Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 18:2 (2008) ► pp.189–213
Siga in interaction
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.
Published online: 1 June 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18.2.02chr
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18.2.02chr
This study is an investigation of a conventionalized ironic marker in spontaneous Cypriot-Greek conversations. Specifically it examines the lexical item siga, which translates variously as “like hell”, “yeah right”, “big deal”. For the analysis of siga, this study will rely on the insights offered by recent work on the interface of grammar and interaction (cf. Ochs, Schegloff and Thomson 1996) in order to analyze the interactional role of siga in the positions where it occurs, by taking into consideration its sequential placement and its position in the turn. Another issue that will be discussed throughout this study is that although there are various translations of siga, its investigation with respect to the positions in which it occurs in a turn reveals that the interactional role of siga is much more complex than a dictionary definition of its meaning suggests. This study will suggest that investigations of irony in context can provide useful insights into the study of verbal communication in general.
Keywords: Irony, Grammar and interaction, Conversation analysis, Pragmatics
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