An Evaluative Review of the Pragmatics of Verbal Irony

What is verbal irony? How is it successfully interpreted? Why should speakers risk employing it when, logically speaking, indirect speech should only harm their chances of being correctly understood? Beginning with the work of Grice, and moving onwards to cover Direct Access Theory, Graded Salience Hypothesis, Relevance Theory and the Echoic, Pretence and Mental Space approaches to irony, the capacity of various pragmatic theories to accurately represent irony will be assessed and tested from both theoretical and cognitive evidential standpoints. Additionally, potential strategic benefits of irony which have thus far been ignored by pragmatic studies will be presented, and the potential of politeness theories to inform future study of these alternative goals will be evaluated. The study will conclude by drawing together theoretic and evidential trends in the research presented and will offer an indication of the pragmatic features of irony on which future studies may seek to focus.