A pragmatic study of irony in Iraqi Arabic

Abstract EN

The current study explores a significant communication mean namely irony.

Irony is one of the everyday communication means which is used by speakers to convey various purposes more than what is stated literary.

Irony is a notion which includes a wide range of implications and functions that could be positive or negative relying on the intention of the writer or the speaker.

Very few studies have been done on studying the irony in Iraqi Arabic from a pragmatic point of view.

This study investigates irony from a pragmatic perspective in one of the Iraqi TV shows.

The present study attempts to detect, analyze and discuss 133 verbal ironic situations found in six randomly selected episodes from a TV show.

It uses an eclectic model, which consists of Grice's (1975) model and Gibbs's (2000) model.

Grice (1975) presents cooperative principles and four maxims for effective communication.

These maxims are : the maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner.

The current research aims to identify the most flouted Grice's maxim during uttering ironic speeches, the pragmatic strategies used to create irony, and the reasons behind using irony.

The study hypothesized that the quality is the most flouted maxim during performing irony and ironists tend to use certain pragmatic strategies more than others.

The results show that most ironic situations in Iraqi Arabic are produced by flouting the maxim of quality, whereas sarcasm is noticed to be the most preferred pragmatic strategy in the production of irony (see figure 1).

In addition, mocking is used more by the presenter as a function of irony when the contestants do not know the answers or provide incorrect answers.

Whereas humor is used by the presenter and other contestants to add a sense of humor to their utterances.