Can Irony Be Phatic? A Relevance-Theoretic Proposal

Abstract

The relevance-theoretic (Sperber and Wilson, 1986/1995) analysis of ironic and phatic utterances has shown that both types of utterances are cases of echoic interpretive (attributive) metarepresentations. However, these utterances differ as regards the attitude that the speaker expresses: with ironic utterances it is an attitude of dissociation from a proposition, whereas with phatic utterances it is an attitude of endorsement or acceptance of a proposition. This paper discusses the conditions that ironic utterances must fulfil in order to become phatic. It argues that for ironic utterances to become phatic, there must be an echoic interpretive (attributive) metarepresentation of a previous echoic interpretive (attributive) metarepresentation (the ironic utterance) and a blend of the attitudes of dissociation and endorsement characteristic of ironic and phatic utterances, respectively.