On the pretense theory of irony

Comments on the mention theory of irony developed by D. Sperber and D. Wilson (1981) and further elaborated and tested by J. Jorgenson et al (see record 1984-30875-001). The present authors offer their own pretense theory of irony based on the ideas of H. P. Grice (1975, 1978) and H. W. Fowler (1965). According to this theory, in using irony, the speaker is pretending to be an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience; the speaker intends the persons to whom the irony is addressed to discover the pretense and thereby their attitude toward the speaker, the audience, and the utterance. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).