Pejoration via sarcastic irony and sarcasm

This chapter addresses two notions which have received hardly any attention in the studies on pejoration: irony and sarcasm. The two concepts are teased out in the light of ample and heterogeneous research. The author argues in favour of differentiating between the two with reference to neo-Gricean terms. The focus is on the negatively evaluative/pejorative potential of sarcasm, as well as sarcastic irony, which is proposed to be a combination of irony and sarcasm. This theoretical study is illustrated with examples extracted from “House”.