Mogućnost primene kognitivno-inferencijalne pragmatike na situacionu ironiju

Abstract

The paper aims to investigate the application of cognitively oriented approaches to language to the analysis of situational irony. First, relevant approaches that have verbal irony as their subject of interest are presented, along with their advantages and disadvantages, in order to adequately explain the choice of the echoic approach. Special emphasis is placed on its potential for application in the analysis of other types of irony – situational, dramatic, tragic, etc. When applying the echoic approach to situational irony, certain terminological changes occur (e.g. the basic proposition of the utterance becomes the basic proposition of the narrative), but the mechanism remains unchanged. Going a step further, the last part of the paper presents an example of the application of the selected theoretical apparatus of Relevance Theory to tragic irony in the novel Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, with a special emphasis on the connection between irony and discrimination against clones-organ donors in the dystopian world of the novel. An analysis of situational irony analogous to the analysis of verbal irony is proposed, which shows that the selected apparatus enables adequate interpretation of the paradox indicated by the situational irony of Kate’s story. The proposed approach also explains the simultaneous existence of ironic and non-ironic interpretations of the narrative, which the author of the novel himself emphasizes in his interviews.