in hierarchical and intimate relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(5): 1231–1247.
Keltner, Dacher, Capps, Lisa, Kring, Ann M., Young, Randall C. & Heerey, Erin A. 2001. Just teasing: A conceptual analysis and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin 127(2): 229–248.
Kreuz, Roger J. & Glucksberg, Sam. 1989. How to be sarcastic: The reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113: 112–120.
Kreuz, Roger, Long, Debra & Church, Mary. 1991. On being ironic: Pragmatic and mnemonic implications. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 6: 149–162.
Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Glucksberg, Sam & Brown, Mary. 2007. How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. In Irony in Language and Thought. A Cognitive Science Reader, Raymond W. Gibbs & Herbert L. Colston (eds), 57–95. New York NY: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Labov, William. 1972. Language in the Inner City. Studies in the Black Vernacular. Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Le Guern, Michel. 1975. Eléments pour une histoire de la notion d’ironie. Linguistique et Semiology 2: 47–59.
Louw, Bill. 1993. Irony in the text or insincerity in the writer? The diagnostic potential of semantic prosodies. In Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair, Mona Baker, Gill Francis & Elena Tognini-Bonelli (eds), 157–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
MacInnes, Paul. 2011. The Art of Banter: ‘It’s like a boxing match. It can be bruising’. The Guardian, Tuesday 8 November.
Morini, Massimiliano. 2010. The poetics of disengagement: Jane Austen and echoic irony. Language and Literature 19(4): 1–18.
. 2016. Irony. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Styistics, Violeta Sotirova (ed.), 553–566. London: Bloomsbury.
Peleg, Orna, Giora, Rachel & Fein, Ofer. 2008. Resisting contextual information: You can’t put a salient meaning down. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 4: 13–44.
Perelman, Chaïm & Olbrechts-Tyteca, Lucie. 1954. Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: PUF.
Simpson, Paul. 2011. “That’s not ironic, that’s just stupid.” Towards an eclectic account of the discourse of irony. In The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains, Marta Dynel (ed.), 33–50.
Seto, Ken-ichi. 1998. On non-echoic irony. In Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 37], Robyn Carston & Seiji Uchida (eds), 240–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Sperber, Dan & Wilson, Deirdre. 1981. Irony and the use-mention distinction. In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 295–318. New York NY: Academic Press.
Toplak, Mary & Katz, Albert. 2000. On the uses of sarcastic irony. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1467–1488.
Utsumi, Akira. 2000. Verbal irony as implicit display of ironic environment: Distinguishing ironic utterances from nonirony. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1777–1806.
Van Overbeke, Maurits. 2004. Quand rire, c’est “faire rire aux dépens”. Notes sur l’ironie. In Seduction, Community, Speech [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 127], Frank Brisard, Michael Meeuwis & Bart Vandenabeele (eds), 97–113. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Sorlin, Sandrine & Tuija Virtanen
2024. A pragmatic model of hypocrisy. In The Pragmatics of Hypocrisy [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 343], ► pp. 15 ff.
Baider, Fabienne & Maria Constantinou
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
