irony :: essays research papers

Abstract My paper deals with responses to conversational irony in two different contexts. As an interaction analyst I am interested in how interlocutors co-construct the whole conversational sequence, in what they do with the ironic act in reacting to it. I combine data analytic methods from interactional sociolinguistics with questions from cognition theory. I shall point out how the interaction analysis of different response types contributes to the development of irony theory. A look at two data sets (informal conversations among friends and pro- and con-TV- discussions) provides interesting differences in responses to irony in these contexts. One important difference in responding appears to depend on whether the irony is framed and understood as critical or as friendly. From the format of the responses we can often access the processing of the ironic (though not always). If there are responses to the literal meaning and to the implicatum, we can take this as evidence that principally both the implicated and the literal message is processed. We find five response types: Responses to the literal, to the implicated, mixed types, just laughter and ambiguous types which do not allow us to assign a meaning. The data further confirm that the different types of responses to irony create different activity types: Responses to the literal develop a humorous discourse type of joint teasing. These are highly frequent during the dinners among friends. In the context of pro and con debates responses within the group differ in connection to the line of arguing. Responses to the implicatum are much more frequent here. They recontextualize the Page 2 serious debate. Very often, those who share the general opinion of the ironist, laugh - those who do not reject the implication of the ironic act. 1. Introduction This paper is contributing to a neglected area of irony research, the reception of irony in contexts of face-to-face interaction. I would like to show that the reception of irony in different conversational contexts can give us insights into the way irony is processed. I cast a critical glance at cognition-oriented irony research which works with data from lab settings. The greatest differences between lab situations and natural conversations are: (a) in the first type of situation the irony recipients are not affected by the ironic act and (b) have no opportunity to continue the interaction and thus to shape and co-construct it. I have reason to think that the way an addressee is