earticle

영어

This paper, first, tries to investigate the complex aspects of meaning in ironical expressions, and then to present an appropriate approach to explain them. An irony is thought of as literally saying one thing but figuratively meaning its opposite. This is possible since our natural languages can incorporate the opposite things together in one linguistic expression, which I want to term as the ‘pharmakon’ of natural languages.
An irony doesn’t describe facts themselves, but it expresses speaker’s feelings, attitudes or
evaluations on facts, which means that an irony is closely related to our thinking. And the
approach to irony should consider not only a linguistic expression, irony, but also our thinking
process. Mental space theory was originally developed as a means to explain our thinking
process. Thus, the best way to interpret the meaning of an irony should be sought after based
upon the so-called mental space theory.