Реферат: Translation of Irony

--PAGE_BREAK--responsibility for his/her word. This property of irony (being a skilful device to assure oneself of many more degrees of freedom than an explicit utterance does), arises from the ironic remark Anthony addresses to his friend Hillary. The lady goes to a cocktail party wearing a hideous dress and Anthony say: “Hillary! You’re so beautiful: just like Sharon Stone!”. “What do you mean?!”, George, Hillary’s husband, intervenes, irritated by Anthony’s sarcastic attitude. “Hillary is gorgeous, tonight! I was just paying your wife a compliment…”, Anthony pretends not to have been sarcastic, as if the meaning of his comment depended only on the linguistic input. In this dialogue the sense of the utterance is the subject of a skillful negotiation between them, because the semantic ambiguity of the ironic remark allows Anthony not to take full responsibility for his innuendo.

As useful outcome of ironic miscommunication, speakers have the chance and opportunity to calibrate the weight of the indirect meaning of their speech. An indirect expression of one’s thoughts, desires and feelings cannot only hide one’s real intention, but it can also define it and re-draw the limits of social interaction between interlocutors. First of all, according to the “tinge hypothesis, irony should express less condemnation and less approval than a direct utterance does (mitigation of the intended meaning). A criticism ironically made is apparently lighter and less offensive than an open insult; similarly, ironic praise is less positive than an explicit form. There is a kind of “regression to the center”, in which, on the one hand, the exultation is lessened, and, on the other, the aggressive charge is attenuated. Ironic criticism is used to emphasize condemnation rather than to dilute it: thanks to irony it should be possible to achieve one’s aims in a more pointed and controlled way, intensifying the meaning of an utterance (enhancement of the intended meaning).

Because of a cool detachment from emotions, irony may be used as a device for wounding someone in a much more cutting way than a direct criticism oriented in the same direction. In fact, an explicit insult can be produced in a moment of rage, as a consequence of the speaker’s mood in the contingent condition. Alternatively, an ironic insult can arise from a cold calculation, so as to express, besides blame, even the ironist’s intention of not losing his/her self-control in showing the interlocutor’s lack of success.Similarly, within a context of praise, irony is feasible when the speakers know each other very well.

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