Journal Articles by Eleni Kapogianni
This paper examines the ironic speaker’s intentions, drawing distinctions on the basis of two cri... more This paper examines the ironic speaker’s intentions, drawing distinctions on the basis of two criteria: communicative priority (primary — secondary communicative intentions) and manifestness (overt — subtle — mixed — covert). It is argued that these provide useful insights into the widely discussed categories of speaker’s intentions (e.g. a priori versus post facto intentions, private i-intentions versus shared we-intentions). First of all, “ironic meaning” is viewed as comprising a set of different types of meaning, including a bundle of implicatures that can be hierarchically ranked in terms of both communicative priority and inferential priority. Secondly, examples of different degrees of manifestness of the ironist’s intentions are discussed in light of the communicative complexities of irony, which is viewed as a higher-order phenomenon. The final discussion attempts to bring together the analyses of the speaker’s and the hearer’s perspectives, contributing to a dynamic model of ironic discourse.
This paper sheds more light on the way in which irony functions at the semantics/pragmatics inter... more This paper sheds more light on the way in which irony functions at the semantics/pragmatics interface by teasing apart three components of the ironic operation: the vehicle, the input, and the output. Focusing on the logical relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning of the ironic utterance, several real instantiations of the phenomenon are discussed and it is demonstrated that the vehicle (i.e. the unit of meaning that is used in an ironic way, thus carrying the ironic intent) does not always coincide with the input (i.e. the unit of meaning on which irony operates). The input to the ironic operation is thus shown to be of three kinds: (a) part of the vehicle, (b) triggered by the vehicle, or (c) discourse-dependent. The final discussion highlights the advantages of viewing irony as an operation rather than an act of mention or dissociation from the content of the utterance.
This paper presents a contrastive approach to the presence of two distinct types of verbal irony ... more This paper presents a contrastive approach to the presence of two distinct types of verbal irony in real (natural, unscripted) versus fictional (scripted) discourse, with a special focus on irony blindness, i.e. the inability to recognize ironic utterances. Irony strategies are categorized into two general types, based on the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning (Type 1: meaning reversal and Type 2: meaning replacement). First, the differences between these two types are discussed in terms of use, interpretation, and misinterpretation. It is found that the first type of irony strongly prevails in natural discourse, while the second type is considerably more present in fictional discourse than it is in natural discourse. At the same time, the first type of irony appears to be more at risk of misinterpretation in natural discourse, as opposed to the second type, which seems to be a safer (even though less frequently selected) option. These findings are then further analyzed in light of the discussion concerning fictional (comedic, in particular) irony blindness and the construction and role of the irony blind characters. Interestingly, the causes of fictional irony blindness are found to correlate more strongly with the (more humorous) misinterpretation of the second type of irony.
Chapters by Eleni Kapogianni
The aim of this paper is to support the general hypothesis that irony is a non-unified phenomenon... more The aim of this paper is to support the general hypothesis that irony is a non-unified phenomenon, comprising different devices, with different semantic/pragmatic/cognitive characteristics. The point of view of the presented argument stands on the boundary between semantics and pragmatics, therefore focusing on the processes of production and retrieval of the ironic message, leaving out any social/culture-specific factors related to the phenomenon. The main focus is a particular strategy, in which the speaker employs a strikingly unrealistic, unexpected, and inappropriate (and thus "surrealistic") question or assertion in order to create the ironic effect. This type of strategy is illustrated in example (1).
The aim of this paper is to question the traditional account of irony as an implicature and to pr... more The aim of this paper is to question the traditional account of irony as an implicature and to propose alternative derivation processes for different types of ironic meaning. The theoretical framework used is a post-Gricean, truth conditional one, assuming a Contextualist point of view (Recanati 2005). The structure of the argument is as follows: first, we argue for cancellability as a precondition for implicatures, then, we highlight the existence of ironies which fail to satisfy this precondition (thus being “non-implicated”), moreover, we detect a non-unified mode of derivation of the ironic meaning, which is, finally, attributed to the ability of irony to be present at different stages of meaning derivation. keywords: cancellability test, implicatures, non-cancellable irony
Book Reviews by Eleni Kapogianni
Conference Presentations by Eleni Kapogianni
Syntax and its Limits, 2013
PhD Thesis by Eleni Kapogianni
This thesis approaches the phenomenon of verbal irony from a definitional and typological perspec... more This thesis approaches the phenomenon of verbal irony from a definitional and typological perspective, with the aim of detecting the principal factors that affect the derivation and strength of ironic meaning.
A preliminary step for this analysis is the treatment of the definitional problem of verbal irony, achieved through the postulation of a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the presence of the phenomenon. Subsequently, with evidence from the study of a wide array of irony strategies, two main types of the phenomenon are distinguished on the basis of the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning of the ironic utterance. The proposed irony types are examined in relation to different factors that may affect the strength of the ironic implicature, i.e. the level of confidence of the hearers about an ironic interpretation of the utterance and the difficulty by which the speaker can cancel (in the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability – Grice 1975) this interpretation. Five main factors are examined both theoretically and experimentally: derivation syllogism, necessary assumptions, context dependence, co-textual reinforcement, and the use of discourse frameworks (particularly the humorous/ironic framework).
The results of this examination show that the influence of different factors on the derivation of the two main irony types and their subtypes correlates with the observation of significant differences in (ironic) implicature strength. These results lead to the consideration of factors of implicature strength as a helpful means of categorisation of inferential meaning, which cuts across the literal-nonliteral divide, being able to provide distinctions within levels of meaning that had so far been considered rather unified.
Papers by Eleni Kapogianni
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Dec 2, 2021
A surprising fact about irony is that, despite vast amounts of research from many disciplinary pe... more A surprising fact about irony is that, despite vast amounts of research from many disciplinary perspectives, the phenomenon is still considered somewhat elusive. It is often remarked that, although it comes naturally and intuitively as part and parcel of typical communicative competence, there is little consensus regarding its exact definitional properties. Muecke (1970:14) poetically compares the recognition and use of irony by language users to the recognition and creation of beauty by an artist: a property they are fully aware of without being able to define it. Aiming to achieve a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon, this chapter is organized around the premise that the diversity of definitions and models is primarily due to the multitude of questions and angles of analysis one can take when approaching irony (verbal irony in particular) rather than radically different interpretations of its nature and properties. First, there is the question of common denominators and distinguishing properties among the different members of the “irony” family (Section 34. 2). Then, there are the theoretically (and empirically) important questions regarding the meaning of the ironic utterance, the ironist’s attitude towards the content of the utterance, and the ironist’s communicative (evaluative) intentions (Section 34. 3). Moreover, there is the question of which elements of irony are necessary, which are optional, and which are strategy-specific (Section 34. 4). Finally, there is the question of how irony relates to figurative language, sarcasm, and humour (Section 34. 5), which, in reality, is a question about the different levels of a communicative event (the meaning/communicated message, the social and interpersonal effects)
Pragmatics & Cognition, Sep 26, 2016
Pragmatics & beyond, 2011
... However, as Marta Dynel pointed out to me, even absurd humour may have some kind of resolutio... more ... However, as Marta Dynel pointed out to me, even absurd humour may have some kind of resolution, when cognitive mastery of the stimulus is gained (Forabosco 1992: 60). ... I am also grateful to Dr. Marta Dynel and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments. ...
Intercultural Pragmatics, Feb 23, 2018
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
This paper examines the factors that influence the outcome of exchanges containing refusals, focu... more This paper examines the factors that influence the outcome of exchanges containing refusals, focusing specifically on the role of irony. For this purpose, we analyse spontaneous conversations in English (SPICE-Ireland Corpus and Spoken BNC) within a discursive framework (Eelen 2001; Mills 2003; Watts 2003) that considers the negotiation of opposing views as well as relationships between interlocutors. We propose a model that relies on the crucial distinction we draw between the ‘positional’ and the ‘interpersonal’ level, pointing at mismatches between the two when it comes to the presence of conflict. We determine the presence and (non-)resolution of interpersonal conflict based on evidence of relational work (Locher and Watts 2008) and show that although there is no fixed trajectory from irony type (Kapogianni 2011, 2018) to interpersonal effect, some ironies are more interpersonally risky than others.
Intercultural Pragmatics, 2018
In this paper, the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability Grice’s original spelling is “cancel... more In this paper, the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability Grice’s original spelling is “cancelability”. is used as a testable characteristic, able to indicate different degrees of strength for different types of (ironic) implicatures. According to the definition adopted for this analysis, implicature strength is determined by the likelihood of retrieval of an implicature in a specific context and, essentially, by the degree of certainty that the hearer maintains about the correctness of the inferred interpretation. Ironic implicature strength is considered the product of various factors (“factors of implicature strength”), some of which are always present (such as the type and strength of assumptions on which a derivation is based), while others are optional and appear in tandem with specific irony strategies. Irony strategies are categorized into two general types (meaning reversal and meaning replacement), which are expected to show different degrees of implicature strength, be...
New Theoretical Insights into Untruthfulness, 2016
This paper examines the ironic speaker’s intentions, drawing distinctions on the basis of two cri... more This paper examines the ironic speaker’s intentions, drawing distinctions on the basis of two criteria: communicative priority (primary — secondary communicative intentions) and manifestness (overt — subtle — mixed — covert). It is argued that these provide useful insights into the widely discussed categories of speaker’s intentions (e.g. a priori versus post facto intentions, private i-intentions versus shared we-intentions). First of all, “ironic meaning” is viewed as comprising a set of different types of meaning, including a bundle of implicatures that can be hierarchically ranked in terms of both communicative priority and inferential priority. Secondly, examples of different degrees of manifestness of the ironist’s intentions are discussed in light of the communicative complexities of irony, which is viewed as a higher-order phenomenon. The final discussion attempts to bring together the analyses of the speaker’s and the hearer’s perspectives, contributing to a dynamic model o...
HUMOR, 2014
This paper presents a contrastive approach to the presence of two distinct types of verbal irony ... more This paper presents a contrastive approach to the presence of two distinct types of verbal irony in real (natural, unscripted) versus fictional (scripted) discourse, with a special focus on irony blindness, i.e. the inability to recognize ironic utterances. Irony strategies are categorized into two general types, based on the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning (Type 1: meaning reversal and Type 2: meaning replacement). First, the differences between these two types are discussed in terms of use, interpretation, and misinterpretation. It is found that the first type of irony strongly prevails in natural discourse, while the second type is considerably more present in fictional discourse than it is in natural discourse. At the same time, the first type of irony appears to be more at risk of misinterpretation in natural discourse, as opposed to the second type, which seems to be a safer (even though less frequently selected) option. These findings are then furt...
The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language, 2021
A surprising fact about irony is that, despite vast amounts of research from many disciplinary pe... more A surprising fact about irony is that, despite vast amounts of research from many disciplinary perspectives, the phenomenon is still considered somewhat elusive. It is often remarked that, although it comes naturally and intuitively as part and parcel of typical communicative competence, there is little consensus regarding its exact definitional properties. Muecke (1970:14) poetically compares the recognition and use of irony by language users to the recognition and creation of beauty by an artist: a property they are fully aware of without being able to define it. Aiming to achieve a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon, this chapter is organized around the premise that the diversity of definitions and models is primarily due to the multitude of questions and angles of analysis one can take when approaching irony (verbal irony in particular) rather than radically different interpretations of its nature and properties. First, there is the question of common denominators and distinguishing properties among the different members of the “irony” family (Section 34. 2). Then, there are the theoretically (and empirically) important questions regarding the meaning of the ironic utterance, the ironist’s attitude towards the content of the utterance, and the ironist’s communicative (evaluative) intentions (Section 34. 3). Moreover, there is the question of which elements of irony are necessary, which are optional, and which are strategy-specific (Section 34. 4). Finally, there is the question of how irony relates to figurative language, sarcasm, and humour (Section 34. 5), which, in reality, is a question about the different levels of a communicative event (the meaning/communicated message, the social and interpersonal effects)
In this chapter we examine ethical datives as a case study of issues such as (a) the way syntax p... more In this chapter we examine ethical datives as a case study of issues such as (a) the way syntax provides input to semantics and in turn to pragmatics, specifying (part of) its well-formedness/felicity conditions and, conversely, (b) the way in which pragmatics filters, evaluates and/or modulates the syntactic/LF output.
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Journal Articles by Eleni Kapogianni
Chapters by Eleni Kapogianni
Book Reviews by Eleni Kapogianni
Conference Presentations by Eleni Kapogianni
PhD Thesis by Eleni Kapogianni
A preliminary step for this analysis is the treatment of the definitional problem of verbal irony, achieved through the postulation of a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the presence of the phenomenon. Subsequently, with evidence from the study of a wide array of irony strategies, two main types of the phenomenon are distinguished on the basis of the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning of the ironic utterance. The proposed irony types are examined in relation to different factors that may affect the strength of the ironic implicature, i.e. the level of confidence of the hearers about an ironic interpretation of the utterance and the difficulty by which the speaker can cancel (in the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability – Grice 1975) this interpretation. Five main factors are examined both theoretically and experimentally: derivation syllogism, necessary assumptions, context dependence, co-textual reinforcement, and the use of discourse frameworks (particularly the humorous/ironic framework).
The results of this examination show that the influence of different factors on the derivation of the two main irony types and their subtypes correlates with the observation of significant differences in (ironic) implicature strength. These results lead to the consideration of factors of implicature strength as a helpful means of categorisation of inferential meaning, which cuts across the literal-nonliteral divide, being able to provide distinctions within levels of meaning that had so far been considered rather unified.
Papers by Eleni Kapogianni
A preliminary step for this analysis is the treatment of the definitional problem of verbal irony, achieved through the postulation of a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the presence of the phenomenon. Subsequently, with evidence from the study of a wide array of irony strategies, two main types of the phenomenon are distinguished on the basis of the relationship between the expressed and the intended meaning of the ironic utterance. The proposed irony types are examined in relation to different factors that may affect the strength of the ironic implicature, i.e. the level of confidence of the hearers about an ironic interpretation of the utterance and the difficulty by which the speaker can cancel (in the Gricean notion of explicit cancellability – Grice 1975) this interpretation. Five main factors are examined both theoretically and experimentally: derivation syllogism, necessary assumptions, context dependence, co-textual reinforcement, and the use of discourse frameworks (particularly the humorous/ironic framework).
The results of this examination show that the influence of different factors on the derivation of the two main irony types and their subtypes correlates with the observation of significant differences in (ironic) implicature strength. These results lead to the consideration of factors of implicature strength as a helpful means of categorisation of inferential meaning, which cuts across the literal-nonliteral divide, being able to provide distinctions within levels of meaning that had so far been considered rather unified.