Verbal Irony: Towards a Situational, Model-Based Account

Verbal irony is a complex phenomenon in which people say things they don’t literally mean, to achieve various discursive and social goals. Cognitive theories of verbal irony have focused on verbal irony as a mainly linguistic phenomenon, related to other forms of irony only in a distant or abstract way. By contrast, this paper sketches a situational account of verbal irony, on which verbal ironies are closely related to situational ironies. A situational irony is a state of affairs that people would describe in terms such as, “It is ironic that…” On this account, verbal ironies cannot be wholly understood without reference to situational ironies. Also, in general, verbal irony gains much of its status as a kind of irony through this connection. A situational account of verbal irony is outlined here, adapting the blended spaces model proposed by Kihara (2005). Simple examples are analyzed, and steps for future work are considered.