Abstract
This article discusses a neo-Gricean approach to irony, deception and humor developed by Marta Dynel, confronting some of its assumptions and implications with results of experimental research. It is stated that Dynel’s modifications and elaborations of Grice’s original theory of conversation improve its coherence and provide adequate methodological tools for a comprehensive model of irony, deception and humor in multi-party interactions, and also for teasing out subtypes of each of these phenomena. Questions regarding the compatibility of this model with experimental findings concern such issues as the relation of irony and deception to Theory of Mind, and the impact of “humor for humor’s sake” on hearers’ opinions. Although these issues are not addressed in Dynel’s philosophically-oriented framework, they are not necessarily incongruent with her perspective.
Note
The paper focuses on Dynel, Marta. 2018. Irony, Deception and Humour. Seeking the Truth about Overt and Covert Untruthfulness. De Gruyter Mouton. ISBN 978-1-5015-1642-9
About the author
Agnieszka Piskorska is Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research interests include relevance-theoretic pragmatics, figurative language (she has published on metonymy in Intercultural Pragmatics and on irony in Journal of Pragmatics) and verbal humor. In her work, she explores the notions of indeterminacy and weak effects, and attempts to account for various functions of communication in relevance-theoretic terms.
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