A Critique of Irony Theories

Irony study is drawing more and more attention from philosophers, psychologists and linguists as well as cognitive scientists, in that it will shed light on the comprehension process of nonliteral language,including metaphor. Meanwhile it will bring out the difference between irony and metaphor comprehension.This paper is mainly intended to make clear the following three issues concerning irony: motivation for irony, its nature, mechanism for distinguishing irony from non-irony through the critical reviewing of some major theories of irony, including their respective theoretical strengths and inadequacies. As the discussion shows,each theory has its own merits and values in the explanation of the different aspects of irony. The paper also outlines the possible areas and theoretical significance for future research.