Cultural Specifics Of Russian Irony

Abstract

The paper discusses characteristics of irony used by speakers of Russian in various discourse domains. The study is based on the texts and transcripts of oral communication complied in 2008-2019. For the analysis of the wider context literary texts written by authors belonging to the Russian, British and Jewish cultures were also analysed. The aim of the research is to show how speakers of Russian use irony to create social and cultural meanings in oral and written interaction, to demonstrate contexts which are more irony-prone and some linguistic means which are used to signal the speaker’s ironic intention. In the paper, verbal irony is viewed as a discursive practice commonly found in many contexts, including, but not limited to, public political discourse, mass media discourse and online discussions in social networks. These discourse domains are highly competitive and evaluative, therefore, irony-prone. Specific cultural and political context of modern Russia triggers ironic reactions, and these reactions mark the speaker’s negative evaluation of the situation. Speakers shape their ironic intention by using various verbal techniques which require deep knowledge of both culture and language and make irony a culture-specific phenomenon. Cultural specifics of Russian irony can be seen in comparison with other cultures, e.g. Jewish or British. The final section of the paper addresses the issue of irony as a cultural phenomenon and describes types of irony that are typical for different cultures. The typology is based on the type of inversion of the meaning of the utterance.