The aim of this paper is to clarify the distinctive and the shared features of the three phenomena: irony, understatement, and litotes. These rhetorical figures have been defined as synonymous, distinct or overlapping in various accounts. This indicates an interrelation but also a need for clearer definitions. Here, each of these rhetorical figures is defined via two jointly necessary conditions. This approach sharpens the categories, enables clear-cut distinctions and helps to explain cases of overlap. German corpus data and examples from the literature as a basis, allow differentiating between cases of understatement as a means of irony, and cases of litotes as a means of understatement. Beyond that, litotes and understatement allow for non-ironic uses. Interestingly, litotic irony is built on litotic understatement. This is due to the overt contrast necessary for both understatement and irony.
Corpora: Tagged-T archive of Das Deutsche Referenzkorpus DeReKo, Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim
Asmuth, B. and Berg-Ehlers, L. 1974. Stilistik. Düsseldorf: Bertelsmann.
Attardo, S. 2000. “Irony as relevant inappropriateness”. Journal of Pragmatics 32(6): 793–826.
Berntsen, D. and Kennedy, J.M. 1996. “Unresolved contradictions specifying attitudes - in metaphor, irony, understatement and tautology”. Poetics 241: 13–29.
Blühdorn, H. 2012. Negation im Deutschen: Syntax Informationsstruktur Semantik. Tübingen: Narr.
Blutner, R. 2004. “Pragmatics and the lexicon”. In L.R. Horn (ed), The Handbook of Pragmatics (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics 16). Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 488–514.
Burton-Roberts, N. 2010. “Cancellation and intention”. In M.B. Soria Casaverde (ed), Explicit Communication. Robyn Carston’s Pragmatics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 138–155.
Caffi, C. 1999. “On mitigation”. Journal of Pragmatics 31(7): 881–909.
Caffi, C. 2007. Mitigation (Studies in pragmatics 4). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Cano Mora, Laura. 2006. ‘How to make a Mountain out of a Molehill’: A Corpus-based Pragmatic and Conversational Analysis Study of Hyperbole in Interaction. Universitat de València: Servei de Publicacions. [URL].
Carston, R. and Wearing, C. 2015. “Hyperbolic language and its relation to metaphor and irony”. Journal of Pragmatics 791: 79–92.
Claridge, C. 2011. Hyperbole in English: A Corpus-based Study of Exaggeration (Studies in English Language). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Clark, H.H. and Gerrig, R.J. 1984. “On the pretense theory of irony”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113(1): 121–126.
Colston, H.L. 1997a. “‘I’ve never seen anything like It’: Overstatement, understatement, and irony”. Metaphor and Symbol 12(1): 43–58.
Colston, H.L. 1997b. “Salting a wound or sugaring a pill: The pragmatic functions of ironic criticism”. Discourse Processes 23(1): 25–45.
Colston, H.L. and Gibbs, R.W. 2007. “A brief history of irony”. In R.W. Gibbs and H.L. Colston (eds), Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader. New York: Erlbaum, 3–21.
Colston, H.L. and O’Brien, J. 2000. “Contrast and pragmatics in figurative language: Anything understatement can do, irony can do better”. Journal of Pragmatics 321: 1557–1583.
Curcó, C. 2000. “Irony: negation, echo, and metarepresentation”. Lingua 1101: 257–280.
Dascal, M. and Gross, A.G. 1999. “The marriage of pragmatics and rhetoric”. Philosophy and Rhetoric 32(2): 107–130.
Deichsel, A. 2013. The Semantics and Pragmatics of the Indefinite Demonstrative dieser in German. Universität Stuttgart: PhD Dissertation.
Dews, S., Kaplan, J. and Winner, E. 1995. “Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony”. Discourse Processes 19(3): 347–367.
Dews, S. and Winner, E. 1995. “Muting the meaning. A social function of irony”. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10(1): 3–19.
Dynel, M. 2013a. “Irony from a neo-Gricean perspective: On untruthfulness and evaluative implicature”. Intercultural Pragmatics 10(3): 403–431.
Fraenkel, T. and Schul, Y. 2008. “The meaning of negated adjectives”. Intercultural Pragmatics 5(4): 517–540.
Garmendia, J. 2010. “Irony is critical”. Pragmatics & Cognition 18(2): 397–421.
Garmendia, J. 2011. “She’s (not) a fine friend: ‘Saying’ and criticism in irony”. Intercultural Pragmatics 8(1): 41–65.
Garmendia, J. 2015. “A (Neo)Gricean account of irony: an answer to Relevance Theory”. International Review of Pragmatics 7(1): 40–79.
Gernsbacher, M.A. and Shroyer, S. 1989. “The cataphoric use of the indefinite this in spoken narratives”. Memory & Cognition 17(5): 536–540.
Gibbs, R.W. 1986. “On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 115(1): 3–15.
Gibbs, R.W. 1999. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Gibbs, R.W. 2000. “Irony in talk among friends”. Metaphor and Symbol 15(1-2): 5–27.
Gibbs, R.W. and Colston, H.L. 2002. “The risk and rewards of ironic communication”. In G. Riva, L. Anolli and R. Ciceri (eds), Say not to say: New perspectives on miscommunication (Emerging communication 3). Amsterdam, Washington, DC, Tokyo: IOS Press, 188–199.
Gibbs, R.W. and Colston, H.L. 2012. Interpreting figurative meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Giora, R. 1995. “On irony and negation”. Discourse Processes 19(2): 239–264.
Giora, R. 2003. On Our Mind. Salience, Context, and Figurative Language. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Giora, R., Fein, O., Ganzi, J., Levi, N.A. and Sabah, H. 2005. “On negation as mitigation: The case of negative irony”. Discourse Processes 39(1): 81–100.
Grice, H.P. 1989a. “Logic and conversation”. In H.P. Grice (ed), Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 22–40.
Grice, H.P. 1989b. “Further notes on logic and conversation”. In H.P. Grice (ed), Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 41–57.
Groeben, N. and Scheele, B. 1986. Produktion und Rezeption von Ironie: Pragmalinguistische Beschreibung und psycholinguistische Erklärungshypothesen (Tübinger Beiträge zur Linguistik 263). Tübingen: Narr.
Haiman, J. 1998. Talk is cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Hasson, U. and Glucksberg, S. 2006. “Does understanding negation entail affirmation?” Journal of Pragmatics 38(7): 1015–1032.
Haugh, M. 2015. Im/Politeness Implicatures (Mouton series in pragmatics 11). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Haverkate, H. 1990. “A speech act analysis of irony”. Journal of Pragmatics 141: 77–109.
Holdcroft, D. 1983. “Irony as a trope, and irony as discourse”. Poetics Today 4(3): 493–511.
Horn, L. 1984. “Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature”. In D. Schiffrin (ed), Meaning, Form, and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications. Washington, DC: Georgetown Univ. Pr.
Horn, L. 1989. The Natural History of Negation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Horn, L. 1991. “Duplex negatio affirmat…: The economy of double negation.” Chicago Linguistic Society 27(2): 80–106.
Horn, L. 2015. “Lie-toe-tease: Double negatives and unexcluded middles”. Philosophical Studies. Published online: [URL]
Huang, Y. 2007. Pragmatics. (Oxford textbooks in linguistics). Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Huang, Y. 2012. The Oxford Dictionary of Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Israel, M. 2006. “Saying less and meaning less”. In B.J. Birner and G.L. Ward (eds), Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn (Studies in language companion series 80). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 137–156.
Jaszczolt, K.M. 2009. “Cancelability and the primary/secondary meaning distinction”. Intercultural Pragmatics 6(3): 259–289.
Jespersen, O. 1917. Negation in English and Other Languages. Kopenhagen: Høst.
Kapogianni, E. 2011. “Irony via ‘surrealism’ ”. In M. Dynel (ed), The Pragmatics of Humour across Discourse Domains (Pragmatics & beyond 210). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 51–68.
Kreuz, R.J. and Link, K.E. 2002. “Asymmetries in the use of verbal irony”. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21(2): 127–143.
Kreuz, R.J. and Roberts, R.M. 1993. “The empirical study of figurative language in literature”. Poetics 221: 151–169.
Kreuz, R.J., Roberts, R.M., Johnson, B.K. and Bertus, E.L. 1996. “Figurative language occurrence and co-occurrence in contemporary literature”. In R.J. Kreuz (ed), Empirical Approaches to Literature and Aesthetics (Advances in discourse processes 52). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publ. Corp, 83–97.
Krifka, M. 2007. “Negated Antonyms: Creating and Filling the Gap”. In U. Sauerland (ed), Presupposition and Implicature in Compositional Semantics (Palgrave studies in pragmatics, language and cognition series). Basingstoke: PalgraveMacmillan, 163–177.
Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S. and Brown, M. 1995. “How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony”. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 124(1): 3–21.
Lausberg, H. and Orton, D.E. 1998. Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study. Leiden: Brill.
Leech, G.N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Leech, G.N. 2014. The Pragmatics of Politeness (Oxford studies in sociolinguistics). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Levinson, S.C. 2000. Presumptive Meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature (Language, speech and communication series). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Liu, Y. and Zhu, C. 2011. “Rhetoric as the antistrophos of pragmatics: toward a ‘competition of cooperation’ in the study of language use”. Journal of Pragmatics 43(14): 3403–3415.
Livnat, Z. 2011. “Quantity, truthfulness and ironic effect”. Language Sciences 33(2): 305–315.
McDonald, S. 2000. “Neuropsychological studies of sarcasm”. Metaphor and Symbol 15(1-2): 85–98.
Meibauer, J. 2012 “What is a context? Theoretical and empirical evidence.” In R. Finkbeiner, P. Schumacher and J. Meibauer (eds), What is a Context? Linguistic Approaches and Challenges. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 9–32.
Meibauer, J. 2015. “Only “nur”. Scare Quoted (Exclusive) Focus Particles at the Semantics/Pragmatics Interface”. In J. Arendholz (ed), Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then (Topics in English Linguistics 89). Berlin: de Gruyter, 177–207.
Molinié, G. 2011. “C’est une litote”. In A. Horak (ed), La litote: Hommage à Marc Bonhomme. Bern: Lang, 61–66.
Neuhaus, L. 2016. “Four potential meanings of double negation: The pragmatics of nicht un-constructions”. International Review of Pragmatics. 81: 55–81.
Neuhaus, L. forthcoming. Linguistik der Litotes im Deutschen.
Partington, A. 2007. “Irony and reversal of evaluation”. Journal of Pragmatics 391: 1547–1569.
Predelli, S. 2003. “Scare quotes and their relation to other semantic issues”. Linguistics and Philosophy 26(1): 1–28.
Recanati, F. 1987. Meaning and Force: The Pragmatics of Performative Utterances (Cambridge studies in philosophy). Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Roberts, R.M. and Kreuz, R.J. 1994. “Why do people use figurative language?” Psychological Science 5(3): 159–163.
Rolf, E. 2013. Inferentielle Pragmatik: Zur Theorie der Sprecher-Bedeutung. Berlin: Schmidt.
Salinger, J.D. 1960. The Catcher in the Rye. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Schenkeveld, D.-M. 1992. “Asteismus”. In G. Ueding (ed), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik. Vol. 1 A-Bib. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1129–1134.
Schmude, M.P. 2001. “Minutio”. In G. Ueding (ed), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik: Vol. 5 L-Musi. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1360–1366.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 1981. “Irony and the use-mention distinction”. In P. Cole (ed), Radical Pragmatics. New York: Acad. Press, 295–318.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 1986. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. 1990. “Rhetoric and relevance”. In D. Wellbery and J. Bender (eds), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 140–155.
Stalnaker, R. 2002. “Common Ground” Linguistics and Philosophy 251: 701–721.
Ueding, G. and Steinbrink, B. 2005. Grundriß der Rhetorik: Geschichte, Technik, Methode. Stuttgart: Metzler.
van der Wouden, T. 1996. “Litotes and downward monotonicity”. In H. Wansing (ed), Negation: A Notion in Focus. Berlin: de Gruyter, 145–167.
Walton, K. 2015. “Meiosis, hyperbole, irony”. Philosophical Studies. Published online: [URL]
Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. 1992. “On verbal irony”. Lingua 87(1-2): 53–76.
Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. 2012. “Explaining irony” In D. Wilson and D. Sperber (eds), Meaning and Relevance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 123–145.
Wilson, D. forthcoming. “Irony, hyberbole, jokes and banter” In J. Blochowiak, C. Grisot, S. Durrleman-Tame and C. Laenzlinger (eds), Formal models in the study of language. Springer.
Winner, E. 1988. The point of words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
2024. “Am I Glad To See Myself?”: The Self-irony Tendency Task as a Measure of the Tendency to Use Verbal Self-irony for Self-presentation Purposes. In Studying Verbal Irony and Sarcasm, ► pp. 327 ff.
Airaksinen, Timo
2021. Metaphysics, Universal Irony, and Richard Rorty’s “We Ironists”. Humanities 10:4 ► pp. 106 ff.
Ayton, Peter & Leonardo Weiss-Cohen
2021. Smoking versus vaping: how (not) to communicate their relative harms. Journal of Risk Research 24:2 ► pp. 198 ff.
Bouko, Catherine, Olivier Standaert & Astrid Vandendaele
2019. Being a journalist in a multilingual country: Representations of Dutch among Belgian French-speaking journalists. Multilingua 38:3 ► pp. 231 ff.
Neuhaus, Laura
2019. Eine diachrone Korpusanalyse der rhetorischen Figur Litotes. Jahrbuch für Germanistische Sprachgeschichte 10:1 ► pp. 345 ff.
Neuhaus, Laura
2023. Irony and Its Overlap with Hyperbole and Understatement. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 310 ff.
Sullivan, Arthur
2019. The varieties of verbal irony: a new neo-Gricean taxonomy. Lingua 232 ► pp. 102740 ff.
Yuan, Ying, Randy Allen Harris & Chrysanne Di Marco
2017. The argumentative litotes in The Analects. Argument & Computation 8:3 ► pp. 253 ff.
2017. Academics vs. American scriptwriters vs. academics: A battle over the etic and emic “sarcasm” and “irony” labels. Language & Communication 55 ► pp. 69 ff.
2023. Irony, Affect, and Related Figures. In The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought, ► pp. 235 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.