Adopting a neo-Gricean perspective on the figure of irony, this chapter critically examines the species of irony that communicates in its implicated meaning. A critical overview of the existing scholarship on this type of irony is performed, with the focus being on the rationale for its intermittence and on the available examples. Further support is thus given to a view that irony must implicate . In the case of irony couched in overtly untruthful negatively evaluative expression of one referent, a negatively evaluated (another referent) is necessary. The speaker’s intention to convey the latter form of evaluative lies at the heart of irony, whilst the positively evaluative is just an optional concomitant.
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[no author supplied]
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