A Pragmatic Analysis of Verbal Irony in the Big Bang Theory开题报告

 2022-08-01 20:38:03

1. 研究目的与意义

As a common language phenomenon, irony has long been a hot issue among linguists. Irony can be classified into verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony. Verbal irony is common in our daily life. During the process of conversations, it’s of great importance for people involved to realize the existence of irony and respond appropriately to keep the conversation going.

The study of irony began with rhetoric. Until the mid-20th century, researchers started to put emphasis on the study of irony from a pragmatic angle. The explanation of irony was first given by Grice (1957, 1975) with Coorperative Principle, namely the Classical Gricean Theory, which was then developed by Sears (1979), Leech (1983), etc., into the Neo-Gricean Theory. With the development of Cognitive linguistics, great progress has been made in the interpretation of irony, such as the proposal of the Relevance Theory (Sperber amp; Wilson, 1986, 1995).

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2. 研究内容和预期目标

This research aims to make a corpus-based study of verbal irony in the Big Bang Theory within the framework of Relevance theory. The essay will focus on the following issues: the realization of verbal irony, the interpretation of it and the response to it.

According to Sperber and Wilson, the realization of irony is based on the context of communication and the mutual knowledge of both parties. Ironic utterances are always echoic. The speaker repeats the other person’s words to express his disagreement. The interpretation of irony is the process of achieving optimal relevance, which means the listeners try to achieve more contextual effect with less effort. Listeners’ response could always reflect their understanding of irony. Therefore, this research would also attach some importance on the study of some possible reactions for irony.

3. 国内外研究现状

The research of irony first started abroad. It was initially studied as a figure of speech, which focuses on the literal meaning of ironic utterances.

The first pragmatic study for irony interpretation was made by Grice (1957, 1975), he proposed the Cooperative Theory(CP) and pointed out that irony is the deliberate flouting of Maxim of Quality, namely to tell the truth. Speech Act Theory by Searle (1979) proposed that irony is an indirect speech act. It has two meanings: the literal one and the utterance one. However, the reasons why people adopt indirect methods to express their attitudes could not be explained. Therefore, Leech (1983) pointed out in the Polite Principle (PP) that people use irony for being polite. He proposed that people tend to express their negative attitudes in an indirect way, so as to avoid conflict. Liu Runqing (1987) claimed that it''s important to differentiate ironies which are related to politeness from irrelevant ones. Giora (1998) proposed two concept about irony: indirect negation”and graded salience hypothesis. Giora held that verbal irony contains both literal and implied meanings, which are direct negations, and the literal meaning would be processed first.

After the researches of pragmatic analysis, cognitive approaches are now receiving extensive attention. Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995) made the statement that ironic utterances are echoic. Through echoing the listeners’’views, speakers express their disapproval towards them. Cao Jia and Lv Yixing (2004) also claimed that the nature of irony lies in its echoic feature. Clark and Gerring (1984) proposed that the nature of irony lies in disguise. They pointed out: “ The speaker intends the addresses of the irony to discover the pretense and thereby see his or her attitude toward the speaker, the audience, and the utterance.” Yao Jun (2003) made a research about the cognitive mechanism of irony understanding and its pragmatic effectiveness.

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4. 计划与进度安排

Outline

1. Introduction

2. Literature Review

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5. 参考文献

Clark, H. H., Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1).

Giora, R. , Fein, O. , amp; Schwartz, T. (1998). Irony: Graded salience and indirect negation. Metaphor and Symbol, 13(2), 83-101.

Grice H. P. (1957). Meaning. Philosophical Review, 66(3), 377-388.

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