Irony as an Impoliteness Tool: An Exploration of Irony’s Intentionality, Cancellability and Strength

This paper studies the ways in which verbal irony can be used as an impoliteness tool. In the recent literature there has been an effort to define verbal irony and its uses, but very little or no study has been done on the impolite function of irony. My research will explore the cancellability of irony, its intentionality and examines the hypothesis that irony’s strength can be either mitigated or enforced depending on the interlocutors’ power differences. Furthermore, this paper will account for the various views on sarcasm and irony and propose that people resort to irony to make criticism as it does not make them sound rude or socially inappropriate. Situational, dramatic and positive ironies are not part of this study.