Gigantes contra molinosuna explicación pragmática de la ironía y el humor en publicidad
ISSN: 1139-1146
Year of publication: 2012
Issue Title: Cuestiones de Historia de la Lengua y documentos
Issue: 15
Pages: 251-267
Type: Article
More publications in: Revista de investigación lingüística (RIL)
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to analyze the ironic, humorous meaning from a pragmatic point of view. This proposal leads us to explain its productivity in advertising, as is shown by the analysis of the texts we have selected. To do so Grice�s defi nition of irony is revised, and an expanded version is presented; that is, irony is a particularized conversational implicature that may trigger the contradiction of what is said or the inversion of the standard inferential processes. Ironic meaning is closely related to humorous meaning, which is explained as the replacement of an activated semantic frame by a new one, which is unexpected. Thus both phenomena exhibit a contrastive nature that is in turn the responsible of their enormous potential as persuasive mechanisms.