From Irony to Post-Irony: Means of Expressing “New Sincerity” in the Magazines The Rules of Life and The New Yorker

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the demand for “new sincerity” that has emerged in society. Reflecting modern trends, mass media highlight the urgency of research into this phenomenon from various angles. The purpose of the work is to describe mass media potential for the use of irony and post-irony as means of expressing “new sincerity”. The analysis is carried out on the material of modern intellectual periodicals The Rules of Life (formerly Esquire) and The New Yorker, which represent a striking example and an integral part of postmodern culture, create and communicate its values. The novelty of the study lies in the integrated approach that enabled the authors to describe the linguistic mechanisms of transforming irony to post-irony and to prove the capability of the “new sincerity” concept extrapolation to the sphere of mass media through determining the characteristic features of irony and post-irony that reflect new communicative strategies. An empirical study identifies lexical, syntactic, stylistic, graphic means of post-irony expression in modern intellectual periodicals and allows to conclude that it is represented in pathos and categoricity reduction, explicit criticism and sarcasm elimination, as well as transition from the irony of rejection to the post-irony of sensitivity, frankness and sympathy. Post-irony is shown to constitute the style of intellectual periodicals while the magazines themselves are noted to be the bearers of the “new sincerity” philosophy.