Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 Facts and questions about verbal irony 1
1.2 Rationale of the present study 5
1.3 Objectives of the present study 7
1.4 Methodology,terminology and data 8
1.5 Outline of the book 11
Chapter 2 Literature Review of Verbal Irony 13
2.1 Semantic study of verbal irony 13
2.2 Pragmatic study of verbal irony 22
2.2.1 Grice's theory of verbal irony 22
2.2.2 Verbal irony as insincere speech act 32
2.2.3 Leech's view of verbal irony 39
2.2.4 Brown and Levinson's view of verbal irony 41
2.3 Psycholinguistic study of verbal irony 41
2.3.1 Gibbs's direct access view of verbal irony 42
2.3.2 Giora's graded salience hypothesis 44
2.4 Summary 47
Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework of the Present Study 50
3.1 Relevance theory and discourse understanding 50
3.1.1 Relevance theory 51
3.1.2 Relevance-theoretic approach to context 61
3.1.3 Utterance understanding and poetic effects 71
3.2 Understanding ironic utterances within the relevance-theoretic framework 84
3.2.1 Echoic-interpretation theory of irony 85
3.2.2 Yus's model of irony comprehension 93
3.3 Applications of the relevance-theoretic approach to the analysis of literary texts 108
3.4 Summary 121
Chapter 4 Contextual Activation in the Relevance-Theoretic Framework and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 125
4.1 Encyclopedic,factual information 126
4.1.1 Macrosocial norms and factual information 127
4.1.2 Commonsense assumptions 131
4.1.3 Microsocial situational expectations 134
4.2 Mutually manifest physical environment(setting) 136
4.3 Speaker's nonverbal behavior 137
4.4 Addressee's background knowledge of addresser's biographical data 139
4.5 Mutual knowledge 144
4.6 Previous utterances in the conversation 149
4.7 Linguistic cues 157
4.8 Summary 168
Chapter 5 Criterion of Optimal Accessibility to Irony and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 172
5.1 Prototypical case 1:fast identification of dissociation 173
5.1.1 Verbal irony in the conversations between the characters 174
5.1.2 Verbal irony in the narrations of the narrator 203
5.2 Prototypical case 2:slow identification of dissociation 214
5.3 Prototypical case 3:nonexistent identification of dissociation 219
5.4 Summary 225
Chapter 6 Poetic Effects in the Relevance-Theoretic Framework and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 229
6.1 Satirical humorous effect 230
6.1.1 Lexical cues 231
6.1.2 Syntactic cues 240
6.1.3 Stylistic cues 244
6.2 Joyous and cordial effect 259
6.3 Vigilant effect 260
6.4 Summary 261
Chapter 7 Conclusion 265
7.1 Summary of findings 265
7.2 Limitations of the present study 270
7.3 Suggestions for further research 271
Bibliography 273