Function Of Irony Research Articles

“The Vigorous New Vernacular”: Settler Colonialism and the Politics of Irony in Roughing It

Abstract This article argues, contrary to the contemporary critical consensus, that Twain’s notorious representation of the Goshutes in Roughing It is a complex satire directed at both the Indigenous people he encounters and those among his white audience who attribute the Goshute’s abjection to essential racial traits. This satire does not rescue the passage from an irredeemable racial logic, but it does mark Twain’s thinking on race as substantially different from the forms of “Indian hating” common among his contemporaries. Exploring Twain’s sources and considering the function of irony in Roughing It more broadly, this article argues that the leveling effect of his irony presages a shift in the United States’ settler colonial “logic of elimination” from frontier homicide to assimilationism, and the subsequent modes of liberal thought (most notably Richard Rorty’s) that imagine irony as a necessary mode of subjectivity for a citizen in a pluralist democracy.

Irony in fashion memes

The practice of fashion memes is a rather fresh exercise on the fashion scene, and it has been enjoyed by both the audiences and the brands. Fashion media have turned their attention to the phenomenon as well, addressing its scope, authorship and function from various angles. Scholarly research of the field is very scarce, though. The article seeks to contribute to the emerging field of fashion meme research by analysing a Lithuanian author of original fashion memes, a self-proclaimed fashion critic the Pink Poodle – an imaginary social media personality active on Facebook and Instagram platforms. The subjects of Pink Poodle memes are objects of media photographs from local and global public events (such as the Presidential Inauguration or an international cinema festival opening, Grammy Awards, Oscars) that demonstrate, from Poodle’s perspective, disagreements with fashion and/or aesthetics in general. The aim of the article is to reflect on the function of irony and sarcasm of the fashion meme as an instrument for fashion criticism, and the role of (visual) irony on the perception of fashion in the contemporary society. The text also addresses the role of independent fashion criticism that the practice of fashion meme creation seems to provide, and the function that this kind of intermediary between fashion and its audiences may perform.

САТИРАЛЫҚ ШЫҒАРМАЛАРДАҒЫ ИРОНИЯНЫҢ ОРНЫ

Annotation. The article is devoted to the discussion of the place of irony in satirical works. The use of irony in the prose works of outstanding satirists of Kazakh literature is considered on the example of stories and feuilletons by A. Tokmagambetov, Sh. Smakhanuly, U. Uaydin, M. Rush. The function of irony in satirical works as a means of the author's assessment, the manifestation of a critical approach, the disclosure of contradictions is analyzed on specific examples. Through the use of irony in the author's narrative and in the statements of the hero, an attempt is made to evaluate the artistic function in the manifestation of evaluativeness, analyticity, and criticality. In addition, the features of the ironic meaning in the subtext are also differentiated using rhetorical techniques, such as allusion, periphrasis, and emphase. In the article, the function of irony in the expression of the author's point of view is characterized by the peculiarities of its application in satirical and humorous texts. It is also considered that in addition to the linguistic form of ironic meaning, objective, conceptual, associative forms are manifested at the textual level.

Irony as a Test of the Presupposition-Denial Account: An ERP Study

According to the Presupposition-Denial Account, complement set reference arises when focus is on the shortfall between the amount conveyed by a natural language quantifier and a larger, expected amount. Negative quantifiers imply a shortfall, through the denial of a presupposition, whereas positive quantifiers do not. An exception may be provided by irony. One function of irony is to highlight, through indirect negation, the shortfall between what is expected/desired, and what is observed. Thus, a positive quantifier used ironically should also lead to a shortfall and license complement set reference. Using ERPs, we examined whether reference to the complement set is more felicitous following a positive quantifier used ironically than one used non-ironically. ERPs during reading showed a smaller N400 for complement set reference following an ironic compared to a non-ironic context. The shortfall generated thorough irony is sufficient to allow focus on the complement set, supporting the Presupposition-Denial Account.

The role of humor-related traits and broad personality dimensions in irony use

As humor has pervasively been postulated as a function of irony, humor-related traits such as the joy of laughing at others (i.e., katagelasticism) or trait seriousness can be assumed to predict who is more and who is less inclined to use verbal irony—even beyond the possible effect of broad personality dimensions. For the present study, N=153 subjects made responses in two different irony use measures and completed personality questionnaires. As expected, irony use scores were higher among individuals who tend to break with social conventions, joyfully expose others' transgressions, or aggressively use ridicule (i.e., individuals scoring high in psychoticism, katagelasticism, or the aggressive humor style). Moreover, irony use was more prevalent among playful individuals who tend to entertain others by joyfully exposing themselves as the butt of jokes or engaging in as-if behaviors (i.e., low-serious individuals, scoring high in gelotophilia or the histrionic self-presentation style). Using a hierarchical regression analysis, it was found that over and above redundancy katagelasticism and—unexpectedly so—the self-defeating humor style predicted irony use beyond the influence of psychoticism. Accordingly, irony may also be seen a way to hide negative feelings behind humor and to avoid dealing constructively with problems.

THE DISCOURSE OF ELITE LANGUAGE PERSON: THE FUNCTION OF IRONY (ON EXAMPLE OF SCIENCE COMMUNICATION OF KAZBEK SHAZZO)

The correlation of language world image and language person is characterized in different linguistic paradigms. Science discourse of the elite language person is examined on example of system function of irony. The elected discourse of outstanding philologist, translator, thinker, pedagogue K.G. Shazzo, relevant for complex problems, is demonstrated in aspect of specific aesthetics of science minimalistic: the genre of article reflexes of essence of searches, which may be explicated in future. Representation of dynamic system shows connected sides of masterpiece of elite language person. Irony as versatile phenomena is defined by the group of device, potentially wide, presenting essential unit of elite language person, universal talent, freedom, strictness and fascination of science stile. The system of devices includes ironic metaphors, marked by inverted commas, and its ironic function is presented on material of new version of “The Rules of Russian Orthography and Punctuation”; by interrelation of variants; by expressive phraseology. Language world image and language person are described as indivisible in discourse of Shazzo. Deepness of abstracts, sincerity and irony are integrated in discourse, its intensify each other. The trials of literature and people are presented on stable discourse models in its dynamics. The essence of irony is defined in unit of other phenomena. The discourse of elite language person is explanative in this aspect. Irony is naturally connected with deep generalizations and with different levels of emotions including determined invectives.

“Not to be taken seriously”: irony’s echo in the Thai translations of Anna and the King of Siam and The Romance of the Harem

“Readers should be reminded that this book was meant for pleasure reading, and not to be taken seriously,” announced Aw Sanidwong, the Thai translator of Anna and the King of Siam. The translator’s negative attitude toward the book by Anna Leonowens, Siam’s most “hated” woman, is hardly discreet. When translating the novels they disagree with, the translators’ fidelity to the source text, as well as the reliability of the translation, would naturally be questioned. To explain the disassociated voices of the translators, I use Theo Hermans’ concept of “irony’s echo” which treats this kind of translation as a form of irony. Translation that is done with a disapproving attitude problematizes the translator’s position, as well as the sociocultural discourses surrounding it. To illustrate, the Thai translations of Anna and the King of Siam, and The Romance of the Harem will be discussed. I argue that the Thai translations of the Anna Leonowens’ narratives can be seen as quotations, in which the quoter strategically avoids direct responsibility to the quoted texts, and such a position reveals “the transideological” function of irony which complexifies the relationship between the encroaching power of the West and resistance from the Thais as manifested in translation.

Genre in the function of irony: Literary revenge of Michael Psellos

The paper deals with the problem of genres and methodological digressions in the sixth book of Michael Psellos? Chronographia, in the context of contemporary genre theories. Conventional opinions about author?s motives for composing digressions about genre and about the complex argument he leaves for interpretation of his own text will be questioned. The main thesis is that the genre-play within history - primarily the use of drama and encomium - has a role in depicting the ironic portrait of the emperor Constantine IX Monomachos.

On the role of irony in the films by Wojciech Jerzy Has, especially in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, with particular reference to Romantic irony

AbstractThe study discusses the problem of irony in the films by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The first part defines the function of irony in the films made by this director prior to The Manuscript Found in Saragossa [Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie] - (Noose [Pętla], 1957; Farewells [Pożegnania, 1958; Shared Room [Wspólny pokój], 1960; Goodbye to the Past [Rozstanie], 1961; Gold [Złoto], 1962; How to Be Loved [Jak być kochana], 1963). The second part of the study compares irony as the principle of artistic creation in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa and the concept of Romantic irony (Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis). This film can be termed as the quintessence of ironic traits of Has’s creative work.In the earlier works by this director irony manifests itself as the attitude of the film characters towards the reality, as their attitude to historical problems, and as an esthetic effect or Has’s game with the audience in the artistic and philosophical dimension. Intertextualism, verbal and situational humor, repeated motifs and stylistic devices are a way of expressing the double meaning of the work, i.e. a manifestation of the author’s irony. It combines seriousness and comedy, emotionality and intellectual distance, and finally, a critical and a creative attitude.All these traits gain special significance in The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1965). The poetics and form of the work resemble the Romantic concept of poetry (creative work) as an arabesque. The irony of Has’s film is similar to Romantic irony because its result is the narrative experience of the Self which can transcend its experiences. Irony also manifests itself in the author’s attitude towards his work which (attitude) consists in exposing the fictional nature of the presented world. In Has’s films, irony allows one to break free from the burden of actual existence and the problems of history, time, and memory in order to make them a subject of art.

Rimbaud “littéralement et dans tous les sens.” Hommage à Gérard Martin et Alain Tourneux (review)

Reviewed by: Rimbaud “littéralement et dans tous les sens.” Hommage à Gérard Martin et Alain Tourneux Robert St. Clair Rimbaud “littéralement et dans tous les sens.” Hommage à Gérard Martin et Alain Tourneux. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2012. Pp. 327. isbn: 978-2-8124-0616-4 One of the latest publications in Classiques Garnier’s dix-neuvièmiste series is a fine, if in parts uneven, collection of essays brought together as an homage to Gérard Martin [End Page 130] and Alain Tourneux (the head curators of the libraries and museums in Arthur Rimbaud’s native Charleville-Mézières, respectively): Rimbaud “littéralement et dans tous les sens.” In its 300 pages, micrological readings of texts and documents running the gamut from early verse production to the Illuminations lie alongside archival inventories, a philological commentary on a list of German vocabulary that Rimbaud compiled circa 1875 (Esa Christine Hartmann, 141–58) and the reproduction of an 1878 letter written from a monastery atop the Alps. It is a remarkably heterogeneous collection. And though some documents in the collection will doubtless prove to be of limited interest to an audience motivated by critical analysis of Rimbaud’s poetry, there are nevertheless a number of impressive and wide-ranging contributions which make this volume excellent for library collections. Among the stand-out contributions are Yann Frémy’s Deleuzian-inspired analysis of the conjunction of the spiritual, the sensual and the verbal in Rimbaud’s (ultimately aporetic) poetic project of emancipation (127–141), as well as Yves Reboul’s piece on the question of the dates of composition of Illuminations. Jean-Luc Steinmetz offers a perspicacious account of Mauvais sang as a kind of “lutte contre tout ce qui rend esclave,” strategically foregrounding emancipatory struggles as well as the alterity within poetic enunciation in Rimbaud (293–301). Steve Murphy’s analysis of the oscillation between revolutionary/utopian aspirations and melancholic withdrawal in the urban cycle prose poems in Illuminations is a must-read situated somewhere at impeccable equidistance between a trenchant intervention into socio-cultural (counter)history and the sort of rigorous close readings that are this author’s stock-and-trade (227–45). Finally, we might highlight contributions by Manami Imura, Philippe Rocher and Patrick Talierco. Imura’s reading of the problem of value, equivalency and the imaginary of the elsewhere in (the late) Marx and Rimbaud in the light of their “climat commun”—with particular attention to the figure of Robinson Crusoe—is an innovative (and perhaps overdue) archeology of the lateral connections between these two key figures of what, glossing Étienne Balibar, we might call anti-philosophy and anti-poetry, respectively. One might quibble with her handling of the question of value and the function of irony in Capital, but on the whole she offers a suggestive cartography of a climat commun that remains to be mapped. If the technical dimension of Rocher’s work can at times be formidable in his “Accroupissements et la poétique de la caricature,” the pay-off for patient attention to the arc of his argument is enormous. In a powerful and at times playful study of the early Rimbaud, Rocher methodically tracks a series of linguistic structures and poetico-technical resonances across several surprising texts (and inter-texts) in order to offer us a study of the political, technical and aesthetic complexities of verbal caricature in the early Rimbaud (1870–1871) that will prove to be indispensable for future studies. Much the same could be said of Patrick Talierco’s essay on the chaotic context [End Page 131] in which “Le Rêve de Bismark”—a rare bit of Rimbaldian prose satire that Talierco himself discovered in 2008—was published in an Ardennais newspaper in the fall of 1870. In a compelling and insightful reading, Talierco ultimately suggests we might still be able to learn quite a bit about the political scope and referential situation of “Le Dormeur du val” by reading it alongside the satirical prose piece ridiculing Bismark as a “dernière tentation 4 septembriste”—that is, as a piece mapping out Rimbaud’s (if not the French left’s) slide towards revolutionary politics in the...

An Acquired Taste:Children's Perceptions of Humor and Teasing in Verbal Irony

Around 5 or 6 years of age, children begin to recognize that speakers who make ironic remarks do not believe what they literally say, but children of the same age do not show appreciation for the humor function of irony (Dews et al., 1996; Harris & Pexman, 2003). We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's interpretations of verbal irony and focused on factors that might modulate children's impressions of humor in irony. Results showed that (a) children tended to identify with the target, not the speaker, of ironic remarks and perceived less humor in irony when they did so; (b) children's appreciation of the teasing function of irony, like the humor function of irony, continues to develop late in middle childhood; and (c) children did not use relationship information (speaker and target were friends, strangers, or enemies) as a cue to the speaker's humorous intent. We suggest that these characteristics of children's theories of verbal irony are a function of their social knowledge and representational skills.

Reconsidering Unreliability: Fallible and Untrustworthy Narrators

Why do we fail to trust some narrators, and why do the tales other narrators tell strike us as incomplete? How do the phenomena of untrustworthy and fallible narra tion function within fictional texts, and how do readers respond to these kinds of nar ration? In this essay I will address these questions by reviewing Wayne Booth's introduction of the term unreliable narrator and his explication of unreliable narra tion as a function of irony, since this formulation remains the leading model for un reliable narration. I will then describe how Booth's text-immanent model of narrator

Ironía y tragedia en Calderón (review)

Reviews293 the cases of Ayllón and Tabernas (and possibly of Carelle, Extremera and Lamego, even at that time probably mere hamlets). The work of transcription of this large MS has been exemplary and assured, so that the handful of apparent enors may be typographical. Such must be the tildes over vowels (43,44), when the principles of transcription specified (39) siempre por acento agudo. A few tentative emendations: "cara de ramilletes para Nuestra Señora" recte "caxa de ramilletes"; "no Querol" (187) as a Valencian surname, recte "Noguerol"; "naveras" (239) recte "navetas"; "cobrar algunas dudas" (314) recte "deudas" ; "dubda en que fuere" (416) recte "en que fuera"; "sole" recte "solo" (546); "marabides" (556) recte "marabedis"; and "contralor" (a speculation, notes to 243) recte "controlador" (if it existed as a word in 1723). "Mallorquies" seems unusual for "mallorquines" (32) and "Alavés" is not so unusual a surname (322); Palau, for example, has several instances . So this MS, known and used for so long by generations of historians of the theater, in its highly unreliable and disordered state, has been rendered completely accessible by Professors Shergold and Varey. It must be consulted by those interested in the history of European histrionismo at large, as well as by specialists in the drama of the Siglo de Oro, who are now privileged to have this work of reference, and often of entertainment. ALAN SOONS Herzog-August-Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, West Germany Susana Hernández-Araico. Ironía y tragedia en Calderón. Potomac, Maryland: Scripta Humanística, 1986. 153 pages. The function of irony in the dramas of the Golden Age has long been recognized; indeed, its presence is a critical part of the movement toward a réévaluation of the Comedia that can be observed in studies published in the last two decades and earlier. Susana Hernández-Araico contributes to this reassessment with her discussion of the carnivalesque elements of Calderonian tragedy. In her book, she maintains that the central purpose of these elements is to create an implicit contrast to the dominant values of the society these dramas portray and in the process undermine their relevance. Hernández-Araico accepts the idea that the Comedia serves as a sounding board for the aristocratic-monarchic system (agreeing in this respect with Maravall and Diez Borque) , but insists that 294BCom, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 1 987) the dramatists, far from being the apologists for the system, were, in effect, keenly aware of the diverse social implications contained in their works. She maintains that the implications that emanate from the juxtaposition of popular and elite cultures are critical components of the re-consideration of established values made necessary by the crisis that pervaded Spanish society during the seventeenth century. Referring to Mikhail Bakhtin, the author proposes that the decadence of national traditions often coincides with the flowering of the satirical mode. In the Comedia this is reflected in the constant use of the conflict between appearance and reality and in particular in the use of the gracioso. She draws a connection between the political decadence of the Spanish empire, the development of ascetic literature which stressed heavily the illusory nature of existence , and the carnivalesque element of literature which challenges the code of official idealistic values by advancing the importance of sex, food and mere survival . The gracioso is the means through which the "burla carnavalesca de los idéalos nobles" is effected (p. 17). It is instructive to note that the author separates herself from the Diez Borque thesis that the Comedia undertakes an open apologia of the aristocraticmonarchic system. She points out that it would not have been possible for a commercial enterprise that depended on the good will of the authorities to challenge them openly, that the escapist nature of the Comedia prevented it from seeking a restructuring of society, and that its wholehearted acceptance on the part of the public does not automatically exclude the existence of popular opposition. She suggests that the mask that the Comedia puts on social conditions in order to cover up society's failures makes patent the contradictions inherent between representation and reality. The Comedia, therefore, serves not as a means of...

The function of irony in discourse

The function of irony in discourse

The Function of Irony in the Work of Leon Bloy

The Function of Irony in the Work of Leon Bloy

The Function of Irony in "El Rey Burgues"

The Function of Irony in "El Rey Burgues"