What is it about?
This chapter explains how people mentally construct and understand irony in everyday communication. Rather than treating irony as simply “saying the opposite,” it shows that ironic meaning emerges from specific cognitive operations—mental processes such as contrasting expectations with reality, echoing someone’s words or thoughts, and adjusting meanings based on context. The chapter explores how speakers may repeat or reshape a previous statement to show pretended agreement, highlight an inconsistency, or reveal a hidden attitude. It also describes why irony can be subtle or complex, depending on how many cognitive steps are involved. By examining these operations, the chapter offers a clearer picture of how we recognize, interpret, and use irony both in language and in real-life situations.
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Why is it important?
Irony is common in conversation, social media, literature, and public discourse, but it is often misunderstood or oversimplified. This chapter offers a unified explanation of how ironic meaning is formed, showing that irony relies on mental processes also used in other forms of meaning-making, such as metaphor and metonymy. By revealing the cognitive mechanisms behind ironic echoing and how people contrast expectations with evidence, the chapter helps clarify why irony is sometimes humorous, sometimes critical, and sometimes used to challenge assumptions. This approach can improve our understanding of communication breakdowns, enhance the analysis of discourse, and contribute to broader theories of how humans construct meaning. It also connects verbal irony and situational irony under the same cognitive principles, offering a more comprehensive framework than previous accounts.
Perspectives
Working on this chapter allowed me to bring together many years of research on meaning construction and explore irony as a complex but deeply human phenomenon. I found it particularly rewarding to show how seemingly simple ironic remarks rely on subtle cognitive operations that we perform effortlessly in everyday life. My aim was to integrate insights from pragmatics and cognitive linguistics into a coherent framework that can make sense of both verbal and situational irony. I hope readers will find that this approach not only clarifies what irony is but also sheds light on broader aspects of how we think, interpret, and communicate. More than anything, I hope the chapter encourages others to look beyond the surface of language and appreciate the rich mental activity behind even the most casual remark.
Professor Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza
University of La Rioja
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Irony and Cognitive Operations, December 2023, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/9781108974004.005.
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