In this shorter seminar, Vlad Zlov will present some initial ideas for his PhD project in cognitive semiotics, which only began this September, taking on a "figure" that is much less studied than metaphor: irony. All are warmly welcome to H402 from 15:00, or to the zoom link with cameras on.

Irony is one of the popular topics within the domain of figurativity studies, but compared to metaphor, it has received less attention. Various influential theories of irony such as Pretense Theory (Clark & Gerrig, 1984) and Echoic Mention Theory (Sperber, 1984; Wilson & Sperber, 1992) have been proposed and modified numerous times in attempt to become as universal as possible. However, each theory has its strengths and limitations that I briefly explain and review.

I will approach irony from a cognitive semiotic perspective and demonstrate how such an approach can make clearer theoretical distinctions between monosemiotic and polysemiotic irony and different kinds of irony markers – components that may facilitate comprehension of irony (Attardo et al., 2003). The Motivation & Sedimentation Model (Devylder & Zlatev, 2020; Zlatev et al., 2021) will be applied to analyze some of the ironic utterances and show how irony, like metaphor, can be co-motivated by the Embodied and the Sedimented levels. I will conclude by outlining ideas for future research – both theoretical and methodological. 

Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J., & Poggi, I. (2003). Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm. Humor, 16(2), 243-260. 

Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1), 121-126. 

Devylder, S., & Zlatev, J. (2020). Cutting and breaking metaphors of the self and the Motivation & Sedimentation Model. Figurative meaning construction in thought and language, 253-282. 

Sperber, D. (1984). Verbal irony: Pretense or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1), 130-136. 

Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (1992). On verbal irony. Lingua, 87(1), 53-76. 

Zlatev, J., Jacobsson, G., & Paju, L. (2021). Desiderata for metaphor theory, the Motivation & Sedimentation Model and motion-emotion metaphoremes. In A. S. da Silva (Ed.), Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage (pp. 41-74). John Benjamins Publishing Company.