Article Title：The meaning of irony
Abstract：
The theory of irony, going back to Quintillian's assessment of Socrates, has been divided between two broad possibilities. On the one hand, irony can be understood as a figure of speech within a meaningful context, and in this case we would be able to examine moments of irony within literature and specific ironic works of literature. On the other hand, irony has also been identified as an attitude towards meaning. Far from being a specific speech act, irony is an attitude adopted to all possible speech acts. Socrates is the exemplar of this ironic personality or attitude; for he represents the possibility of not asking just what this or that statement means, but of challenging all our assumptions regarding meaning. It is this second notion of irony as an attitude that is celebrated by Richard Rorty's attempt to supplant philosophy with literary criticism. In an ironic attitude we will no longer assume that our words are tied to meanings. On the contrary, the ironic personality recognizes that there is no meaning that subtends the speech act other than the speech act itself. In this article I argue that there is a necessarily undecidable boundary between irony as a localized speech act and irony as an attitude adopted to all speech acts. Certain speech acts can work ironically such that they open any determined and meaningful context to the question of just how that context appears to be meaningful. But once irony is adopted as a general attitude or theory of meaning we hav foreclosed the possibility of these context-troubling events of meaning. Once we accept our own context as operating with a permanent attitude of irony, we disavow the very possibility of irony: that there might be a speech act that is not reducible to context.
Keywords: irony; context; speech act; Rorty
DOI: 10.1080/095023600363328
Source：TEXTUAL PRACTICE
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