（外国语言学及应用语言学专业论文）顺应论视角下的反讽研究.pdf

a study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory iv 摘 要 本文旨在维索尔伦的顺应论的理论框架中研究反讽现象。顺应论认为，语言的使用是对语言形式和语用策略做出选择使之顺应物理、社会和认知语境的过程。 在本研究中， 反讽被定义为会话含义异于或近似于字面意义的一种言语行为，同时又是语言使用者为满足交际需要而选择的一种交际策略。 先前的反讽研究大多选取了语义学、逻辑学或语用学视角，这些研究虽然在某些方面彼此矛盾，但是它们为该领域进一步创新性研究垫定了坚实的基础，维索尔伦的顺应论因此诞生。该理论框架下的语用研究（包括反讽研究）考虑了认知、社会和文化纬度。 本文旨在回答如下三个问题：第一个问题是关于反讽选择的特征。从顺应论的角度出发，反讽语言的选择可以出现在语言结构的各个层面，从语言、语码、风格到话语、话语束。这里涉及到反讽选择的变异性特征，即反讽选择的可能性范围。反讽选择的另一特征是它的协商性，意指反讽选择是在高度灵活性的原则和策略的基础上做出的。反讽选择的第三个特征是它的顺应性，即语言使用者顺应语境变量的语用动机。顺应性也是反讽语言的本质特征。 第二个问题是关于反讽的认知原则和语用机制。 顺应性是反讽认知的一般原则。反讽语言的发话人通过反讽表达给受话人造成某种心理的逆期待感受，从而引起其意识突显性。反讽使用者与听话者之间的互明是反讽理解成功的先决条件，也就是说，为获取发话者试图表达的反讽信息，听话者必须了解发话者拥有的特殊的、私人化的或者“内部的”知识。 第三个问题是关于反讽交际的过程。 反讽的顺应过程是一种动态意义的生成过程，该过程与时间、语境和语言结构因素有关。 关键词关键词：反讽，顺应论，反讽选择特征，认知原则，意识突显性，动态性 a study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory ii abstract this thesis is devoted to the study of irony within the framework of verschuerens adaptation theory, which views language use as a choice-making process of linguistic forms as well as pragmatic strategies towards the adaptation to the physical, social and cognitive contexts. in the present study, irony is defined as the speech act which conveys a conversational implicature different from or similar to its surface meaning and which, at the same time, serves as a communicative strategy chosen by language users to approach points of satisfaction for communicative needs. most of the previous studies on irony have taken a semantic, logical or pragmatic approach to the problem, which, though contradictory to each other in some respects, lay a necessary foundation for the more creative researches of the same field such as verschuerens adaptation theory, which takes the cognitive, social and cultural factors into consideration in pragmatic researches, including the research on irony. this thesis is aimed at answering three general questions. the first question concerns the properties of ironical choices. seen from the perspective of adaptation theory, choice of ironical utterance can be located at every level of linguistic structure, ranging from languages, codes, styles to utterances and utterance clusters. this concerns the property of variability, which is defined as the range of possibilities from which choices can be made. another property of ironic choice is its negotiability, which means that ironic choice is made on the basis of highly flexible principles and strategies. the third property of ironic choice is its adaptability, which points to the language users pragmatic motive of getting adapted to the contextual variants. adaptability is the intrinsic property of ironical utterances. the second question concerns the principle and pragmatic apparatus of irony cognition. adaptability is the general principle of irony cognition. the utterer shows a counter-expectational mismatch to the hearer through ironic expression and thus trigger his salience. mutuality between the ironist and the hearer is the precondition for successful irony interpretation, that is, the hearer must be aware of the utterers 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 iiispecial, private or “inside” knowledge necessary for the derivation of the intended ironic message. the third question concerns the process of ironical communication. use of irony is a process in which dynamic meaning is generated in relation to the temporal, contextual and structural dimensions. key words: irony; the adaptation theory; properties of ironic choices; cognition principle; salience; dynamics 中南民族大学中南民族大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权中南民族大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 本学位论文属于 1、保密，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 2、不保密。 （请在以上相应方框内打“” ） 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 i acknowledgements this thesis concludes my past three years study in the postgraduate program of foreign linguistics & applied linguistics in south-central university for nationalities. i would like to thank all those who have exchanged their invaluable opinions with me during my writing of this thesis. in particular, i am grateful to my supervisor, professor xu ju, for her illuminating and patient supervisionreading, criticizing and polishing the manuscript at every stage. her insights in terms of general pragmatics, cognitive pragmatics and the adaptation theory have helped a lot in the establishment of the framework of the thesis. i feel equally grateful to prof. huang chongzhen, prof. luo jiansheng who have raised many helpful questions and made valuable comments on the proposal of the thesis. i am also thankful to the whole staff in the foreign languages college of the south-central university for nationalities, who helped me in one way or another. besides, i would like to express my thanks to my classmates for providing me with resourceful reference materials. last but not least, my heartfelt thanks give to my parents and my friends for their extraordinary and constant spiritual support. it remains to be said that all mistakes and inadequacies are my sole responsibility. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 1 chapter 1 introduction 1.1 the definition of irony when enright (1986) talks about irony, he makes such a comment: “it is unfortunate, it is even ironical, that for so ubiquitous and multifarious and, some say, alluring a phenomenon there should be but one word.” indeed, irony is a ubiquitous phenomenon, so omnipresent that it is found on all levels of language. the following sections will demonstrate that irony is also multifarious indeed, so manifold that it is far beyond the traditional rhetorical and semantic definition. what is irony? linguists have always attempted a definition of it. in a general sense, the definition of irony is cast in terms of the contrast between the surface meaning and underlying meaning of an utterance. this definition might be true of some standard cases of irony. but there are many other instances of irony that can not be defined in terms of meaning contrast. in fact, as is pointed out by zeng yantao (2006), ironies are of three types: (i) irony which conveys a meaning different from the surface meaning; (ii) irony which conveys a meaning that is or appears to be the same as or similar to the surface meaning itself; (iii) sarcastic irony that in most cases conveys a meaning opposite to the literal meaning. this idea will be taken into account in the next parts of the thesis. 1.2 the classification of irony irony, as we know it, is a complex language phenomenon. a basic distinction in the field of irony is made between verbal irony, which is a linguistic phenomenon, and situational irony which is a state of the world perceived as ironical. a further distinction is made by haverkate (1990) between dramatic irony and irony of fate within the broader situational irony. dramatic irony is the telling of an ironical event. irony of fate corresponds to situational irony. sarcasm is an overtly aggressive type of irony, with clearer markers or cues and a clear target. salvatore attardo (2000) thinks there is no a study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory 2consensus on whether sarcasm and irony are essentially the same thing, with superficial differences, or if they differ significantly. gibbs et al (1995) introduce the concept of “unintentional irony”. an instance of irony is unintentional if “the speaker did not intend the utterance to be understood this way.” gibbs et al (1995) note that this type of irony is a complex case which contains “elements of both verbal and situational irony”. in this thesis, however, i will consider exclusively verbal irony. 1.3 pragmatic functions of irony (1) making criticism an at-the-first-sight observation of irony in various forms makes it clear that irony can be used to express a variety of attitudes, loosely called ironic attitude. a common attitude made in irony is that of criticism. at times, even the most ostensible praise involves a tacit criticism. criticism appears to be a major component of irony. it operates as a face-saving device both for the ironist and for his target. one may tease by means of irony. teasing can also be considered as a form of criticism. the serious reaction given by people when teased points to their recognition of a possible criticism. (2) saving face another perlocution of irony is “saving face”. by using irony, the speaker on one hand manages to criticize and victimize the recipient of the irony; on the other hand, he manages to make the criticism not too obvious so as to keep face for the victim. irony gives speakers the chance to be aggressive in a seemingly non-aggressive way. it seems to be able to keep conflict at bay, so the victim will not be made too embarrassed, so embarrassed that he fights back. due to this particular pragmatic perlocution of it, irony has always been considered to be in close relation with politeness, as in politeness theory (brown & levinson, 1987) where irony is described as a face-saving mechanism one of the sub-strategies doing the fta (face-threatening act) off the record. leech (1983) even proposes that there is a principle called the irony principle, whereby speakers can pretend to be polite in appearance but intend to be impolite 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 3actually. being ironic, the speaker exploits the irony principle at the expense of any one of the cooperation maxims. irony typically takes the form of being too obviously polite for the occasion, so it may not give the victim a sense of “losing face”. therefore, while an open insult or criticism can easily lead to a counter-insult or counter-attack and hence conflict, an ironic remark may not trigger off so strong a negative reaction because of its conflict-avoidance property. (3) amusing the two-fold feature (making criticism and easing criticism) which so characterizes irony is also the major reason for the use of irony for amusing purpose, for expressing humor and joke. as we know, ironies convey attitudes that dissociate the speaker from the addressee, but it does not mean ironies are invariably used to express thoughts or feelings that are unreasonable and intolerable. instead, ironies may also be a source of amusement. in other words, except for the use of irony for indirect hostile attack upon the victim, irony is also used for light and vivacious amusement. irony, as a face-saving indirect criticism, often finds its place in interpersonal joking relationships. for example, speakers may tell ironic jokes in order to criticize, embarrass or put down one or more of the hearers in front of other participants. participants who “got” the joke may consequently feel like a member of a group. the following jokes employ irony for that purpose. (a boss is once again telling one of his stale jokes. except for miss wang, his secretary, all of his other employees laugh) (1) boss: miss wang, dont you have a sense of humor? wang: well, yes, i do, but i am leaving the firm soon. on the joke level, the irony constitutes a face-saving criticism intended by miss wang of her boss. it appears that the boss is a productive but boring joke-teller. on the interpersonal level, an employee may tell this joke to other employees in order to criticize a boss who exhibits similar characteristics. society is one of oppressed systems morally, politically, etc. under such systems, a study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory 4criticism is usually tabooed, critics often suffer dire consequences when openly examining and criticizing certain basic aspects of the system. therefore, under-toned or controlled criticism is often expressed by irony. political criticism and censure, in particular, are characterized predominantly by their extended use of irony. to summarize, irony is used in humor and joke due to its ability to criticize implicitly, to save face, and thus to remain polite on the surface 1.4 general framework of the study as mentioned in the earlier passage, the main research object of this study is to interpret irony within the framework of adaptation theory. the study will be conducted within the scope defined below. firstly, irony is a large category. rhetoricians for more than 2000 years and psycholinguists for more than 20 years have tried to account for one kind of irony, namely, verbal irony, from various perspectives; most previous studies of irony are speaker-oriented. the present study, however, is hearer-oriented and it aims at analyzing verbal irony from the pragmatic-cognitive point of view. secondly, pragmatic-cognitive adaptation models for language production and interpretation are of different sorts. some model specifies the functions an aspect of language performs in production and interpretation while others specifies the mental processes by which those functions are realized. the production emphasizes the process by which an utterance is designed while the interpretation the process by which the meaning, implication or intention of an utterance is understood. in my analysis, i will take the hearers stance. on the other hand, i will specify aspects of the properties of ironical utterances; the nature of irony means what is the distinction between irony and non-irony; the principle of ironical communication and search for the process to which irony is interpreted. most of the data (expressions, sentences, passages, etc.) cited for analysis, except for a few english sentences or utterances, are quoted from chinese documents (literature, play, related theoretical writings) or recorded utterances in live exchanges. those data, unless specifically noted about their origins, are all from personal recording. 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 5the thesis is composed of five parts. part i is a brief introduction to the general knowledge of irony. it includes the definition, classification, pragmatic functions of irony. a general framework of the study is also introduced. part ii is a review of previous accounts of irony and also a demonstration of some reasons why the semantic definitions of irony fail and why the refinements by grice, sperber & wilson, and so on are inadequate. part iii presents an introduction to the adaptation theory, which serves as the theoretical basis of the research being done. then chapter is concerned with the study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory in terms of (i) the properties of ironical choices (ii) the principle of ironical understanding (iii) the process of irony interpretation. chapter v comes as a conclusion of the whole thesis. a study of irony from the perspective of adaptation theory 6 chapter 2 literary review for a long period of time, verbal irony has been one of the hot topics for rhetoricians, linguists as well as pragmatists. scholars have developed a variety of approaches to the interpretation of this special language phenomenon. some of them will be introduced and evaluated in this chapter. 2.1 semantic approach to irony semantically, irony is often defined as saying something other than what one means. according to this definition, irony is treated as an indirect speech. the ironist intends to convey something other than what he actually says. indeed, this definition captures the sense of indirectness that earmarks the use of irony. the deficiency of this definition lies in that verbal indirectness also characterizes substantial number of non-ironic phenomena that are non-assertively communicated. for example: (2) if i were you, i would have accepted it. (2) is also an indirect speech act which indirectly expresses a piece of advice, but it is not related with irony. another definition given from the perspective of semantics interprets irony as a language phenomenon that conveys a meaning opposite to what is said. nevertheless, this definition has not further specified in what way the opposition or inversion is constituted in specific context. the reference remains too vague. consider the ironical expression given by the second speaker of the following verbal exchange: (3) (chen qian said) “i always can not mind my ps and qs in handling affairs. yesterday night, i felt wronged and acted rashly, this is totally due to my vain glorybut mow it seems that i have been dressed like a dogs dinner willfully so as to tease others. you know, mr. cai made me feel sick, but i would rather play at him than speak to mr. zhao.” 中南民族大学硕士学位论文 7(lin ziyu said) “in that way, it might have been more flirtatious.” (yang jiang, 1995) where does the exact opposition or inversion lie in this ironical expression? the above definition seems to be unable to provide a proper answer. in fact, the irony in the case of (3) cannot simply be interpreted as meaning opposition or inversion because it cannot be paraphrased as “it might not have been flirtatious”, an interpretation that loses all of its ironical implications. 2.2 logical approach to irony from logical point of view, irony is interpreted as the logical negation of the literal meaning. this context-free interpretation of ironic opposition may be applicable to what morgan (1978) calls conventional usage of irony. however, ironical communication relies to a great extent upon the context in which it occurs. additionally, the rule of utterance negation can apply only to the truth functional constituents. yet many ironies are triggered by non-truth-functional constituents. for instance, (4) a: im sorry ive damaged your computer, but there had been something wrong with it before i operated it. b: then, i should express my gratitude for you! the ironic expression in bs utterance violates one of the felicity, rather than truth, conditions of the utterance, as it is infelicitous for someone to thank someone else when the latter does not deserve any ingratitude. as is pointed out by gazder (1979), the felicity conditions are pragmatically and not logically r