Irony as a complex attitude

Verbal irony is a complex mode of communication which has attracted the attention of scholars from several different fields. Scientific and literary analyses have contributed to shedding light on specific aspects of irony, and have provided cumulating evidence of its protean nature and cognitive complexity. Attempts to pin down the nature of verbal irony in terms of antiphrasis have proved to be reductive. Indeed, a growing body of literature has pointed out that what is at stake in irony is not simply saying the opposite of what is meant but rather communicating an attitude. This insight, however, needs to be refined. In this paper irony is argued to be the emergent interpretation of a cluster of attitudes that may surface in different forms and modulate different interpretations of irony, ranging from gentle and jocular to more sarcastic and biting. The selective combination of some attitudes out of a higher order ATT is hypothesized to be at the basis of the different forms that irony may take and the different shades of interpretation that ironic utterances may trigger .