ScholarWorks@경상국립대학교

초록

According to Lagerwerf (2007), although it has been known that irony of sarcastic purpose can hardly be used in commercial advertisements whose conclusion should be ended in a positive meaning, Kim and Ahn (2021) holds that sometimes even sarcastic irony can be used in comparative advertisements where the advertiser downgrades his rival company. Even though it has been held that irony is brought about when maxim of quality is blatantly violated or flouted since Grice (1975), Relevance Theory (e.g. Sperber and Wilson 1995) offers another alternative approach to treating irony: ‘echoic mentioning + rejection or dissociation.’ Instead of mobilising various maxims given by Grice (1975), Relevance Theory explains irony by a single principle of relevance, defining the nature of all types of irony use as echoic mentioning + rejection or dissociation. By verifying that it is possible to explain non-sarcastic irony as well as sarcastic one within a Relevance theoretic perspective, this paper makes a contribution to pursuing explanatory economy and strengthening theoretical expandability of Relevance Theory.

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