earticle

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The purpose of this study is to seek some explanations how and why the ironical expressions are used to convey non-literal meanings and achieve their pragmatic functions such as condemnation, sarcasm, reproach, humor, etc. better than the ordinary, literal counterparts. We distinguish the situations which cause verbal irony (i.e., situations which make statements ironic) from ironic situations or situational irony (i.e., situations which are ironic) and we assume that verbal irony would be a device to communicate irony as a cognitive phenomenon. Colston, et al. (1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2002) suggested the concept of contrast and contrast effects are fundamental to account for the figurative language comprehension. In processing the verbal irony, we found the positive literal meaning of the remarks in verbal irony serve very important functions: referring weakly manifested negative assumptions, making a contrast with those assumptions, and achieving different degrees of ironicalness via contrast effects. We also found some very convincing explanations why a speaker chooses verbal irony to express his/her dissociative attitudes. Verbal irony makes use of contrast effects which make the ironic remarks more funny, more condemning, and more self-protective than their literal counterparts. We conclude verbal irony is a very efficient device which man has long developed to express and control his/her negative emotion and frustration wisely.