Prof. Helga Kotthoff: Irony in text and talk

Prof. Dr. Helga Kotthoff (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg im Breisgau)

Irony in text and talk

Abstract:

In this presentation, I combine discursive and cognitive approaches to examples of textual and conversational irony from two different corpora, a monological one drawn from radio broadcasts and a dialogical one from institutional talk. I employ a data-driven approach that starts with the assumption that there are sedimented sense- and knowledge repertoires within communicative households (in Luckmann’ sense) that must be employed to understand irony. I will discuss ironic letters that the German SWR 1 radio station has successfully presented for more than 11 years and episodes from parent-teacher conferences held at German schools.

I am going to focus on the too little-appreciated phenomenon that very often in ironic contributions the said (dictum) as well as the implicated (implicatum) are explicitly expressed, not just hinted at. In the course of a contribution, the ironic gap between the two levels of the message (said and meant) is apparent on the surface.

This also holds true for examples from conversational talk, as data from parent-teacher conferences show. In the sequential unfolding of talk, the two messages of the ironic, double-coded intertext become evident. Irony researchers underestimate the efforts of ironists to guarantee an adequate understanding of the implicated meaning.

References:

Kotthoff, Helga, 2002. Ironie in Privatgesprächen und Fernsehdiskussionen. In Inken Keim/Wilfried Schütte (Hgg.): Soziale Welten und kommunikative Stile. Tübingen: Narr, 445-473.

Lapp, Edgar, 1992. Linguistik der Ironie. Tübingen: Narr.