On the social meaning of verbal irony

Whoever speaks or writes ironically expresses the contrary of what is said, rhetoric would have it. Approaches to verbal irony have been further differentiated in literary, linguistic, and psycholinguistic studies, but there is no consensus on what verbal irony is. We discuss how irony can be detected from the social constellations of its use. After reviewing the complementary foci of literary, linguistic, and psycholinguistic approaches to verbal irony and its social meaning, we analyze select instances of verbal irony in Kurt Tucholsky's Ratschläge für einen schlechten Redner ('Advice for a bad speaker'). We find that literary and linguistic approaches are fruitfully combined in analyzing verbal irony in the Ratschläge, suggesting that research on verbal irony and its social meaning benefits from a cross-disciplinary perspective that builds on the notion of common ground.