La inadecuación contextual como propiedad para el reconocimiento de la ironía verbal: sus patrones de configuración

Within the framework of a larger research project aimed at the analysis of verbal irony from a pragmatic dimension, this paper focuses on the recognition phase of this mechanism. More specifically, we address the configuration of the incompatibility between the ironic utterance and the context, which triggers such recognition (Attardo 2000). The study is based on a corpus of 432 actual ironic examples produced in three different oral discourse genres (journalistic debate, interview and colloquial conversation). The results show that a) there are four patterns of construction of contextual inappropriateness –1) attribute-reality; 2) dictum-locutor; 3) modus-assumed knowledge; 4) argumentative structure-topos); and b) each of the identified binomials involves, on the one hand, an element of the utterance or enunciation, and, on the other, pragmatic information of a discursive or extra-discursive nature.