This book offers a systematic, bottom-up account of irony across both everyday contexts and literary and linguistic texts, using an empirically rigorous approach in distinguishing between central irony, non-central ironies, and non-ironies and highlighting a new way forward for irony research. The volume considers the current landscape of irony, in which the term is used with increasing frequency with the knock-on effect of a loosening of its meaning. Pattison addresses this challenge by applying a systematic form of analysis, rooted in frameworks from pragmatics and complementary disciplines, to a database of over 500 irony candidates from a wide range of sources. The book uses these examples to illustrate the features of central ironies as well as the attributes used to differentiate between central ironies, non-central ironies, and non-ironies. These attributes are mapped across four key domains, including: difference and opposition; the role of context; how ironies are signaled; and speaker attitude and intention. Taken together, the volume puts forth a credible account for more clearly characterizing examples of irony and equips researchers with a comprehensive step-by-step method for undertaking future research. This book is key reading for scholars in stylistics, pragmatics, literary studies, and psycholinguistics.

Although the figure of irony has enjoyed extensive attention through important contributions to the diverse literatures addressing figurative thought and language, it still remains relatively in the background compared to other figures such as metaphor and metonymy. The present volume, together with a 2017 collection by Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston, aims to the further exploration of verbal and situational irony, its gestural accompaniments, its comprehension and interpretation, its constructional diversity and its cooperation with other figures such as metaphor and hyperbole. The present volume is a highly interesting collection of chapters dealing with both theoretical investigations and descriptive applications of a central figure pervading human thought and language. Its aim is to draw more attention to irony’s diversity and its concomitant connections to other aspects of figurativeness.

Can Shakespeare help us with the question of how to live? Re-Humanising Shakespeare argues that although Shakespeare himself contributed to the uncertainties of modern living, his work can still serve as a source of existential wisdom and guidance.The book examines through a wide range of Shakespeare's plays the conditions under which human beings flourish or perish. Love, ethics, emotion, vulnerability and humility are amongst the topics discussed as part of the book's argument that Shakespeare is continually at pains to reclaim the human from its complete liquefaction. Given the range and originality of its approach, Re-Humanising Shakespeare will make provocative reading for all those interested in Shakespeare, ethics and questions of literary value.

Bridges the gap between Plutarch Studies and Achaemenid Studies through analysis of key texts.

Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS), to three translations of a classic Chinese text, Zhao proposes a new model for linking translator positioning with translational norms in the target culture. Zhao combines the Appraisal model from SFL with a characterisation model to describe the role of translator positioning in character construction. Looking at three different translations of the classic Chinese novel Luotuo Xiangzi, she uses corpus tools to compare the opening and ending chapters of each translation, identifying textual patterns of translator positioning. She then analyses and compares the cover designs of the translated novels and reconstructs the translational norms governing the translator’s positioning in characterisation. In doing so she contributes to DTS by developing a systematic and consistent framework to analyse verbal and visual elements in translated novels. Her multimodal analysis also provides insights into the broader patterns of translated language. An insightful read for scholars interested in both theoretical and empirical approaches to translation studies.

This book explores ways in which common metaphors can play a detrimental role in everyday life; how they can grow in outsized importance to dominate their respective terrains and push out alternative perspectives; and how forms of resistance might act to contain their dominance. The volume begins by unpacking the dynamics of metaphors, their power and influence and the ways in which they are bolstered by other rhetorical devices. Adams draws on four case studies to illustrate their destructive impact when they eclipse other points of view—the metaphor of mental illness; the metaphor of free-flowing markets; the metaphor of the mind as a mirror and the metaphor of men as naturally superior. Taken together, these examples prompt further reflection on the beneficiaries of these "monster metaphors" and how they promote such metaphors to serve their own interests but also on ways forward for challenging their dominance, strategies for preventing their rise and ways of creating space for alternatives. This book will be of interest to scholars interested in the study of metaphor, across such fields as linguistics, rhetoric and media studies.

No detailed description available for "Phantom Formations".

"Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony" so wrote Kierkegaard. While we commonly think of irony as a figure of speech where someone says one thing and means the opposite, the concept of irony has long played a more fundamental role in the tradition of philosophy, a role that goes back to Socrates Ð the originator and exemplar of the urbane ironic life. But what precisely is Socratic irony and what relevance, if any, does it have for us today? Bernstein begins his inquiry with a critical examination of the work of two contemporary philosophers for whom irony is vital: Jonathan Lear and Richard Rorty. Despite their sharp differences, Bernstein argues that they complement one other, each exploring different aspects of ironic life. In the background of Lear’s and Rorty’s accounts stand the two great ironists: Socrates and Kierkegaard. Focusing on the competing interpretations of Socratic irony by Gregory Vlastos and Alexander Nehamas, Bernstein shows how they further develop our understanding of irony as a form of life and as an art of living. Bernstein also develops a distinctive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s famous claim that a life that may be called human begins with irony. Bernstein weaves together the insights of these thinkers to show how each contributes to a richer understanding of ironic life. He also argues that the emphasis on irony helps to restore the balance between two different philosophical traditions philosophy as a theoretical discipline concerned with getting things right and philosophy as a practical discipline that shapes how we ought to live our lives.

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of opinion-heavy texts on the Web: opinions of Internet users, comments on social networks, etc. Automating the synthesis of opinions has become crucial to gaining an overview on a given topic. Current automatic systems perform well on classifying the subjective or objective character of a document. However, classifications obtained from polarity analysis remain inconclusive, due to the algorithms' inability to understand the subtleties of human language. Automatic Detection of Irony presents, in three stages, a supervised learning approach to predicting whether a tweet is ironic or not. The book begins by analyzing some everyday examples of irony and presenting a reference corpus. It then develops an automatic irony detection model for French tweets that exploits semantic traits and extralinguistic context. Finally, it presents a study of portability in a multilingual framework (Italian, English, Arabic).

Textual Explorations General Editors- Mick Short, Lancaster University Elena Semino, Lancaster University The focus of this series is on the stylistic analysis of literary and non-literary texts, and the theoretical issues which such work raises. Textual Explorations will include books that cover studies of literary authors, genres and other groupings, stylistic studies of non-literary texts, translation study, the teaching of language and literature, the empirical study of literature, and corpus approaches to stylistics and literature study. Books in the series will centre on texts written in English. Readership of the series is mainly undergraduate and postgraduate students, although advanced sixth formers will also find the books accessible. The series will be of particular interest to those who study English language, English literature, text linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies. Language & Characterisation- People in Plays & Other Texts explores how the words of a text create a particular impression of a character in the reader's mind. Drawing together theories from linguistics, social cognition and literary stylistics, it is the first book-length study to focus on: the role of language and characterisation characterisation in the dialogue of play texts Containing numerous examples from Shakespeare's plays, the book also considers a wide range of other genres, including, prose fiction, verse, films, advertisements, jokes and newspapers. Language and Characterisation is as practical as it is theoretical and equips readers with analytical frameworks to reveal and explain both the cognitive and the linguistic sides of characterisation. Clear and detailed introductions are given to the theories, and useful suggestions for further analysis are also made at the end of each part of the book. The book will be essential reading for students and researchers of language, literature and communication.