Cover not available
Article published In:
Revista Española de Lingüística Aplicada/Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 34:2 (2021) ► pp.527–554

Form-function dialectics in the analysis of irony in political discourse

ORCID logo | University of A Coruña
In this paper, I analyze the construction of the trope of irony in a political interview, more specifically the interview with a Spanish politician on television in 2013. Its context is the emergence of the 15M, a citizen’s protest movement against the cuts imposed by the European Union and the Spanish Government. From a theoretical-methodological point of view, I adopt a holistic perspective, inspired by Halliday’s approach of jointly analysing the form-function relationship and White’s constructivism. I also review the different definitions and explanations of irony. After analysing the formal resources that construct irony, I give an account of the cognitive frameworks that are opposed in this discourse, and finally describe their narrative disposition and the communicative functions that those resources fulfill.
Keywords: constructivism, post-15M discourses, discourses of social change, irony, critical discourse analysis, functionalism, political discourse, political interview
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definition of irony
  • 3.Methodology and analysis of data
    • 3.1Analysis of the interview with Miguel Ángel Revilla
    • 3.2Form-function dialectics in the expression of irony
  • 4.Interpretation and final conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/resla.19015.mor
References (67)
References
Attardo, S. (2013). Intentionality and irony. In L. Ruiz Gurillo & M. B. Alvarado Ortega (Eds.), Irony and Humor. From Pragmatics to Discourse (pp. 39–57). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ballart, P. (1994). Eironeia, la figuración irónica en el discurso literario moderno. Barcelona: Quaderns Crema.Google Scholar
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Berrendonner, A. (1981). Élements de Pragmatique Linguistique. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Booth, W. C. (1974). Retórica de la ironía. Madrid: Taurus, 1986.Google Scholar
Brown, L., & Prieto, P. (2017). (Im)politeness: Prosody and gesture. In J. Culpeper, M. Haugh & D. Z. Kádár (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Linguistics (im)politeness (357–379). London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Capra, F. (1996). La trama de la vida. Una nueva perspectiva de los seres vivos. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1998.Google Scholar
Cicero / Cicerón. (2002). Sobre el orador. Gredos, Madrid.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113 (1), 121–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Colston, H. L., & Athanasiadou, Angeliki. (2017). Introduction. The irony of irony. In A. Athanasiadou & H. L. Colston (Eds.), Irony in language use and communication (pp. 1–15). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cormier, K., Smith, S., & Sehyr, S. (2015). Rethinking constructed action. Sign Language and Linguistics, 18 (2), 167–204. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cortés Rodríguez, L. (2017). Cómo conocer mejor los discursos políticos. Madrid: Síntesis.Google Scholar
Coupland, N., & Jaworski, A. (2004). Sociolinguistic perspectives on metalanguage: Reflexivity, evaluation and ideology. In A. Jaworski, N. Coupland & D. Galasinski (Eds.), Metalanguage. Social and ideological perspectives (pp. 15–51). De Berlin: Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ducrot, O. (1984). Le Dire et le dit. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Duranti, A. (1997). Antropología lingüística. Madrid: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G. (1984). Espaces mentaux. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, G., & Turner, M. (2002). The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
García Riverón, R., Losada, M., & Pardo, A. (2008). El acto de habla interaccional como unidad para el estudio de la oralidad: una visión desde la complejidad. Oralia, 111, 333–351.Google Scholar
García Riverón, R., & Marrero Montero, A. (2017). Multimodalidad y retórica en la nueva política de los medios de comunicación de Cuba: el caso de “Cuba dice”. Moenia 231, 621–665.Google Scholar
Giora, R. (2011). Irony. In J.-O. Östman & J. Verschueren (Eds.), Pragmatics in practice (159–176). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
González-Fuente, S., Escandell-Vidal, V., & Prieto, P. (2015). Gestural codas pave the way to the understanding of verbal irony. Journal of Pragmatics, 901, 26–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, P. (1989). Studies in the ways of words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1982). Explorations in the functions of language. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
(1970 [2002]). Language structure and language function (1970). In M. A. K. Halliday. On grammar (pp. 173–195). London: Continuum, London.Google Scholar
(2014). Introduction to functional grammar. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jarque, M. J., & Pascual, E. (2016). Mixed viewpoints in factual and fictive discourse in Catalan Sign Language narratives. In B. Dancygier, L. Wei-lun & A. Verhagen (Eds.), Viewpoint and the fabric of meaning: Form and use of viewpoint tools across languages and modalities (pp. 259–280). Berlin: De Gruyter, Berlin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kapogianni, E. (2014). Differences in use and function of verbal irony between real and fictional discourse. (Mis)interpretation and irony blindness. Humor, 27 (4), 597–618. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kerbrat-Orecchioni, C. (1986). L’implicite. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Kihara, Y. (2005). The mental structure of verbal irony. Cognitive Linguistics 16, 3, 513–530. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2017). Complexity theory. The lessons continue. In L. Ortega & H. ZhaoHong (Eds.), Complexity theory and language development. In celebration of Diane Larsen-Freeman (11–50). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lausberg, H. (1960). Handbook of Literary Rhetoric: A Foundation for Literary Study. Leiden: Brill, 1998.Google Scholar
Lozano, J., Peña-Marín, C., & Abril, G. (1989). Análisis del Discurso. Hacia una Semiótica de la Interacción Textual. Madrid: Cátedra.Google Scholar
McNeill, D., & Duncan, S. D. (2000). Growth points in thinking-for-speaking. In D. McNeill (Ed.), Language and gesture (pp. 141–161). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Montesano Montessori, N., & Morales-López, E. (2015). Multimodal narrative as an Instrument for social change. Reinventing democracy in Spain: the case of 15M. CADAAD, 7 (2), 200–221.Google Scholar
(2019). The articulation of ‘the people’ in the discourse of Podemos. In J. Zienkowski & R. Breeze (Eds.), Imagining the peoples of Europe (pp. 123–147). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morales-López, E. (2011). Hacia dónde va el Análisis del discurso. Tonos Digital, 211 (accessed 19.12.2012 [URL]).
(2012a). El discurso político de Rafael Correa (Presidente de Ecuador), Tonos Digital, 231 (accessed 19.12.2012 [URL]
(2012b). Análisis de discursos ideológicos en la empresa: La deslegitimación y la defensa de las energías renovables, FORUM. Qualitative Social Research, 13 (3), Article 20 (accessed 19.12.2012 [URL]).
(2014). La reflexión meta-discursiva como función comunicativa en el proceso de construcción de los discursos de cambio social en un grupo de mujeres. Sociolinguistic Studies, 8 (2), 249–269. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016a). Frame construction in post-15M speeches. Res Rhetorica 1/2016, 50–67 (accessed 14.10.2016 [URL]).
(2016b). La ironía en los discursos de cambio social. Oralia, 191, 177–200.Google Scholar
(2017a). Cognitive frames, imaginaries and discursive constructions: Post 15M’s discourses with reference to eco-social alternatives. In E. Morales-López & A. Floyd (Eds.), Developing new identities in social conflicts: Constructivist perspectives on discourse studies (pp. 249–272). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2017b). Epilogue. In E. Morales-López & A. Floyd (Eds.), Developing new identities in social conflicts: Constructivist perspectives on discourse studies (pp. 273–284). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2019). Discourse analysis: Constructivist perspective and transdisciplinarity. In A. Bastardas-Boada, À. Massip-Bonet & G. Bel-Enguix, (Eds.), Applications of complexity theory in language and communication sciences (pp. 187–205). Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morales-López, E., Mallo García, B., & Bobillo García, N. (2019). Mecanismos de cohesión y coherencia en la organización de una narrativa en lengua de signos. REVLES 11, 91–125.Google Scholar
Overstreet, M. (2015). Metapragmatics. In C. A. Chapelle (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Hoboken, NJ. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1958). Tratado de la argumentación: La nueva Retórica. Madrid: Gredos, 1989.Google Scholar
Piquer, A. (2016). L’argumentació. Teoria i pràctica. Valencia: Bromera.Google Scholar
Pujante, D. (2003). Manual de Retórica. Madrid: Castalia.Google Scholar
Pujante, D., & Morales-López, E. (2013). Discurso (discurso político), constructivismo y retórica: los eslóganes del 15-M. Language, Discourse, & Society, 2 (2), 32–59 ([URL]). Reprinted in English: 2017. Discourses of Social Movements in Southern Europe: The Slogans of 15M”. In E. Morales-López & A. Floyd (Eds.), Developing new Identities in social conflicts: Constructivist perspectives on discourse studies (pp. 227–248). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logo
Quintilian. Institutio oratoria. Cambridge, Mass. / London: Harvard University Press/ William Heinemann, Ltd., 1922.Google Scholar
Rodríguez Rosique, S. (2013). The power of inversion. Irony, from utterance to discourse. In L. Ruiz Gurillo & M. B. Alvarado Ortega (Eds.), Irony and humor. From Pragmatics to discourse (pp. 17–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Romero Velasco, P. (2018). La ironía en la retórica clásica y la pragmática. Un estudio comparativo. In M. Díaz Ferro, J. Diz Ferreira, A. Pérez Pérez & A. Varela Suárez (Eds.), Novas perspectivas na Lingüística Aplicada (pp.163–172). Lugo: Axac.Google Scholar
Ruiz Gurillo, L., & Alvarado Ortega, M. B. (2013). The pragmatics of irony and humor. In L. Ruiz Gurillo & M. B. Alvarado Ortega (Eds.), Irony and humor. From Pragmatics to discourse (pp. 1–13). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sopeña Balordi, A. E. (1997). El concepto de ironía: de tropo a ambigüedad argumentativa. In Homenaje al Prof. J. Cantera (pp. 451–460). Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981 [1991]). Irony and the use-mention distinction. In St. Davis (Ed.), Pragmatics. A reader (pp. 550–563). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Torres Sánchez, M. Á. (1999). Aproximación pragmática a la ironía verbal. Universidad de Cádiz, Cádiz.Google Scholar
van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. The Pragma-dialectical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Verschueren, J. (2004). Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in language use. In A. Jaworski, N. Coupland & D. Galasinski (Eds.), Metalanguage. Social and ideological perspectives (pp. 53–73). Berlin: De Gruyter, Berlin. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2011). Ideology in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Viana, A. (2013). Humor and argumentation in everyday talk. In L. Ruiz Gurillo & M. B. Alvarado Ortega (Eds.), Irony and humor. From Pragmatics to discourse (pp. 219–242). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vico, G. (1744). Ciencia nueva. Madrid: Tecnos, 2006.Google Scholar
White, H. (1973). Metahistoria. La imaginación histórica en la Europa del siglo XIX. México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2001.Google Scholar
(1978). Tropics of discourse. Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
(2017). Constructionism in historical writing. In In E. Morales-López & A. Floyd (Eds.), Developing new identities in social conflicts: Constructivist perspectives on discourse studies (pp. 1–15). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zienkowski, J. (2016). Reflexivity in the transdisciplinary fields of critical discourse studies. Palgrave Communications, 31, Article: 17007 DOI logoGoogle Scholar