IRONY AND SARCASM AS FIRST- ORDER METALINGUISTIC LABELS

Abstract

The corpus does not contain any instances of “ironically” lemma on part of scriptwriters, though their correlative “sarcastically” textual markers for defining speech act character make up 95% of the respective selection. Besides, while no situations are described with the help of “sarcastically” lemma, 96% of “ironically” labels are attributed to situations, so here the first-order data match prevalent second-order observations perfectly well. As to the actors’ labels for speech act character, both “ironically” and “sarcastically” lemmas in the corpus refer to their own utterances, which contradicts traditional second-order standpoints. Moreover, the use of a “near-to-performative” formula “I can’t sarcastically ask you…” may be evaluated as a pragmatically mal-formed act, comprising a metalinguistic comment which deprives irony of its essential constitutive feature – impliciteness.