A pragmatic approach of types and functions of irony in Hemingway's "Cat in the Rain"

Abstract EN

Although the notion of irony occurs frequently in the criticism of many works and many writers, little effort has been made to discuss the various possibilities for different types of irony and their manifestations in the literature.

This research is a textual examination of the different types and functions of irony in Hemingway’s "Cat in the Rain".

The notion of irony is usually synonymous with a straightforward form like satire with an accompanying contention of narratorial moral presupposition.

So, the present paper sets itself to deal with this notion from a pragmatic point of view.

More specifically, the study attempts to answer the following question: What are the pragmatic functions of the types of Irony used in the short story "Cat in the Rain"? Hence, the main aim of the paper is to answer the question raised previously, and according to this aim it is hypothesized that evaluation, persuasiveness and politeness constitute the pragmatic functions used in the short story and echoic and verbal irony are the most evident types of irony in the story.

For achieving the aim of the study and verifying or rejecting its hypothesis, a theoretical survey of the notion of irony and its types and pragmatic function is carried out to depend on in the analysis of the data under study.