Cover not available

In:Evaluation in Context
Edited by Geoff Thompson † and Laura Alba-Juez
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 242] 2014
► pp. 93–116

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

The evaluative palette of verbal irony

ORCiD logo with link | UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia), Madrid, Spain
Published online: 4 February 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.242.05alb
In this chapter we present the results of both a theoretical and empirical study on the evaluative character of verbal irony. Our main research concern was to provide evidence as to whether all cases of verbal irony are ‘critical’ in nature or not, both by means of theoretical reflection and by presenting the results of a survey whose questions were mainly oriented toward the identification of ironical situations by English native speakers. For our analysis of the evaluative content of ironic utterances we draw on the findings of studies such as Thompson and Hunston (2000), Martin and White (2005), or Bednarek (2008a). The results of the survey show that the great majority of speakers recognized the different evaluative shades of the ironical situations presented, which gave grounds for accepting our hypothesis that the essence of verbal irony is not to be found in its possible implied criticism, but in a finer, more subtle aspect of the phenomenon which has to do with a clash or contradiction at different linguistic/discursive levels.
References (74)
References
Alba Juez, Laura. 1995. “Verbal irony and the Maxims of Grice’s Cooperative Principle”. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, Vol. 8, 25–30. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1995. “Irony and Politeness”. Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada, Vol. 10, 9–16.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1998. “On the conventionalization of verbal irony in English: A corpus-based study”. Perspectivas Pragmáticas en Lingüística Aplicada, Zaragoza: Anubar Ediciones. 11–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000. “Some discourse strategies used to convey praise and/or positive feelings in Spanish everyday conversation”. In Hispanic Linguistics at the Turn of the Millennium, Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger, Alfonso Morales-Front and Thomas Walsh (eds), 364–380. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alba-Juez, Laura. 2001 [1996]. The Functions and Strategies of Ironic Discourse: An Analysis. Madrid: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad Complutense.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Alba-Juez, Laura and Elena Martínez Caro. 2011. “No wonder you’re in trouble! The evaluative function as part of the hidden pragmatic meaning of certain expressions in English and Spanish.” Rocky Mountain Review 65 (2): 188–207. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anolli, Luigi, Ciceri, Rita and Infantino, Maria Giaele. 2000. “Irony as a game of implicitness: acoustic profiles of ironic communication.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 29: 275–275. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore. 2000a. “Irony as relevant inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 793–793. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000b. “Irony markers and functions: Towards a goal-oriented theory of irony and its processing.” RASK 12: 3–3.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2001. “On the pragmatic nature of irony and its rhetorical aspects.” In Pragmatics in 2000, Enico Nemeth (ed.), 52–66. Antwerp: IPrA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore 2002. “Humor and irony in interaction: From mode adoption to failure of detection.” In Say not to Say: New Perspectives on Miscommunication, Luigi Anolli, Rita Ciceri and Giuseppe Riva (eds), 159–179. Amsterdam: IOS Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore, Eisterhold, Jennifer Hay and Poggi Isabella. 2003. “Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm.” Humor 16 (2): 243–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika 2006. “Subjectivity and cognition: Inscribing, evoking and provoking opinion.” In Language and Memory. Aspects of Knowledge Representation, Hanna Pishwa (ed.), 187–221. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monica (ed.). 2008a. Evaluation in Text Types. Special issue of Functions of Language, 15 (1).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika 2008b. Emotion Talk across Corpora. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2009. “Dimensions of evaluation.” Pragmatics and Cognition 17 (1): 146–175. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berrendonner, Alain. 1981. Eléments de Pragmatique Linguistique. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan. 1989. “Styles of stance in English: Lexical and grammatical marking of evidentiality and affect.” Text 9 (1): 93–124.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan and Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Robert L. 1980. “The pragmatics of verbal irony.” In Language Use and the Uses of Language, Roger W. Shuy and Anna Shnukal (eds), 111–127. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. 1987. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Charaudeau, Patrick. 2006. “Des catégories pour l’humour?” Questions de Communication 10: 12–12.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Colston, Herbert L. and Jennifer E. O’Brien. 2000. “Anything understatement can do, irony can do better.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 1557–1583. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dews, Shelly and Winner, Ellen. 1995. “Muting the meaning: A social function of irony.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (1): 3–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Englebretson, Robert (ed.). 2007. Stancetaking in Discourse. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Enright, D.J. 1988. The Alluring Problem: An Essay on Irony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Escandell Vidal, Victoria and Leonetti, Manuel (forthcoming). “Fronting and irony in Spanish.” To appear in Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish: Diachronic, Variationist and Typological Perspectives, Andreas Dufter and Álvaro Octavio de Toledo (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Felices-Lago, Ángel. 1997. “La compilación de un diccionario de términos valorativos desde la perspectiva lexemático-funcional.” In Toward a Functional Lexicology, Gerd Wotjak (ed.), 159–184. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2003. “Reformulation of the domain-level semantic pattern of axiological evaluation in the lexicon of English verbs.” Hermes 30: 179–179.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fontanier, Pierre. 1977. Les Figures du Discours. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garmendia, Joana. 2010. “Irony is critical.” Pragmatics and Cognition 18 (2): 379–421. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giora, Rachel. 1995. “On irony and negation.” Discourse Processes 19: 239–239. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glucksberg, Sam. 1995. “Commentary on nonliteral language: Processing and use.” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (1): 47–57. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul. 1975. “Logic and conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics III: Speech Acts, Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan (eds), 41–58. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1978. “Further notes on logic and conversation.” In Syntax and Semantics IX: Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 183–197. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1981. “Presupposition and conversational implicature.” In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 167–181. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, H. Paul 1982. “Meaning revisited.” In Mutual Knowledge, Neil V. Smith (ed.), 223–43. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1985 [1983]. Conciencia Moral y Acción Comunicativa. Barcelona: Ediciones Península.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1991 [1984a]. Escritos sobre Moralidad y Eticidad. Barcelona: Paidós.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000 [1991]. Aclaraciones a la Ética del Discurso. Madrid: Editorial Trotta.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2001 [1984b]. On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction. Preliminary studies in the Theory of Communicative Action. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hancock, Jeffrey T., Dunham, Philip J. and Purdy, Kelly. 2000. “Children’s comprehension of critical and complimentary forms of verbal irony.” Journal of Cognition and Development 1: 227–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harris, Melanie and Pexman, Penny M. 2003. “Children’s perceptions of the social functions of verbal irony.” Discourse Processes 36 (3): 147–165. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haugh, Michael. 2010. “Jocular mockery, (dis)affiliation, and face.” Journal of Pragmatics 42: 2106–2119. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A speech-act analysis of irony.” Journal of Pragmatics 14: 77–77. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer. 2000. “Functions of humour in the conversations of men and women.” Journal of Pragmatics 32: 709–742. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hidalgo Downing, Raquel and Iglesias Recuero, Silvia. 2009. “Humor e ironía: Una relación compleja.” In Dime cómo Ironizas y te Diré quién eres, Leonor Ruiz Gurillo and Xose A. Padilla García (eds), 423–455. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holdcroft, David 1983. “Irony as trope, and irony as discourse.” Poetics Today 4 (3): 437–449. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan and Thompson, Geoff (eds). 2000. Evaluation in Text. Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kaufer, David. 1983. “Irony, interpretive form and the theory of meaning.” Poetics Today 4 (3): 451–464. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomasz P. 1990. “The axiological aspect of idealized cognitive models.” In Meaning and Lexicography, Jerzy Tomaszczyk and Barbara Lewandowska (eds), 135–165. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William and Waletzky, Joshua. 1967. “Narrative analysis.” In Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, June Helm (ed.), 12–44. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
 Labov, William. 1972. The transformation of experience in narrative syntax. In Language in the Inner City, 354–405. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1997a. “Some further steps in narrative analysis.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 7 (1-4): 395–415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1997b. “Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience.” Journal of Narrative and Life History 7 (1-4): 3–38. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. Singapore: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mao, LuMing R. 1991. Pragmatic Universals and Their Implications. PhD Diss., University of Minnesota.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, J.R. 2000. “Beyond Exchange: APPRAISAL Systems in English.” In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 143–175. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, J.R. and White, P.R.R. 2005. The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matthews, Jacqueline K., Hancock, Jeffrey T. and Dunham, Philip J. 2006. “The roles of politeness and humor in the asymmetry of affect in verbal irony.” Discourse Processes 41 (1): 3–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mizzau, Marina. 1984. L'ironia. La Contraddizione Consentita. Milan: Feltrinelli.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Muecke, Douglas C. 1983. “Images of irony.” Poetics Today 4 (3): 399–413. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Myers Roy, Alice. 1977. “Towards a definition of irony.” In Studies in Language Variation, Ralph W. Fasold and Roger Shuy (eds), 171–183. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norrick, Neal. 1993. Conversational Joking: Humour in Everyday Talk. Indiana: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1994. “Involvement and joking in conversation.” Journal of Pragmatics 22: 409–409. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ortega y Gasset, José. 1923. “Introducción a una Estimativa: ¿qué es el valor?” Revista de Occidente, IV, octubre 1923 (Ed. 1947, 315–335).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Osgood, Charles E. 1980. Lectures on Language Performance. New York: Springer-Verlag. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Osgood, Charles E., Suci, George, and Tannenbaum, Percy. 1957. The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Partington, Alan. 2007. “Irony and reversal of evaluation.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (9): 1547–1569. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2011. “Phrasal irony: Its form, function and exploitation.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1786–1800. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Cooper, J.M.and Hutchinson, D.S. (eds). Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quintilian, M.F. 1942. Instituciones Oratorias. Libros VIII and IX. Translation into Spanish by Ignacio Rodríguez and Pedro Sandier. Tomo II. Madrid: Librería y Casa Editorial Hernando.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the use-mention distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 295–318. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff and Hunston, Susan. 2000. “Evaluation: An introduction.” In Evaluation in Text, Susan Hunston and Geoff Thompson (eds), 1–27. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (32)

Cited by 32 other publications

Martín-Gascón, Beatriz
2024. Irony in American-English tweets. In Recent Advances in Multiword Units in Machine Translation and Translation Technology [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 366], ► pp. 197 ff. DOI logo
Attardo, Salvatore
2023. Tracking the Ironical Eye: Eye Tracking Studies on Irony and Sarcasm. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 140 ff. DOI logo
Benenowska, Iwona & Anna Bączkowska
2023. “Nobody from the Kossaks family has mounted a horse with a knife and fork so far” – Axiolinguistic analysis of evaluative culinary language in letters written by Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska. Forum Filologiczne Ateneum :1(11)2023 ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Bischetti, Luca & Salvatore Attardo
2023. From mode adoption to saluting a dead kitten. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335], ► pp. 65 ff. DOI logo
Nacchia, Francesco
2023. Get a Jab or Grab a Glass (of Wine): A Sentiment and Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Reader Comments on News Story in the Daily Mail. Lingue Culture Mediazioni - Languages Cultures Mediation (LCM Journal) 10:2 DOI logo
Salini, Yalamanchili & J. HariKiran
2023. 2023 3rd International Conference on Smart Data Intelligence (ICSMDI), ► pp. 15 ff. DOI logo
Troiano, Enrica, Aswathy Velutharambath & Roman Klinger
2023. From theories on styles to their transfer in text: Bridging the gap with a hierarchical survey. Natural Language Engineering 29:4 ► pp. 849 ff. DOI logo
Vergis, Nikos
2023. How affect modulates conversational meanings: a review of experimental research: invited review. Cognition and Emotion ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Yus, Francisco
2023. Inferring Irony Online. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 160 ff. DOI logo
Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez, Francisco José & Inés Lozano-Palacio
2021. On verbal and situational irony. In Figurative Language - Intersubjectivity and Usage [Figurative Thought and Language, 11], ► pp. 213 ff. DOI logo
Buzea, Marius-Cristian, Stefan Trausan-Matu & Traian Rebedea
2020. 2020 24th International Conference on System Theory, Control and Computing (ICSTCC), ► pp. 72 ff. DOI logo
Galera Masegosa, Alicia
2020. The role of echoing in meaning construction and interpretation. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 18:1 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
Hernández Farías, Delia Irazú, Ronaldo Prati, Francisco Herrera & Paolo Rosso
2020. Irony detection in Twitter with imbalanced class distributions. Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems 39:2 ► pp. 2147 ff. DOI logo
Canestrari, Carla, Ivana Bianchi & Valerio Cori
2018. De-polarizing verbal irony. Journal of Cognitive Psychology 30:1 ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Chovanec, Jan
2018. Irony as counter positioning. In The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 30], ► pp. 165 ff. DOI logo
Dynel, Marta
2018. Deconstructing the myth of positively evaluative irony. In The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter [Linguistic Approaches to Literature, 30], ► pp. 41 ff. DOI logo
Hernández Farías, Delia Irazú, Cristina Bosco, Viviana Patti & Paolo Rosso
2018. Sentiment Polarity Classification of Figurative Language: Exploring the Role of Irony-Aware and Multifaceted Affect Features. In Computational Linguistics and Intelligent Text Processing [Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 10762], ► pp. 46 ff. DOI logo
Ruiz-Moneva, María Ángeles
2018. Irony and Parody in a Spanish Translation of Fowles’ "The French Lieutenant’s Woman": A Relevance-Theoretical Approach. Complutense Journal of English Studies 26 ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Farias, D.I. Hernández & P. Rosso
2017. Irony, Sarcasm, and Sentiment Analysis. In Sentiment Analysis in Social Networks, ► pp. 113 ff. DOI logo
Márquez, Aurelia Carranza
2017. A functional view on the expression of emotion – the case of Spanish emigration and the media: Politics, manipulation and stance. Discourse & Communication 11:5 ► pp. 467 ff. DOI logo
Taboada, Maite, Radoslava Trnavac & Cliff Goddard
2017. On Being Negative. Corpus Pragmatics 1:1 ► pp. 57 ff. DOI logo
Alba-Juez, Laura
2016. The variables of the evaluative functional relationship. In Metapragmatics of Humor [IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature, 14], ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo
Alba-Juez, Laura
2018. Emotion and appraisal processes in language. In The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 296], ► pp. 227 ff. DOI logo
Alba-Juez, Laura
2021. Affect and Emotion. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 340 ff. DOI logo
Alba-Juez, Laura
2023. Contrasting Dimensions behind the Use of Irony and Humour in Times of Crisis. Półrocznik Językoznawczy Tertium 8:1 ► pp. 152 ff. DOI logo
Don, Alexanne
2016. “It is hard to mesh all this”: Invoking attitude, persona and argument organisation. Functional Linguistics 3:1 DOI logo
Escandell-Vidal, M. Victoria & Manuel Leonetti
2014. Chapter 11. Fronting and irony in Spanish. In Left Sentence Peripheries in Spanish [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 214], ► pp. 309 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2016. Mock Politeness in English and Italian [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 267], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Topics and Settings in Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 247 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Modeling Irony [Figurative Thought and Language, 12], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2022. Figuring out Figuration [Figurative Thought and Language, 14], DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2023. Irony in Linguistic Communication. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 129 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 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.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue