‘It seems my enemy is about having malaria’: The sociocultural context of verbal irony in Nigeria

Felix Nwabeze Ogoanah

Abstract

This study seeks to characterise the form of verbal irony common among Nigerians by identifying its motivation, inherent properties, and communicative value. Data for this study comprised detailed field notes taken within the last five years in contexts in which utterances occurred naturally. These were then tested among informants from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds at the University of Benin to determine the prevalence and motivation of the ironic utterances. In addition, 500 questionnaires were administered to a group of students and staff in the same institution. These were analysed using frequency tables and simple percentages. Results support the claim that irony in this context is governed by a single cultural principle: “You hurt yourself by admitting a negative situation.” Although the study draws heavily from the relevance-theoretic echoic account, it seeks to reevaluate this account by suggesting that positive attitudes in negative situations are salient cultural notions that underlie the echoic account in this context.

Keywords:

Publication history

Date received: 31 August 2020

Date accepted: 24 October 2022

Published online: 16 May 2023

Table of contents

Abstract
Keywords
References
Address for correspondence
Biographical notes

Contentions about verbal irony as a subject of intellectual inquiry have increased in the last three decades and many strands of the notion have emerged, especially in the pragmatics literature (Simpson 2011). Numerous labels for the various strands of the notion have evolved and so have detailed explanations based on the authors’ theoretical orientations and intuitions. For example, verbal irony may now be seen as an overt untruthfulness (Grice 1989), as pretense (Clark and Gerrig 1984), as relevant inappropriateness (Attardo 2000), as an implicit display (Utsumi 2000), as a pragmatic insincerity or ‘allusional pretense’ (Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995), as a reversal of evaluation (Partington 2007), as a non-deliberate act (Gibbs 2012), as critical (Garmendia 2000, 2018), as simply echoic (Sperber and Wilson 1981), or as both pretense and echoic at the same time (Papa-Wyatt 2014). This list is not exhaustive.

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