Cover not available
Article published In:
Pragmatics
Vol. 34:3 (2024) ► pp.347–366

Modal particles in ironic utterances

A common-ground approach to pretended surprise in verbal irony

ORCID logo | Universität Kassel
| Universität Kassel

This study contributes to theorizing about the semantic characteristics of verbal irony. Specifically, we investigate the function of the modal particles ja (lit. ‘yes’) and aber (lit. ‘but’) that often occur in ironic utterances in German, cf. Das war aber ein aufregender Film (‘That was prt a thrilling movie’). Our main claim is that modal particles are used in ironic utterances to reflect the speaker’s intention to pretend surprise and produce a mockery effect by manifesting the utterance as an echo. Modal particles require some mutual knowledge to be contained in the common ground, and we link this notion to the interplay between echoic mention and pretense in interpreting an utterance as ironic. In an empirical approach to our claim, we report on results from an online questionnaire study, in which we test whether the presence of a modal particle leads to a higher perception of pretense in ironic reactions. While the data generally confirm our prediction, we found that only aber affects pretense perception but not ja, which can be explained by the former’s contrastive nature. The view we pursue implies that attitudinal content is a graded feature and that such a notion is applicable to surprise and pretense involved in verbal irony.

Keywords: verbal irony, modal particle, mirativity, common ground
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Semantic–pragmatic features of ironic utterances
    • 2.1Non-literal and attitudinal content of ironic utterances
    • 2.2Echoic mention and pretense in ironic utterances
  • 3.Modal particles in ironic utterances
    • 3.1Mirativity in ironic utterances
    • 3.2Mirative particles and the background proposition
    • 3.3Mockery and evaluative attitude
    • 3.4Hypothesized effect of mirative particles in ironic utterances
  • 4.Experimental study
    • 4.1Method
      • 4.1.1Participants
      • 4.1.2Material and design
      • 4.1.3Procedure
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 July 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.22035.har
References (45)
Abraham, Werner
2017 “Modalpartikel und Mirativeffekte.” In Grammatische Funktionen aus Sicht der japanischen und deutschen Germanistik [Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft 24], ed. by Shin Tanaka, Elisabeth Leiss, Werner Abraham, and Yasuhiro Fujinawa, 76–108. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Alm, Maria, Janina Behr, and Kerstin Fischer
2018 “Modal Particles and Sentence Type Restrictions: A Construction Grammar Perspective.” Glossa 31: 1–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore
2000 “Irony as Relevant Inappropriateness.” Journal of Pragmatics 321: 793–826. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Attardo, Salvatore, Jodi Eisterhol, Jennifer Hay, and Isabella Poggi
2003 “Multimodal Markers of Irony and Sarcasm.” Humor 161: 243–260. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Richard J. Gerrig
1984 “On the Pretense Theory of Irony.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1131: 121–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colston, Herbert L., and Shaune B. Keller
1998 “You’ll Never Believe This: Irony and Hyperbole in Expressing Surprise.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 271: 499–513. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colston, Herbert L., and Shyh-Yuan Lee
2004 “Gender Differences in Verbal Irony Use.” Metaphor and Symbol 191: 289–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Currie, Gregory
2006 “Why Irony is Pretence.” In The Architecture of the Imagination: New Essays on Pretence, Possibility, and Fiction, ed. by Shaun Nichols, 111–133. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Declercq, Dieter
2017 “A Philosophy of Satire: Critique, Entertainment, Therapy.” PhD Thesis. University of Kent.
Dews, Shelly, and Ellen Winner
1999 “Obligatory Processing of Literal and Nonliteral Meanings in Verbal Irony.” Journal of Pragmatics 311: 1579–1599. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dews, Shelly, Joan Kepler, and Ellen Winner
1995 “Why Not Say It Directly? The Social Functions of Irony.” Discourse Processes 191: 347–367. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele, and Kerstin Fischer
1998 “Zur diskursiven und modalen Funktion der Partikeln ‘aber’, ‘auch’, ‘doch’ und ‘ja’ in Instruktionsdialogen.” Linguistica 381: 75–99. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Kerstin
2007 “Grounding and Common Ground: Modal Particles and Their Translation Equivalents.” In Lexical Markers of Common Grounds, ed. by Anita Fetzer, and Kerstin Fischer, 47–66. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Gibbs, Raymond W., and Herbert L. Colston
2007 Irony in Language and Thought. A Cognitive Science Reader. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giora, Rachel
1995 “On Irony and Negation.” Discourse Processes: 191: 239–264. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. Paul
1989 Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Härtl, Holden
2018 “Name-Informing and Distancing ‘Sogenannt’ (‘So-Called’). Name Mentioning and the Lexicon-Pragmatics Interface.” Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 371: 139–169. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Härtl, Holden, and Tatjana Bürger
2021 “ ‘Well, That’s Just Great!’ – An Empirically Based Analysis of Non-Literal and Attitudinal Content of Ironic Utterances.” Folia Linguistica 551: 361–387. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Härtl, Holden, and Heiko Seeliger
2019 “Is a So-Called ‘Beach’ a Beach? An Empirically Based Analysis of Secondary Content Induced by Ironic Name Use.” In Secondary Content: The Linguistics of Side Issues, ed. by Daniel Gutzmann, and Katharina Turgay, 200–221. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hengeveld, Kees, and Hella Olbertz
2012 “Mirativity Does Exist!” Linguistic Typology 161: 487–503. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, David
1999 The Meaning of ‘Ouch’ and ‘Oops’: Explorations in the Theory of Meaning as Use. Unpublished Ms. Los Angeles: University of California.Google Scholar
Kapogianni, Eleni
2016 “The Ironic Operation: Revisiting the Components of Ironic Meaning.” Journal of Pragmatics 911: 16–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Karagjosova, Elena
2003 “Modal Particles and the Common Ground: Meaning and Functions of German ‘ja’, ‘doch’, ‘eben’/‘halt’ and ‘auch’.” In Perspectives on Dialogue in the New Millenium, ed. by Peter Kühnlein, Hannes Rieser, and Henk Zeevat, 335–349. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kraus, Kelsey N.
2018 “Great Intonations.” PhD Thesis. UC Santa Cruz.
Kreuz, Roger, and Sam Glucksberg
1989 “How to Be Sarcastic: The Echoic Reminder Theory of Verbal Irony.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 1181: 364–386.Google Scholar
Kreuz, Roger, and Kristen Link
2002 “Asymmetries in the Use of Verbal Irony.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 211: 127–143. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kreuz, Roger J.
2020 Irony and Sarcasm. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroll, Margaret, and Tom Roberts
2019 “Stating the Obvious: ‘Of Course’ as a Focus-Sensitive Marker of Uncontroversiality.” Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 231. 37–53.Google Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Sam Glucksberg, and Mary Brown
1995 “How about Another Piece of Pie: The Allusional Pretense Theory of Discourse Irony.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 1241: 3–21. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meibauer, Jörg
2007 “Syngrapheme als pragmatische Indikatoren: Anführung und Auslassung.” In Von der Pragmatik zur Grammatik, ed. by Sandra Döring, and Jochen Geilfuß-Wolfgang, 21–37. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar
Minitab, L. L. C.
2020 Minitab 19 [computer software]. Retrieved from [URL]
Popa-Wyatt, Mihaela
2014 “Pretence and Echo: Towards an Integrated Account of Verbal Irony.” International Review of Pragmatics 61: 127–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potts, Christopher
2005 The Logic of Conventional Implicatures. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2007 “The Expressive Dimension.” Theoretical Linguistics 331: 165–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Predelli, Stefano
2003 “Scare Quotes and Their Relation to Other Semantic Issues.” Linguistics and Philosophy 261: 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Repp, Sophie
2013 “Common Ground Management: Modal Particles, Illocutionary Negation and VERUM.” In Beyond Expressives: Explorations in Use-Conditional Meaning, ed. by Daniel Gutzmann, and Hans-Martin Gärtner, 231–274. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Rett, Jessica
2011 “Exclamatives, Degrees and Speech Acts.” Linguistics and Philosophy 341: 411–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rockwell, Patricia
2000 “Lower, Slower, Louder: Vocal Cues of Sarcasm.” Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 291: 483–495. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schlechtweg, Marcel, and Holden Härtl
2023 “Quotation Marks and the Processing of Irony in English: Evidence from a Reading Time Study.” Linguistics 61 (2): 355–390 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, E. Allyn, and Kathleen Currie Hall
2011 “Projection Diversity: Experimental Evidence.” In Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2011 Workshop on Projective Content. 156–170.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson
1981 “Irony and the Use–Mention Distinction.” In Radical Pragmatics, ed. by Peter Cole, 295–318. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre
2006 “The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?” Lingua 1161: 1722–1743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 “Irony Comprehension: A Developmental Perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 591: 40–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber
1992 “On Verbal Irony.” Lingua 871: 53–76. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zimmermann, Malte
2011 “Discourse Particles.” In Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning – Vol. 2, ed. by Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn, and Paul Portner, 2011–2038. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar