Within a cyberpragmatic framework rooted in cognitive pragmatics (Yus 2011), context is basically information that is brought to bear in turning the schematic coded input (e.g., spoken, written, or typed words) into interpretations. Although it is undeniable that contextual information may stem from different sources, eventually what is at stake in contextualization is to mentally assess and select the appropriate quality and quantity of information that allows us to reach meaningful interpretations. Regarding the specificity of social media and internet communication overall, several challenges for pragmatic analysis arise, some of which will be addressed in this chapter. Specifically, what interests most in an analysis of context online are: (a) the role of the interfaces in favoring/limiting the contextualization of utterances; (b) the role of the physical-virtual interface in today’s internet-mediated communication; and specially (c) the differentiation of the user’s personal, interactive, and social contexts managed in everyday virtual communication.

This chapter considers the treatment of context in relevance theory, a cognitively oriented pragmatic theory which sees human communication and cognition as governed by the search for relevance. Utterance interpretation crucially relies on context, and a central question for pragmatics is about how hearers find the right contextual information to use in interpreting an utterance, and thus succeed in identifying the speaker’s meaning. According to relevance theory, utterances raise precise and predictable expectations of relevance which guide the hearer in every aspect of utterance interpretation, from disambiguation and reference resolution to the choice of contextual information and the derivation of implicatures (i.e. intended implications). After outlining the main assumptions of Relevance Theory, the chapter illustrates with examples how these different aspects of interpretation fit together, and compares Relevance Theory’s treatment of context with some alternative treatments discussed in the pragmatic literature, including those based on a notion of “common ground.”

We experience irony in various ways other than through language. This chapter describes how irony often emerges in different modalities of human expression (e.g., talk, gesture, music, photography, dance, art). People’s conscious realizations that something is irony do not completely capture many unconscious ironic conceptualizations, including acts that are unintentionally ironic. People also sometimes call these out for others to attend to and engage in divergent nonverbal ironic performances, all of which illustrate the importance of bodily experience in ironic thinking, language, and action. Gibbs et al. specifically argue that irony is as much an appraisal process through which people deal with incompatibilities in their varied experiences (i.e., the appraisal theory of irony), as it is a particular type of meaning product. People may not simply possess a single conception of irony that is applicable to all situations in the same way. Individuals may differ, for example, in whether they view two contrasting events as just correlated as opposed to having some causal relationship with one another. The varied ways we think about, and emotionally react to, contrasts between expectations and unfolding realities leads to a family resemblance of both unconscious and conscious realizations of irony.

This chapter offers a “conceptual geography” of the ways irony is expressed and understood through several representations of irony, as seen, for example, in fiction and film. Currie draws the careful distinction between cases where an event is represented as being ironic without the event itself being ironic (e.g., a film scene may be constructed to express irony without the scene itself necessarily being an example of situational irony). Dramatic irony, for example, often succeeds because of our knowing something that the characters do not. But the characters’ lack of knowledge is only a pointer to the irony and is not what actually constitutes the irony. Many so-called instance of verbal irony are “expressive,” but not really “communicative,” because they are expressive of an ironic state of mind without a speaker specifically aiming to communicate irony. Currie’s chapter dives into many of these complexities, which are too often ignored in theoretical discussions and explications of irony. His overarching aim is to raise our awareness about what should be counted as irony and what “should be abandoned as the product of an inflated vocabulary.”

This chapter argues that irony in language emerges as an exquisite form of social work, through the operations of opposition, expectation violation, and contrast. Among all the different and varied figurative forms, irony may be particularly well suited in helping us form a sense-of-self that aligns with other people’s expectations, connect with other people, and manage our positions in social networks and hierarchies. Verbal irony’s oppositionality can lead to an expression of a violation of expectations on a speaker’s part through various methods (e.g., echo, pretense, allusional pretense, salience, contrast). But irony does more by providing speakers with a way to express their attitudes about different situations (e.g., agreeing or disagreeing with some other person’s attitude). Hearing irony may also help people form attitudes about the ironic speakers (e.g., finding the use of sarcasm as funny, clever, boorish). Thinking of irony as social work highlights the utility of this figure in delicately dealing with a wide range of interpersonal circumstances in everyday life.

We typically believe that irony is a completely human affair, but there have been interesting attempts to create computational models of irony use and understanding. This chapter presents an overview of some of these models, especially as implemented as conversational agents. One of the beauties, and major challenges, of computer modeling is that it forces researchers to make concrete decisions on how best to implement some linguistic observation or theoretical idea (e.g., how to create a workable model of echoic mention, pretense, or what is meant by incongruity). Veale presents his EPIC model in which an expectation (E) predicts a property (P) of an instance (I) of concept (C) that can get upended by an ironic utterance. This model provides a quantifiable view of what it means for an ironic utterance to achieve its desired effect on an audience. The success of an ironic utterance hinges on its capacity to highlight the failure of a reasonable expectation. The effectiveness of this computational model was partly assessed by obtaining human judgments about the meaning and quality of different ironic utterances in varying contexts that are suggestive of different expectations. In this way, Veale’s work offers insights as to how engineering solutions may be very informative about the way irony functions in human communication.

This chapter examines the complicated relationship between irony and humor, primarily from the perspective of neo-Gricean pragmatics (e.g., an ironic utterance flouts/overtly violates the maxim of Quality). Not all irony is humorous, of course, in part because of the highly polysemous nature of irony. In this light, it is important to distinguish irony that is humorous from irony that is related to sarcasm, teasing, parody, and even playfulness. Dynel offers a formal test by which one may determine what forms of humor may be specifically viewed as “irony.” She also describes some of the reasons why irony sometimes expresses humor, focusing on the importance of contrast and incongruity in judgments of ironic humor, but extending this emphasis to include surprise, absurdity, and creativity as key facets of humorous irony. Even blindness to irony can elicit humorous responses in some interpersonal situations. Dynel’s chapter also considers some of the intricacies in the ways speakers use humorous irony to position themselves in various interactions with others.

This chapter examines the conceptual relations between irony and satire. Many forms of satire, usually seen as containing elements of judgment, play, laughter, and aggression, may be considered discourse-level irony (i.e., satire is more evident in stretches of discourse, rather than in single utterances). Burgers illustrates this important point, as well as how satire expresses implied criticism, through consideration of several instances of television comedy programs, literature, internet news, and political commentaries. Satire may be differently explained by several prominent theories of irony (e.g., Gricean, pretense, echoic mention), each of which reveals the discourse-level nature of satirical communication. Burgers’ chapter describes various experimental studies looking at the impact that satirical language has on people’s attitudes toward different topics. As is all cases of irony, whether satire is successful in communicating speakers’ beliefs depends on a variety of situational (e.g., the specific media) and personal (e.g., who is the speaker, the addressee, overhearers, and their particular prior beliefs about some topic) factors. Even though satire may be a global phenomenon, how it is specifically employed in different cultures, and for different personal and social reasons, is very much a topic for future research.

The versatility of irony is evident in the variety of ways and places in which it is used. This chapter considers some of the complexities of ironic language on the internet (e.g., social media, messaging apps). Yus views irony as being associated with making a reference to some state of affairs that can be criticized or mocked, and which communicates a speaker’s attitudes toward that situation, including others who adopt a similar point of view. He embraces a “relevance theory” perspective to emphasize the prominence of echoic mention as a key source of pragmatic information when determining an ironic speaker’s dissociative attitude. Yus details the range of contextual information that enables successful irony use, even in situations where individuals do not share the same immediate physical space. This information includes widely held encyclopedic background knowledge, speaker-specific encyclopedic knowledge, previous utterances, particular linguistic cues, and information from the current physical setting. These different sources of contextual information are combined in specific ways to enable ironic meaning interpretation when people are not physical co-present (e.g., when posting messages or writing email on the internet).

Ironic language often conveys and elicits intense emotions. This chapter describes much of the relevant experimental research on the ways people emotionally react to sarcastic messages (e.g., “You’re so strong” when the person is actually rather weak). She considers some of the communicative reasons why people employ sarcasm in their speech, including possible affective messages they may wish to express. Experimental studies have employed eye tracking and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) measures to assess examine people’s anticipated emotional responses to story characters who were presented with either ironic (e.g., “You’re so strong”) or literal (e.g., “You’re so weak”) criticisms. The results suggest that readers initially anticipated a hurt response to ironic criticism, but eventually found it easier to integrate a hurt response following literal criticism (i.e., a “two-stage model” of emotional responses). But there are important individual differences in the ways people respond to sarcasm, not surprisingly. For example, autistic individuals do not easily distinguish between ironic and literal criticisms. Older adults also exhibit reduced abilities to understand and emotionally respond to sarcastic utterances. There are also significant variations in the ways people from different cultures use, interpret, and emotionally respond to sarcasm.

Hypocrisy is also closely related to irony (i.e., a disparity of word and deed) and this chapter advances the claim that hypocrisy is really a form of situational irony, especially as it relates to moral judgments (e.g., not practicing what you preach). Shelley reviews past theories in philosophy and psychology (e.g., moral hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance) that offer insights into how people detect hypocrisy in others and even excuse it in themselves. But he goes on to outline his “bicoherence theory of situational irony” in which a situation is judged as “ironic” when it displays a bicoherent conceptual structure, adequate salience, and evokes an appropriate configuration of emotions. Bicoherence is important because it shows that while incoherence can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated from people’s understandings, despite their cognitive prowess and best efforts. Shelley considers numerous examples of hypocrisy, including ones in which something is explicitly called out as “hypocrisy,” to show its effectiveness in criticizing people for their shortcomings.

Films offer many interesting examples of irony in action. This chapter highlights the extent to which filmmakers create scenes that convey a range of both situational and verbal ironies. Films can express many types of irony (e.g., Charlie Chaplin films sometimes alerts viewers to ironic situations that the film character, Chaplin, is himself unaware of). Several of MacDowell’s arguments explicitly stand in contrast to Greg Currie’s claims that irony in film is rather limited. This chapter goes into many detailed examples of possible irony in films, including various cases of parody and dramatic irony, which greatly extend our understanding of the complexities of irony in both film and ordinary life. He later focuses on the larger, unresolved, question of whether films “contain” irony (i.e., as a property of films) or create conditions for viewers to infer their own ironic interpretations and experience particular emotional reactions (i.e., irony is an “effect” from films but not actually a property of films). MacDowell concludes that films offer viewers “invitations” to recognize an intended irony as being part of an artwork, even if that may not happen to all audiences.

Hyperbole is a trope with close relations to irony. People use hyperbole to overly exaggerate the reality of some situation, which implicitly communicates their attitudes toward that topic or event. Barnden specifically argues that hyperbole is another example of “irony-as-affect-expression” in which a hyperbolic statement, such as “Peter has millions of pets,” is not an exaggeration about the number of pets Peter owns, but exaggerates the discrepancy between what some person believes about Peter’s pets and the number of pets Peter really owns. In this manner, hyperbole increases the intensity of “the affect cargo” (e.g., the speaker’s affective purpose in saying “Peter has millions of pets”) beyond that of the cargo (e.g., the actual number of Peter’s pets), which could have been expressed by a nonexaggerating utterance (e.g., “Peter has many pets”). Barnden considers several types of “affect types in ironic cargo,” including contempt, bitterness, criticism, teasing, as well as annoyance, disappointment, regret, relief, and gladness. More generally, irony, including hyperbole, offers far more potential for expressing complex affective states than does nonirony.

This chapter describes how people read and interpret ironical language. Tracking people’s rapid eye movements as they read can be an informative measure of the underling cognitive and linguistic processes operating during online written language comprehension. Attardo introduces some of the technologies employed in measuring eye movements during reading and suggests why these assessments can provide critical insights into how irony interpretation rapidly unfolds word-by-word as one reads. He reviews various experimental studies on irony and sarcasm understanding that provide explicit empirical tests of different theories of irony (e.g., multistate models, graded salience, parallel-constraint models predictive processing models). He also explores what the study of eye tracking reveals about the influence of contextual factors and individual differences in irony interpretation, as well as the phenomenon known as “gaze aversion” when listeners momentarily look away from speakers’ faces when hearing ironic language. Attardo closes his chapter with an important discussion of the sometimes contentious relations between psycholinguistic experiments and philosophical arguments on the ways people use and interpret irony in discourse.