Cover not available

In:The Dynamics of Political Discourse: Forms and functions of follow-ups
Edited by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman and Lawrence N. Berlin
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 259] 2015
► pp. 173–194

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

Irony in and through follow-ups

Talk and meta-talk in online commenting in the Israeli context

 | Bar-Ilan University, Israel
Published online: 27 August 2015
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.259.07wei
This study examines how irony is evaluated and practiced in online commenting. Specifically, it explores readers’ perceptions of irony manifest in their comments on ironic opinion editorials, and ironic comments following-up on ironic op-eds. Against the background of readers’ judgmental evaluations which highlight the threat to face embedded in ironic op-eds, the analysis focuses on affiliative irony whereby readers reciprocate the irony in the op-ed, and by so doing align with the columnist in jointly addressing a third party, who thus becomes a common target. In terms of the conceptualisation of follow-ups, the discussion adapts the traditional definition of a follow-up to the contextual constraints and requirements of CMC (in this case, op-eds. and their comments). In terms of irony research, it argues for the follow-up quality inherent in the flouting of implicit conversational norms or in the echoing mention of a previous act, be it explicit (a prior utterance) or implicit (presumed thought, belief, state of mind), true or imagined. The analysis draws on a corpus-based study of three Israeli newspapers: Ha’aretz, Ynet and NRG. The study presupposes an interactional view of irony, and considers the study of readers’ follow-ups as a way to gain access to speakers’ intuitions, as well as to spontaneous discourse.
References (61)
References
Attardo, Salvatore. 2000. “Irony as Relevant Inappropriateness”. Journal of Pragmatics 32: 793–826. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barbe, Katharina. 1995. Irony in Context. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. 1987. “Indirectness and Politeness in Requests: Same or Different?” Journal of Pragmatics 11(2): 145–160. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana and Juliane House. 1989. “Cross-cultural and Situational Variation in Requesting Behavior.” In Cross-cultural pragmatics: Requests and apologies, ed. by Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House and Gabriele Kasper, 123–154. New Jersey: Ablex.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some Iniversals in Language Usage. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clift, Rebbeca. 1999. “Irony in Conversation”. Language and Society 28: 523–553. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Colston, Herbert L. 1997. “Salting a Wound or Sugaring a Pill: The Pragmatic Functions of Ironic Criticism”. Discourse Processes 23: 25–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000a. “On Necessary Conditions for Verbal Irony Comprehension”. Pragmatics and Cognition 8(2): 277–324. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000b. “Dewey Defeats Truman: Interpreting Ironic Restatements”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 19(1): 46–65. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deuze, Marc. 2008. “The Changing Context of News Work: Liquid Journalism and Monitorial Citizenship”. International Journal of Communication 2: 848‒865.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dews, Shelly, Joan Kaplan and Ellen Winner. 1995. “Why not say it directly? The Social Functions of Irony”. Discourse Processes 19: 347–367. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dori-Hacohen, Gonen and Shavit, Nimrod. 2013. “The Cultural Meanings of Israeli Tokbek (Talk-Back Online Commenting) and their Relevance to the Online Democratic Public Sphere.” International Journal of Electronic Governance 6(4): 361–379. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. 1984. “Literal Meaning and Psychological Theory”. Cognitive Science 8: 275–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1986. “On the Psycholinguistics of Sarcasm”. Journal of Experimental Psychology/ General 115(1): 3–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisterhold, Jodi, Salvatore Attardo and Diane Boxer. 2006. “Reactions to Irony in Discourse: Evidence for the Least Disruption Principle”. Journal of Pragmatics 38: 1239–1256. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fetzer, Anita. 2000. “Negotiating Validity Claims in Political Interviews.” Text 20: 1–46.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Quotations in monologic and dialogic political discourse”. In Proceedings of the ESF Strategic Workshop on Follow-Ups Across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, Würzburg (Germany), 31 May – 2 June 2012, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman and Elisabeth Reber, 72–86. Würzburg: Universität Würzburg. – [online]. URL: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. “Quotations in Monologic and Dialogic Political Discourse”. This volume.
Fetzer, Anita, Elda Weizman and Elizabeth Reber (eds.). 2012. Proceedings of the ESF Strategic Workshop on Follow-Ups Across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, Würzburg (Germany), 31 May – 2 June 2012. Würzburg: Universität Würzburg. [online]. URL: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, Paul H. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”. In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 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 9: Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 113–127. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haverkate, Henk. 1990. “A Speech act Analysis of Irony”. Journal of Pragmatics 14: 77–109. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hermida, Alfred and Niel Thurman. 2008. “A clash of Cultures: The Integration of User-generated Content within Professional Journalistic Frameworks at British Newspaper Websites”. Journalism Practice 2(3): 343–356. <
CrossRef DOI logo with hyperlink to permanent DOI
> Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hirsch, Galia and Shoshana Blum-Kulka. 2014. “Identifying Irony in News Interviews”. Journal of Pragmatics 70: 31–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holdcroft, David. 1983. “Irony as trope, and irony as discourse”. Poetics Today 4(3): 493–511. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Julia. 1996. “The Functions of Sarcastic Irony in Speech”. Journal of Pragmatics 26: 613–634. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johansson, Marjut. 2012. “Editorial and its Comments. Follow-ups in a Discussion Forum”. In Proceedings of the ESF Strategic Workshop on Follow-Ups Across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, Würzburg (Germany), 31 May – 2 June 2012, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman and Elisabeth Reber, 151–154. Würzburg: Universität Würzburg. – [online]. URL: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. Forthcoming. “Bravo for this Editorial: Writer’s Opinions in Comment Sections”. In Follow-Ups in Political Discourse, ed. by Elda Weizman and Anita Fetzer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Katriel, Tamar. 1986. Talking Straight: Dugri Speech in Israeli Sabra Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, Adam, V. Baisa, J. Bušta, M. Jakubiĕk, V. Kovar, J. Michelfeit, P. Rychly and V. Suchomel. 2014. “The Sketch Engine: ten years on”. Lexicography ASIALEX 1: 7–36. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kleinke, Sonia. 2010. “Interactive Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication. Disagreement in an English and German Public News Group.” In Discourses in Interaction, ed. by Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, Marja-Liisa Helasvuo, Marjut Johansson and Mia Raitaniemi, 195‒222. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kohn, Ayelet and Motti Neiger. 2007. “To talk and Talkback: The rhetoric of the Talk-back in Israeli On-line Newspapers”. In Journalism Dot Com: On-Line Newspapers in Israel, ed. by Tehila Altshuler, 321–350. Jerusalem: The Israeli Democratic Institute and Be-Gurion University (in Hebrew).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kotthoff, Helga. 2003. “Responding to Irony in Different Contexts: On Cognition in Conversation”. Journal of Pragmatics 35: 1387–1411. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Glucksberg, Sam and Mary Brown. 1995. “How About Another Piece of Pie: The Allusional Pretense Theory of Discourse Irony”. Journal of Experimental Psychology/ General 124(1): 3–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langlotz, Andreas and Miriam A. Locher. 2012. “Ways of Communicating Emotional Stance in Online Disagreements.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(12): 1591‒1606.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London & New York: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Livnat, Zohar and Gonen Dori-Hacohen. 2013. “The effect of irony in radio talk-back programs in Israel”. In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations Across cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 193–217. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manosevitch, Edith. 2011. “User Generated Content in the Israeli Online Journalism Landscape”. Israel Affairs 17(3): 422–444. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mazara, Jekaterina. 2013. “Irony in the Face(s) of Politeness: Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates” . In Approaches to Slavic Interaction, ed. by Nadine Thielemann and Peter Kosta, 187–213. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neurauter-Kessels, M. 2013. Impoliteness in Cyberspace: Personally Abusive Reader Responses in Online News Media. Ph.D. thesis, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Available at: [URL].
Partington, Allen. 2007. “Irony and Reversal of Evaluation”. Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1547–1569. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reich, Zvi. 2011. “User comments: The transformation of Participatory Space”. In Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, ed. by Jane B. Singer, David Domingo, Ari Heinonen, Alfred Hermida, Steve Paulussen, Thorsten Quandt, Zvi Reich and Marina Vujnovic, 96–117. London: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruiz, Carlos, David Domingo, Josep Lluís Micó, Javier Díaz-Noci, Koldo Meso and Pere Masip. 2011. “Public Sphere 2.0? The Democratic Qualitiesof Citizen Debates in Online Newspapers”. The International Journal of Press/Politics 16(4): 463–487.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John and Malcolm Coulthard. 1975. Towards an Analysis of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, John M. 1991. “Words and Phrases”. Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: OUP. pp. 70–75.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Singer, Jane B. 2009. “Separate Spaces: Discourse About the 2007 Scottish Elections on a National Newspaper Web Site.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 14: 477‒96. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Singer, Jane B., David Domingo, Ari Heinonen, Alfred Hermida, Steve Paulussen, Thorsten Quandt, Zvi Reich and Marina Vujnovic (eds.). 2011. Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers, 96–117. London: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan. 1984. “Verbal Irony: Pretense or Echoic Mention?” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1): 130–136. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Deirdre Wilson. 1981. “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction”. In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weizman, E. 2001. “Addresser, Addressee and Target”. In Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction, ed. by Edda Weigand and Marcelo Dascal, 125–137. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Quantity Scales: Towards Culture-Specific Profiles of Discourse Norms”. In Dialogue and Culture, ed. by Marion Grein, M. and Edda Weigand, 141–152. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Conveying Indirect Reservations Through Discursive Redundancy”. Language Sciences 33: 295–304. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. “Negotiating Irony through Follow-Ups: Readers’ Comments on Op Eds in the Daily Press. Follow-Ups in a Discussion Forum.” In Proceedings of the ESF Strategic Workshop on Follow-Ups Across Discourse Domains: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Their Forms and Functions, Würzburg (Germany), 31 May – 2 June 2012, ed. by Anita Fetzer, Elda Weizman and Elisabeth Reber, 263–274. Würzburg: Universität Würzburg, 2012. – [online]. URL: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “Political Irony: Constructing Reciprocal Positioning in the News Interview”. In The Pragmatics of Political Discourse: Explorations across Cultures, ed. by Anita Fetzer, 167–190. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weizman, Elda and Anita Fetzer, eds. Forthcoming. Follow-Ups in Political Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Weizman, Elda and Marcelo Dascal. 1991. “On Clues and Cues: Strategies of Text Understanding”. Journal of Literary Semantics XX/1: 18–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2006. “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?” Lingua116: 1722–1743. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre and Dan Sperber. 1992. “On Verbal Irony”. Lingua 87: 53–76. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wright, Scott and John Street. 2007. “Democracy, Deliberation and Design: the Case of Online Discussion Forums”. New Media & Society 9(5): 849–869. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Upadhyay, Shiv R. 2010. “Identity and Impoliteness in Computer-Mediated Reader Responses.” Journal of Politeness Research: Language, Behaviour, Culture 6(1): 105–127. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (19)

Cited by 19 other publications

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
Chovanec, Jan & Villy Tsakona
2023. “The girl is on fire!”. In The Pragmatics of Humour in Interactive Contexts [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 335], ► pp. 87 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda & Ayelet Kohn
2022. Resemblance in comments/posts interaction. Pragmatics and Society 13:5 ► pp. 861 ff. DOI logo
Kampf, Zohar, Dana Chudy, Roni Danziger & Mia Schreiber
2021. “Wait With Falling in Love”: Discursive Evaluation of Amicable Messages Conveyed by Opponents. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 40:2 ► pp. 188 ff. DOI logo
Baider, Fabienne & Maria Constantinou
2020. Covert hate speech. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 8:2 ► pp. 262 ff. DOI logo
Livnat, Zohar
2020. “My refrigerator is as much in the dark as I am”. In The Discourse of Indirectness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 316], ► pp. 39 ff. DOI logo
Rabab’ah, Ghaleb & Nusiebah Alali
2020. Impoliteness in reader comments on the Al-Jazeera channel news website. Journal of Politeness Research 16:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Shukrun-Nagar, Pnina
2020. “Hero, genius, king and Messiah”. In The Discourse of Indirectness [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 316], ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo
Baider, Fabienne H.
2019. Le discours de haine dissimulée : le mépris pour humilier. Déviance et Société Vol. 43:3 ► pp. 359 ff. DOI logo
Dori-Hacohen, Gonen
2019. ‘Hitlahamut’: A term for unreasonable populist public talk in Israel. Discourse & Society 30:2 ► pp. 135 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda & Marjut Johansson
2019. Constructing ordinariness in online commenting in Hebrew1 and Finnish. In The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 307], ► pp. 209 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
Chovanec, Jan
2021. ‘Re-educating the Roma? You must be joking. . .’: Racism and prejudice in online discussion forums. Discourse & Society 32:2 ► pp. 156 ff. DOI logo
Chovanec, Jan
2023. Negotiating Hate and Conflict in Online Comments: Evidence from the NETLANG Corpus. In Hate Speech in Social Media, ► pp. 341 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita
2018. “Our Chief Political Editor reads between the lines of the Chancellor’s Budget speech”. Internet Pragmatics 1:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Fetzer, Anita & Elda Weizman
2018. ‘What I would say to John and everyone like John is ...’: The construction of ordinariness through quotations in mediated political discourse. Discourse & Society 29:5 ► pp. 495 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda
2018. Commenting on in-memoriam columns. Internet Pragmatics 1:1 ► pp. 161 ff. DOI logo
Weizman, Elda
2023. Recontextualization practices: A scale of directness. Frontiers in Communication 7 DOI logo
Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna & Jan Chovanec
2017. Media representations of the “other” Europeans. In Representing the other in European media discourses [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 74], ► pp. 1 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