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Part of
Irony in Language Use and Communication
Edited by Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 1] 2017
► pp. 109–126

Chapter 5
On ironic puns in Portuguese authentic oral data

How does multiple meaning make irony work?

In the present paper we are going to focus on two Portuguese case studies (one in European Portuguese – EP and one in Brazilian Portuguese – BP) of the ironic oral discourse that result in verbal puns. In our analysis we postulate that studying multiple meanings (polysemy and homonymy) in puns can explain how irony functions on cognitive, linguistic and cultural levels given that (i) irony is a fundamental way of thinking about human experience (Gibbs & Colston, 2007; Gibbs, 2012); (ii) it is perspectivised and culturally grounded (Tobin & Israel, 2012; Dancygier & Sweetser, 2012, 2015); and (iii) linguistically explicit in verbal irony (Bryant, 2012, cf. Batoréo, 2016).

The study is qualitative in character: the aim of the analysis is to exemplify cognitive and linguistic mechanisms culturally grounded that make irony work. In two case studies of authentic Portuguese discourse with ironic puns chosen out of larger corpora (cf. References) to be discussed in the present paper we shall argue that (i) polysemy and homonymy are cognitive and linguistic phenomena that trigger ironic puns; (ii) metonymy organised in metonymical chains or networks can be a complex cognitive mechanism that underlies polysemy; (iii) verbal puns are perspectivised and strongly culturally and historically grounded.

Keywords: irony, Cognitive Linguistics, Cultural Linguistics, verbal puns, authentic oral discourse, polysemy, metonymy, homonymy, Portuguese (EP and BP), Spanish
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: What do we understand by irony from a Cognitive Linguistics point of view?
  • 2.The first case study: Polysemy of ‘Mercedes’ in The Mercedes joke
    • 2.1Formal representation, scripts, and a sarcastic trigger
    • 2.2Polysemy and a metonymical network as a grounding cognitive mechanism
    • 2.3Representations and metarepresentations of irony
  • 3.The second case study (Brazilian Portuguese): Homonymy of ‘cremado’ in The ‘cremado’ joke
  • 4.Final discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Extra information related to the corpus
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.1.06bat
References

References

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Extra information related to the corpus

1.Information on Mercedes Jellinek and the Mercedes-Benz brand

Janis Joplin’s
Mercedes-Benz lyrics Retrieved from [URL]
Krebbs, M.
(2001) Her name still rings a bell. The New York Times, Automobiles Section. Oct. 19 (2001) Retrieved from [URL]
Meet Mercedes Jellinek, the woman behind the name
. Autoblog 28 June (2012) Retrieved from [URL]
Mercedes Jellinek, an interesting life story
Mercedes-Benz Cyprus Website: Mercedes World. Retrieved from [URL]

2.Information on Brazilian jokes “Piadas de Português” (Jokes on the Portuguese)

Fino, C.
(2016) Piada de português e espírito do tempo. Ms.

Sites on “piada-de-portugues” retrieved from

http://www.osvigaristas.com.br/piadas/portugues/
http://www.piadascurtas.com.br/piadas-de-portugues/
http://www.piadas.com.br/piadas/portugues
http://www.piadasnet.com/piadas-de-portugues.htm
http://piadasantigasenovas.blogspot.pt/2008/06/piadas-de-portugus.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&hl=en&client=mvgoogle&v=BajXlGOotEk&fulldescription=1&app=desktop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWFkEuJ1sqI
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Batoréo, Hanna Jakubowicz
2018. Metaphorical Competence in Multilingual Context of Language Acquisition and Learning. Psychology of Language and Communication 22:1 ► pp. 534 ff. DOI logo
Maldonado, Gabriel Orlando Quiñones
2022. A polissemia do item lexical ‘luz’, uma análise baseada na linguística cognitiva. Revista Científica Multidisciplinar Núcleo do Conhecimento ► pp. 117 ff. DOI logo

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