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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. 145–178

Chapter 7
Irony, pretence and fictively-elaborating hyperbole

This article broadly adopts a well-known approach to verbal irony: taking ironic speakers to be engaging in pretence; and it follows others in viewing the pretences as (micro-)dramas created by the ironists, who act characters in the dramas. But it breaks new ground by strongly emphasizing the world of the drama (the drama’s world). In drama, acted characters operate within some implied world (e.g., a historical setting). Equally, in irony there is such a world. We then see a triangle of contrast: not only (a) the opposition usually considered in irony theory – between acted characters’ views/attitudes and the nature of the real world – but also potential contrast between (b) those views/attitudes and the rest of the drama’s world, and between (c) drama’s world and real world. This particularly helps us analyse fictively-elaborating hyperbole, arising from drama-world details invented by ironists. The article also invites non-pretence irony theories to try to account for the effects.

Keywords: irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, pretence, contrast
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Assumptions about irony and hyperbole
    • 2.1Irony
    • 2.2Hyperbole: Initial comments
    • 2.3Scalar hyperbole and hyperbole within irony
    • 2.4Ficitvely-elaborating hyperbole
  • 3.More on pretence and drama in irony
    • 3.1Location in the theoretical landscape
    • 3.2The pretended/acted speaker
    • 3.3Export of criticizing attitude
    • 3.4Drama’s world versus real world
  • 4.The corners of a triangle: Acted speaker, drama’s world and real world
    • 4.1Critical irony: Where Winifred should know about the bad weather
    • 4.2Being yet more critical
    • 4.3Non-person-criticizing irony: Ian & Winifred
    • 4.4Non-person-criticizing irony, contd: Ian alone
  • 5.The drama’s world and fictively-elaborating hyperbole
    • 5.1Ian the hyperbolic ironist
    • 5.2The picnic
    • 5.3Other examples
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.1.08bar
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