Publications
Publication details [#25818]
Jorgensen, Julia. 1996. The functions of sarcastic irony in speech. Journal of Pragmatics 26 (5) : 613–634.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
Elsevier
ISBN
0378-2166
Journal WWW
Annotation
This paper investigates the social functions of sarcastic irony in American discourse which may derive from its effects on hearers, in the context of pragmatic theories of interpretation -in particular Brown and Levinson's politeness theory- and psychological tests of language processing. It is shown that sarcasm can serve a face-saving function, especially when expressing a trivial criticism.