Clues to Irony

Ironic utterances are indirect and ambiguous, and the author/speaker thus risks being misunderstood by the reader/listener. That is, the reader/listener may regard the literal meaning as the actual meaning. To accomplish the speech act of irony, the author/speaker must ensure that the reader/listener has or will receive adequate information to correctly interpret the ironic utterance. As mentioned in Section 5.4.2, the author/speaker normally obeys the cooperative principle as suggested by Grice (1975) and tries to provide necessary contextual information. Gibbs and Colston (2007)

<context sentiment="neg">才剛買的書，竟然掉頁了，</context>這 品質<rhetoric>也太</rhetoric><ironic sentiment="pos">好</

ironic>了<rhetoric>吧</rhetoric>. English translation:

<context sentiment="neg">The book I just bought has fallen

apart.</context> The quality is <rhetoric>just extremely</rhetoric>

<ironic sentiment="pos">good</ironic>le<rhetoric>ba</

rhetoric>.

suggest that intentionally violating Gricean Maxims would result in an ironic interpretation (pp. 126-127). The superficial violation of the maxims therefore creates the clues to irony that can be used by the reader/listener to avoid misinterpretation.

The clues to be discussed below are lexical or non-lexical devices used by the author/speaker to convey irony. By examining these clues in irony, the interpretation of irony, that is, how irony is indicated by the author/speaker and finally successfully perceived as irony by the reader/listener, can be further explored. An irony clue can be unveiled in one or more irony elements described in Section 5.4 or through the existing knowledge and understanding of the real circumstances.

Booth (1974) suggests that five kinds of clues can be provided by the author: (1) straightforward warnings in the author's own voice, (2) known error proclaimed, (3) conflicts of facts within the work, and (4) clashes of style. In face-to-face communication, the speaker can make use of paralinguistic clues including intonation, loudness, gesture and facial expression. In this study, however, written materials are used exclusively for ironic expression collection and analysis, making obtaining paralinguistic components impossible. This doesn’t mean that non-lexical elements cannot be used as clues in online messages. The special usage of letters, characters, symbols and emoticons are found to be related to irony. The three different kinds of clues to irony are found in the NTU Irony Corpus:

(1) Customary ironic expression

Some linguistic patterns, such as 可以再…一點 mentioned in Section 5.3.5, are used regularly to convey irony. They can contain the ironic word/phrase and some accompanying lexical elements. When such a pattern is present, there is a high probability of irony. For example:

（s8) 辦公室咖啡可以再難喝一點。

It’s fine if the office’s coffee tastes even more awful.

Table 5.1 shows how likely a message is ironic when a specific pattern is present. In 1,000 messages containing the pattern [可以再 + any word(s) + 一 點] randomly chosen from the Plurk dataset, there are 78.3% confirmed to be ironic. As for the pattern [#很好 + punctuation], where the symbol # indicates the beginning of a message, 60.5% of them are ironic. This suggests that 可以 再…一點 is a more powerful customary irony pattern than #很好。

Pattern Irony Likelihood

可以再…一點 78.30%

#很好 + punctuation 60.50%

Table 5.1 Likelihoods of irony for random 1,000 messages with specific patterns

Some linguistic patterns originated from a specific linguistic community, and their uses are only popular within a group of people. For example, 丁丁是 個人才, 很好很強大，我開始相信你了 and 記者快來抄 emerged on blogging platforms and online forums and later became popular throughout the Internet.

It is possible that the reader identify this kind of irony even if there is no contextual information is present in the author’s message because the customary pattern itself is a clue to irony. The message (s8) shown above does not include any other information except for the sentences containing the irony patterns. The likelihood of 可以再…一點 is calculated with a dataset that

contains the pattern but has not been preprocessed to eliminate noises. In the 1,000 message containing this pattern, it is found that a message is not ironic if the pattern is preceded by the word 希望 (hope), 覺得 (think or feel), 如果 (if), 以為 (think), 應該 (should) or 還 (still) or followed by 的話 (if), 嗎 (ma, question marker), 了 (le, perfective aspect marker) or 就好了 (if…, it would be good.). Most of these words are used to indicate an expectation, opinion or question. The following if an example:

(s9) 午休時間可以再長一點嗎！

Can the length of the noon break be longer!

To understand how these words affect the usage of the irony pattern可以 再…一點, other 1,000 messages [可以再 + any word(s) + 一點] are randomly chosen from the Plurk dataset. If the messages with those words are removed in advance, the likelihood of irony increases to 88.20%, indicating that the pattern is a reliable clue to irony.

(2) Irrational statement

When a message contains an “error” or contradiction, the author either makes a mistake or is intentionally being ironic. If the reader does not think the author is careless, then an ironic interpretation is made. The error can occur in physical, epistemic and social contexts:

a. Error in physical context

In the following example, the author states that he or she is very

“patient” while the website he or she is using is too slow. If readers are aware of the status of the website, then they can interpret the ironic word “patient” correctly.

(s10) 樂 X 的網站~~真的可以再慢一點~~我非常的有耐心~~

It is fine that the website is so slow~~I am very patient~~

b. Error in epistemic context

In the following example, the author and the reader share the knowledge of computer viruses, and thus accomplish a successful irony interpretation.

(s11) 電腦半年中毒三次還真棒

It is wonderful that the computer has been infected with viruses three times in six months.

c. Error in social context

While seeing the boss in a holiday is usually not a good thing, whether or not the following message is ironic still depends on the author’s current actual relationship with the boss:

(s12) 假日還要見老闆..真是太幸福了

I have to see my boss in the holiday..I really have a happy life.

In order to perceive these expressions as irony, it is necessary for the

reader/listener to identify the ironic word/phrase and also take the explicit or implicit contextual information into account in order to see the conflict.

(3) Rhetoric

Special uses of words, letters, characters, punctuations, symbols and/or textual or image emoticons can be found in our irony corpus. Rhetoric and other non-lexical elements do not cause opposite meanings, but they can be used as irony indicators and to intensify the effects of irony. When an expression is unusual or overstated in terms of style, it draws the reader’s attention and makes them more likely to interpret the expression correctly.

Duplication, hyperbole and intensifiers can be found in our irony corpus:

(1) Duplication

Words, punctuations and other symbols can be repeated to help convey irony.

(s13) 今天真是太太太幸運了~在台九線上開車，大卡車迎面而來…

I was very very very lucky today~ When I was driving on the highway, a large truck rushed toward me…

(2) Hyperbole

Intentional emphasis on or exaggeration of something can make a clue to irony.

(s14) 亞洲第一名 台灣的驕傲!!

The best in Asia. The pride of Taiwan!!

(s15) 這真是這世紀最偉大的發明啊

This is indeed the greatest invention in the century.

(3) Intensifier

Some degree adverbs and complements can be used as intensifiers.

(s16) 今天真是運氣好到爆耶!!!

I am crazy lucky today!!!

Any words or phrase that are used as rhetoric clues will be labeled as rhetoric elements in the irony corpus.