CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1
1.0 Preliminary Remarks 1
1.1 A General Description of Irony 2
1.2 A Brief Comparison Between Verbal Irony in English and"Fanyu"in Chinese 9
1.3 The Rationale of the Present Study 10
1.4 Objectives and Methodology 13
1.5 Outline of the Dissertation 13
CHAPTER 2 A Review of Previous Literature on the Nature of Irony 16
2.0 Introduction 16
2.1 The Traditional Rhetorical and Semantic Approaches:Irony as a Figure of Speech 17
2.2 Pragmatic Approaches 21
2.3 Cognitive Approaches 32
2.4 An Integrated View on the Nature of Irony 50
CHAPTER 3 Identification of Irony 54
3.0 Introduction 54
3.1 The Criterion for the Identification of Irony 55
3.2 Irony and Other Related Tropes 60
3.3 Irony and Other Related Speech Acts 69
3.4 Identification of Pragma-linguistic Cues Triggering Ironic Interpretation 76
CHAPTER 4 Pragmatic Functions of Irony and Ways of Responding to Irony 108
4.0 Introduction 108
4.1 Pragmatic Functions of Irony 109
4.2 Ways of Responding to Irony 115
CHAPTER 5 Pragma-linguistic Cues for Irony Used in Mandarin Chinese and American English 121
5.0 Introduction 121
5.1 Research Design 122
5.2 Pragma-linguistic Cues Used in Chinese Ironic Utterances 126
5.3 Pragma-linguistic Cues Used in American English Ironic Utterances 148
5.4 Comparison and Discussion 169
5.5 Summary 177
CHAPTER 6 Ways of Responding to Irony in Mandarin Chinese and American ENGLISH 179
6.0 Introduction 179
6.1 Research Design 180
6.2 A Classification and Brief Account of the Ways of Responding to Irony 183
6.3 A Comparison of the Responses to Irony between Mandarin Chinese and American English 192
6.4 Summary 201
CHAPTER 7 Conclusion 206
7.0 Introduction 206
7.1 Summary of the Major Findings 207
7.2 Practical Implications of the Present Study 211
7.3 Limitations of This Study and Suggestions for Further Research 215
Appendix 218
References 228