Reconocimiento e interpretación: dos fases en el análisis de la ironía verbal

This paper is part of a larger research that aims to achieve a clear and consistent pragmatic characterisation of verbal irony. Critical review of the preceding approaches has shown their failure to define this phenomenon. Nevertheless, the irony as relevant innappropriateness theory (Attardo, 2000) and the speech act analysis of irony (Haverkate, 1985) have been identified as potentially valid to explain how irony is recognised and understood, respectively. What we present here are the most significant results obtained after confronting these theories with the samples of an oral corpus of ironies in Spanish produced by us. The analysis has allowed us to corroborate the suitability of its basis, in addition to raising new assumptions about what type of contextual information activates the recognition and what other modes of interpretation of the ironic statement can occur apart from the prototypical one consisting of a contrary meaning. KeywoRds: verbal irony; pragmatic characterisation; recognition; understanding; corpus. sUmmARy: