Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Facts and questions about verbal irony 1.2 Rationale of the present study 1.3 Objectives of the present study 1.4 Methodology, terminology and data 1.5 Outline of the book
Chapter 2 Literature Review of Verbal Irony 2.1 Semantic study of verbal irony 2.2 Pragmatic study of verbal irony 2.2.1 Grice's theory of verbal irony 2.2.2 Verbal irony as insincere speech act 2.2.3 Leech's view of verbal irony 2.2.4 Brown and Levinson's view of verbal irony 2.3 Psycholinguistic study of verbal irony 2.3.1 Gibbs's direct access view of verbal irony 2.3.2 Giora's graded salience hypothesis 2.4 Summary
Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework of the Present Study 3.1 Relevance theory and discourse understanding 3.1.1 Relevance theory 3.1.2 Relevance-theoretic approach to context 3.1.3 Utterance understanding and poetic effects 3.2 Understanding ironic utterances within the relevance-theoretic framework 3.2.1 Echoic-interpretation theory of irony 3.2.2 Yus's model of irony comprehension 3.3 Applications of the relevance-theoretic approach to the analysis of literary texts 3.4 Summary
Chapter 4 Contextual Activation in the Relevance-Theoretic Framework and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 4.1 Encyclopedic, factual information 4.1.1 Macrosocial norms and factual information 4.1.2 Commonsense assumptions 4.1.3 Microsocial situational expectations 4.2 Mutually manifest physical environment(setting) 4.3 Speaker's nonverbal behavior 4.4 Addressee's background knowledge of addresser's biographical data 4.5 Mutual knowledge 4.6 Previous utterances in the conversation 4.7 Linguistic cues 4.8 Summary
Chapter 5 Criterion of Optimal Accessibility to Irony and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 5.1 Prototypicat case 1 : fast identification of dissociation 5.1.1 Verbal irony in the conversations between the characters 5.1.2 Verbal irony in the narrations of the narrator 5.2 Prototypical case 2 : slow identification of dissociation 5.3 Prototypical case 3: nonexistent identification of dissociation 5.4 Summary
Chapter 6 Poetic Effects in the Relevance-Theoretic Framework and Verbal Irony in Pride and Prejudice 6.1 Satirical humorous effect 6.1.1 Lexical cues 6.1.2 Syntactic cues 6.1.3 Stylistic cues 6.2 Joyous and cordial effect 6.3 Vigilant effect 6.4 Summary
Chapter 7 Conclusion 7.1 Summary of findings 7.2 Limitations of the present study 7.3 Suggestions for further research Bibliography
