Interpretation of Irony in Persian based on a Perceptual Perspective

Irony in the tradition of studying rhetoric refers to a word that has two meanings and the audience realizes its implicit meaning according to the circumstances. A look at the background of the study of irony shows that this device, which today is no longer limited to the field of literature and is generally used in everyday conversations of speakers, has always been confused with other processes such as metaphor, metonymy, implication, and so on. The present article, while referring to these overlaps, seeks to provide a clear and independent definition of irony, and, in particular, tries to provide an analytic-descriptive perspective with the help of various data from the in-context everyday sentences of Persian speakers. The perceptual approach lets us examine how irony is understood and interpreted. This study shows that speakers interpret irony by relying on perceptual context information, whether linguistic context (context A), situational context (context B) or pre-existing information in memory (context C). In the meantime, the existence of specific information in context C plays a major role, according to which, each sentence can be interpreted in its contradictory meaning.
 
1. Introduction
In the tradition of studying rhetoric, "irony" is presented in the form of two concepts: One is in the general sense - according to which a speech is ironic when it has two meanings, and the audience realizes its implicit meaning according to its explicit meaning - and the other carries a technical sense. A review of studies in the field of Persian literature shows that this widely used technique in the everyday conversations of language speakers has been confused with other concepts and processes, and finally, the overlaps have prevented the definition from being clear, precise and independent, so that "irony" can be distinguished from implicit meaning, metonymy, metaphor and other linguistic devices and meanings. The present article first tries to outline these overlaps and depict the inaccurate border of "irony" in the tradition of Persian literary studies and while examining this process in the field of linguistics and especially semantics, give a clear definition of it. In the next step, it will examine the interpretation of "irony" from a perceptual perspective to find out how this process can be interpreted by Persian speakers.
 
2. Theoretical Framework
Perceptual perspective is a design introduced by Koorosh Safavi, which is generally referred to as Perceptual Semantics. According to this view, the study of meaning begins with "human perception" with the help of his senses, and for this reason, it is called "perceptual". In Perceptual Semantics, "perception" through "inference" leads to a stage called "interpretation". This view studies meaning based on onomasiology and is a kind of sentence-based semantics. For this reason, it distances itself from the tradition of studying meaning in terms of words and tends toward the views of philosophers such as Kripke and Quine. If we consider each of the sensory information we obtain with the help of the five senses as a p, this p is interpreted as q, and a conditional relationship is established between the two, which is a conditional proposition displayed as p → q. This conditional proposition can be a prelude to the next inference. Thus, if we first interpret p → q and then q → r, we can reach the interpretation of p → r.
 
3. Methodology
The present study has been conducted within the framework of a perceptual approach in the form of a library and descriptive-analytical, relying on various data from spoken Persian.
 
4. Results and Discussion
Examining how to interpret irony from a perceptual perspective shows that, in addition to the function of the contextual layers A, B and C in the interpretation of the irony, the information of context C is particularly important. The situational context, or context B, plays an important role in interpreting irony. For example, if you and I are walking down the street, and, while someone approaches, I produce the sentence, “Go to that side and let this pencil pass,” you understand through the situational context that you have to interpret the sentence invertedly, because you see someone who is fat and can hardly pass between us. In addition to this type of information, there are other things that can help you interpret my sentence correctly through situational context. If I wink at you while producing this sentence, make movements with my eyes and eyebrows that my sentence is a little mischievous, or say that sentence with a smile, you can understand that I mean something else from what I have said. Now, if we were to deal only with linguistic context or context A, the situation would be a little different, because we are only dealing with a sentence that cannot be accompanied by visual information, blinking, facial gestures or a smile. In such cases, the sentences before and after our intended sentence as well as the information of context C can be helpful.
In the interpretation of irony, we have already recorded in our memory a sentence like this that "every sentence can be interpreted in a contradictory way". The presence of such a sentence in context C helps us interpret a sentence in its inverted or contradictory sense based on the circumstances in which we find ourselves, whether it is interpreted from a positive meaning to a negative meaning or vice versa; that is to say each sentence can have an inverted interpretation, and it is the linguistic context, situation, or both that determines how we should interpret the sentence in an inverted or contradictory form.
 
5. Conclusions & Suggestions
Examination of various data shows that "irony", that is the circumstances in which a word is used in a reverse meaning, cannot be a kind of metonymy, because in the metonymy, we encounter a kind of reduction, whereas in irony, there is no reduction in the sentence. Irony cannot be considered a metaphor, because the process of "metaphor" is formed based on a similarity between the tenor and the vehicle but in irony, we see contradiction and not similarity. Irony cannot be an implicit meaning because implicit meaning can be plotted in line with the explicit meaning and not in contradiction with it. Thus, irony is a process that must be addressed and examined independently.
 
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Saeed, J. 2016. Semantics (4^th ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.
Safavi, K. 2010. Wandering in the Philosophy of Literature. Tehran: Iranian Poets Association. [In Persian]
Safavi, K. 2014. An Introduction to the Semiotics of Literature. Tehran: Elmi Publications. [In Persian]
Safavi, K. 2017. Text Interpretation. Tehran: Elmi Publications. [In Persian]