Who's afraid of irony? An analysis of uncooperative behavior in Edward Albee's who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?
1981; Elsevier BV; Volume: 5; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/0378-2166(81)90035-7
ISSN1879-1387
Autores Tópico(s)Creativity in Education and Neuroscience
ResumoAbstract IRONY, a verbal expression of ‘uncooperative behavior’, is by its nature at home in modern drama, especially the theater of the absurd: it absurdly violates the Gricean cooperative principle, and the maxim of quality in particular. In Edward Albee's ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’, irony becomes an intricate language game. The dissonance between intended communicative content and apprehended content basic to irony develops into at least three different mechanisms: (i) the simple negation of literal meaning gives the intended meaning; (ii) by violating the sincerity condition of the illocutionary act, the illocutionary force of the ironic speech act is reversed; (iii) the meaning conveyed by irony is presupposition (and also downgraded predication, entailment and expectation) logically implying its own negation In Albee's masterpiece play, irony serves the game of exorcism.
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