Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
1
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 2 NOUS
2
3 sarcastically a speaker A exploits a mutually shared assumption that he could
4 not plausibly have meant what he said. So, Grice says,
5
6 unless As utterance is entirely pointless, A must be trying to get across some
7 other proposition than the one he purports to be putting forward. This must
8 be some obviously related proposition; the most obviously related proposition
9 is the contradictory of the one he purports to be putting forward (1975/1989a,
10 34).
11
12 Because this explanation employs the same basic explanatory tools and form
13 of analysis as Gricean explanations of typical conversational implicatures,
14 sarcasm seems to fit nicely into Grices overall theoretical picture. The view
15 that in speaking sarcastically a speaker implicates the opposite of what she
16 actually says is so widely accepted that it rarely comes in for sustained inves-
17 tigation in recent debates among minimalists (e.g. Borg 2004, Cappelen and
18 Lepore 2005), indexicalists (e.g. Stanley 2000, Szabo 2001) and contextual-
19 ists (e.g. Travis 2000, Recanati 2004) about the relation between semantics,
20 pragmatics, and what is said.
21 Despite its storied pedigree and inherent plausibility, the standard impli-
22 cature view is vulnerable to attack from two very different directions. From
23 the left, as it were, semanticism argues that sarcasm is semantically encoded
24 at the level of logical form by an operator which inverts the literal mean-
25 ing of the word or clause to which it applies. Meanwhile, from the right,
26 expressivism denies that sarcasm or verbal irony is a matter of meaning at
27 all, arguing instead that it serves to draw attention to a disparity between
28 how things are and how they should be, and thereby expresses a dissocia-
29 tive attitude about some aspect of this disparity. I will argue that although
30 these two challengers locate sarcasm at opposing ends on the spectrum of
31 meaning, they each get something importantly right. At the same time, be-
32 cause they both insist that sarcasm always works in just one way, they each
33 fail to explain the full range of data. An adequate explanation requires a
34 more subtle and expansive understanding, not merely of sarcasm, but also
35 of meaning more generally.
36 More specifically, I will defend the claim that sarcasm involves a unified
37 operation of meaning inversion, which is manifested in distinct ways by four
38 different subspecies of sarcasm. All four varieties invert something that the
39 speaker pretends to mean (or presupposes someone else to have meant) rela-
40 tive to an evoked normative scale. But the target of the sarcasm, and the result
41 of the inversion, vary widely depending on the species involved. Propositional
42 sarcasm functions most like the traditional model, delivering an implicature
43 that is the contrary of a proposition that would have been expressed by a sin-
44 cere utterance. Lexical sarcasm delivers an inverted compositional value for
45 a single expression or phrase. Like-prefixed sarcasm commits the speaker
46 to the emphatic epistemic denial of a declarative utterances focal content.
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 4 NOUS
2
3 semantics. Ultimately, it drives us toward semantic skepticism, at whose
4 extreme semantics withers away entirely, leaving only syntax and pragmatics
5 (Chomsky 2000).
6 The semanticist challenger applies this general methodological bias for
7 semantic analyses to sarcasm by noting that it appears to display three
8 important marks of semantic status. First, it seems to be conventional, at least
9 in the sense of involving a specific operation on meaning which language
10 users learn to recognize and deploy.2 Second, it is tightly constrained by
11 sentence meaning, in a way that metaphorical meaning, for instance, is not.3
12 Its true that the relation between literal and sarcastic meaning is not just
13 one of simple negation (Fogelin 1988): the typical sarcastic meaning of an
14 utterance of
15
16 (1) Your plan sounds fantastic,
17
18
is not merely that the plan is not fantastic, but that its terrible. But the rela-
19
tion between the two meanings is still quite controlled: intuitively, the sarcas-
20
tic meaning is the contrary or opposite of the literal one. Third, sarcasm
21
is highly systematic in its application: nearly any sentence can be uttered sar-
22
castically in some context, with results that are largely predictable without
23
much information about the specific conversational context. Indeed, one can
24
often identify an utterance as sarcastic and discern its core intended mean-
25
ing in the absence of any contextual information, simply given its tone. In
26
all these respectsconventionality, constraint, and systematicitysarcasm
27
patterns with semantic meaning, and contrasts with other standard cases of
28
pragmatic meaning, such as Grices (1975/1989a) letter of recommendation.
29
If we wanted to reflect these features in our syntax, it would be plausible to
30
postulate a sarcasm operator, SARC. This might be represented in surface
31
form by an intonational contour involving heavy stress, slow rate, and nasal-
32
ization (Haiman 1998, Rockwell 2000). Semantically, it could take as input
33
a word, phrase, or sentential clause and return the most salient from among
34
a contextually-determined set of contrary items of the same syntactic type.
35
Eminences such as Grice (1989b, 53), Bach and Harnish (1979, 33), Zwicky
36
and Sadock (1978), and Potts (2005, 212) have all at least toyed with an
37
analysis along these lines. For instance, Bach and Harnish (1979, 33) write,
38
39
If . . . there is an intonational clue to the sarcastic reading, it seems that such
40 an utterance means the opposite of what it means without the change of in-
41 tonation, and so the speaker may well have said that Mac was a scoundrel
42 (or whatever). We see no reason to deny that there are characteristic sarcastic
43 intonation contours with semantic effects (emphasis in original).
44
45 A semantic rule along the lines of SARC isnt significantly more com-
46 plex than those that have been proposed to deal with quantifier domain
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 6 NOUS
2
3 The second specific argument for semanticism is that in many cases,
4 sarcastic interpretations can be embedded within more complex construc-
5 tions. This strongly suggests that sarcasm can enter into the compositional
6 process. And for many pro-semanticist theorists, compositionally-generated
7 content is intimately, even definitionally, connected with semantic content.
8 Such theorists (e.g. King and Stanley 2005, Stanley 2000, Szabo 2001) al-
9 low weak pragmatic effectsthe saturation of conventionally context-
10 sensitive expressionsto enter into composition, but deny that strong
11 pragmatic effects can affect what is said. Instead, they maintain that when-
12 ever the intuitive truth-conditions of a speakers utterance differ from the
13 truth-conditions we would expect to be delivered by semantic composition, a
14 more sophisticated theory will reveal either that some construction is seman-
15 tically context-sensitive, or else that the pragmatic effect is actually introduced
16 after the compositional determination of what is said has been completed.
17 Embedded sarcasm is a fairly commonplace and flexible phenomenon, as
18 the following examples attest:6
19
20 (2) Since youve already made so many scintillating points this evening, I
21 think you should let someone else voice their opinion.
22 (3) Because George has turned out to be such a diplomat, weve decided to
23 transfer him to Payroll, where hell do less damage.
24 (4) Because hes been such a fine friend, Ive struck him off my list.
25 (5) If Jane is as thrilled with our plan as Bill was, then were really in trouble.
26 (6) If Alice is so brilliant, then shell be the perfect dupe for our little plan.
(7) If you come to me with one more inspired idea like that, then youre out
27
of here.
28
(8) If you manage to generate one more half-baked, inconsequential idea like
29
that, then youll get tenure for sure.
30 (9) [Sun shining] If it continues to rain like this, Ill come to England more
31 often.7
32 (10) Im sure that the cat likes having its tail pulled.8
33
34 Utterances like these are not particularly strained or forced, and dont depend
35 upon highly specific conversational contexts. Ive offered a fair number to
36 suggest that they dont exploit any single construction. Thus, we cannot
37 simply dismiss such cases as inherently infelicitous, inappropriately artificial,
38 or utterly unusual.
39 Although King and Stanley (2005) are strong proponents of a semanti-
40 cist methodology, they do not endorse semanticism about sarcasm. On the
41 contrary, they assume that in non-literal speech, speakers knowingly ex-
42 press false propositions and thereby communicate true ones (2005, 159).
43 My claim is rather that their general arguments in favor of semanticism,
44 combined with the specific behavior displayed by sarcasm, suggest that they
45 themselves might be succumbing to precisely the sort of prejudicial assump-
46 tion about what can and cannot count as semantic that they warn us against.
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 8 NOUS
2
3 You didnt catch on; I was in an ironical way drawing your attention to the
4 broken window. The absurdity of this exchange is I think to be explained by the
5 fact that irony is intimately connected with the expression of a feeling, attitude,
6 or evaluation. I cannot say something ironically unless what I say is intended
7 to reflect a hostile or derogatory judgment or a feeling such as indignation or
8 contempt.
9
10 The connection to a critical attitude, and specifically contempt, is bolstered
11 by the observation that the intonational contour(s) associated with irony
12 is closely related to the expression of negative emotion.10 However, Wilson
13 (2006, 1727) argues that something more specific is required than just the
14 presence of a critical attitude:
15
16 When some hooligan breaks my car window, I may well feel critical of him
17 (or his behaviour). However, in normal circumstances, I could not rationally
18 attempt to convey this feeling by saying, in an ironical tone of voice, Look, my
19 car has all its windows intact.
20
21 Wilson suggests that the speaker also must be echoing, in order to criticize,
22 some previous thought. For instance, Grices ironic statement would become
23 felicitous if uttered in light of a previous exchange about vandalism, where
24 one party claimed that cars in the neighborhood are generally in excellent
25 condition.
26 Wilson, and expressivists more generally, are right to draw attention to the
27 crucial role that both evaluative attitudes and evoked thoughts play in verbal
28 irony. But this doesnt establish their core negative claim: that irony does not
29 involve the inversion of meaning. Implicature theorists can address this first
30 argument by adding two further clauses to their analysis: a presupposition
31 that someone else has endorsed the content that she makes as if to say, and an
32 implicature that the speaker evaluates this content negatively. Similarly, a se-
33 manticist might claim that a felicitous use of SARC presupposes that someone
34 has endorsed the embedded content, and that SARC delivers a two-pronged
35 value as its output: the truth-conditional contrary of the embedded content,
36 and a negative evaluation of that embedded content. Many semanticists re-
37 ject the inclusion of non-truth-conditional features within semantics, and so
38 this option would not be open to them. But they could still treat the negative
39 evaluation as a conventional implicature, as several theorists have done for
40 slurs (e.g. Williamson 2009).
41 The second expressivist argument does aim to establish the negative claim
42 that irony is not a matter of the speakers meaning the opposite of what
43 she says. The general point is that the target of an ironic attitudewhat
44 the irony operates onis often something at the level of the overall prag-
45 matic effects that would be generated by a sincere utterance, rather than the
46 uttered sentences semantic value or its assertoric content. Insofar as irony
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 10 NOUS
2
3 position would significantly raise the cost of semanticism about sarcasm, by
4 broadening the range of phenomena that require a semantic analysis.14
5 Where Stern (2000) uses the order of interpretation in combined cases
6 to argue that metaphor is semantic, Bezuidenhout (2001, 161) takes it to
7 show that metaphor belongs to what is said, where this is understood in
8 contextualist terms, as content determined via pragmatic enrichment and
9 modulation. She then treats irony as the contrary of what is said, in keeping
10 with a traditional implicature model. So far as combined cases of metaphor
11 and irony like (11) go, this is a viable view.15 However, both semanticist
12 and implicature accounts of irony are strongly challenged by the fact that
13 irony can target, not just contextually enriched what is said, but also the
14 implicatures that a sincere utterance would have generated. Indeed, often
15 enough the implicature is the ironys only target. For instance, an ironic
16 utterance of
17
18 (15) You sure know a lot.
19
20
need not take issue with the proposition that the addressee is knowledge-
21
able; rather, the speakers scorn may be directed exclusively at the pretended
22
implicature that this is admirable. Similarly, an ironic utterance of
23
24
(16) The hotel room costs a thousand dollars a night. Of course, for that you
25
get a half bottle of Australian champagne and your breakfast thrown in.
26
(Bredin 1997, 7)
27
28
targets just the implicature that the rooms apparently high expense is signif-
29
icantly offset by the half bottle of Australian champagne and breakfast; the
30
sentence meaning is itself presented straight. Likewise, in the most likely
31
interpretation of the following exchange, with Bs utterance employing an
32
artificially cheery tone,
33
34
(17) A: Im sorry Aunt Louisa is such a bother.
35
36 B: Oh, she never stays for more than a month at a time, and she always
37 confines her three cats to the upper two floors of our house.
38
39 B does genuinely assert the utterances semantic content; only the implicature
40 that such visits are no imposition is ironic. And in
41
42 (18) Would you mind very much if I asked you to consider cleaning up your
43 room some time this year?
44
45 only the manner of speech is ironic, along with the correlative implicature
46 that the request is supererogatory.
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 12 NOUS
2
3 by a sincere utterance. The most decisive examples involve ironic questions,
4 orders, and expressives. For instance, by uttering
5
6 (19) Thanks for holding the door.
7
8 the speaker doesnt thank the hearer for not holding the door, or for any
9 other contrary proposition. Rather, she pretends that he has held the door
10 and deserves thanks for doing so, where this pretense then draws attention
11 to the fact that he rudely allowed the door to shut. Similarly, by uttering
12
13 (20) How old did you say you were?
14
15 to someone acting childish, or
16
17 (21) Could I entice you to eat another small slice of pizza?
18
19 to someone who has gobbled up the bulk of the pie, the speaker doesnt sin-
20 cerely ask any question at all; instead, she pretends to ask a question in or-
21 der to point out the addressees immaturity or rudeness (Kumon-Nakamura
22 1995, 4).
23 Philosophers and linguists tend to focus almost exclusively on assertion
24 in their theorizing about language. Often enough, this restriction is not just
25 innocuous, but positively useful. But it also makes it easy to neglect the
26 significant role played by illocutionary force. In particular, the illocutionary
27 force most plausibly contrary to assertion is denial; and it is natural to
28 think of denial as the assertion of the original propositions negation (Frege
29 1918, Geach 1965). Analogously, an exclusive focus on assertive cases of
30 irony also makes it appear natural to treat irony as communicating the
31 contrary of the proposition literally expressed. However, this model breaks
32 down dramatically when applied to irony directed at illocutionary act types
33 other than assertion. Most illocutionary acts dont have plausible opposites,
34 let alone ones that can be analyzed as the same force directed at a logically
35 related proposition. As a result, ironic speech acts other than assertion often
36 cannot be analyzed in exclusively propositional terms. Because standard
37 theories of speakers meaning focus on propositional meaning (meaning
38 that p), it is not at all clear either that the speaker does mean anything in
39 these cases, nor in what sense what is meant could be the opposite of what
40 is said.
41 Examples like (19) through (21) also provide strong evidence for the pos-
42 itive expressivist model. Intuitively, these examples do involve the speaker
43 pretending to make a certain speech act in order to draw attention to some
44 disparity between the actual circumstances and the circumstances in which
45 that speech act would be appropriate, and thereby to disparage some aspect
46 of the current situation.17
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 14 NOUS
2
3 single sentence. However, this bifurcating analysis does not cover the cases
4 of embedded sarcasm that we discussed in 1, where the sarcasm contributes
5 an inverted meaning to the compositional determination of a propositional
6 content which is itself put forward with genuine force. Unlike (22) and (23),
7 cases like
8
9 (2) Since youve already made so many scintillating points this evening, I think
10 you should let someone else voice their opinion.
11 (3) Because George has turned out to be such a diplomat, weve decided to
12 transfer him to Payroll, where hell do less damage.
13 (4) Because hes been such a fine friend, Ive struck him off my list.
14 (5) If Jane is as thrilled with our plan as Bill was, then were really in trouble.
15 (6) If Alice is so brilliant, then shell be the perfect dupe for our little plan.
16
17 become uninterpretable if the sarcastic material is simply deleted from the
18 asserted content.20
19 None of this is to deny that something importantly echoic, allusional, or
20 pretending is operative in these embedded cases, along with the expression
21 of an evaluative attitude. But by itself, this is compatible with the possibil-
22 ity that the echoing or pretense ultimately contributes an inverted meaning
23 to the compositional determination of a genuinely asserted content. The
24 clear actualization of this possibility in cases of embedded sarcasm like (2)
25 through (6) falsifies the negative expressivist claim that there is no meaning
26 inversion.
27
28
29 3.2: Like-Prefixed Sarcasm
30 The second class of cases constitute a still clearer counterexample to the
31 negative expressivist claim. In many dialects of American English, there is a
32 form of explicit sarcasm which prefixes the relevant sentence with Like or
33 As if and employs a sneering tone, as in
34
35 (24) Like thats a good idea.
36
37 This use isnt just a crazy invention of contemporary American adolescents:
38 its also found in (at least) German, as als ob (as if), in Russian, as mozhno
39 podumat (It is possible to think), and in French, as si tu crois (if you
40 think) (Haiman 1998). In many cases, like (24), sarcastic utterances with and
41 without Like feel like stylistic variants: Like seems like just one more way,
42 along with hyperbole and dripping tone, for a speaker to provide explicit cues
43 to her sarcastic intent. In other cases, though, sarcastic utterances prefixed
44 with Like display marked, systematic differences from bare sarcasm. (For
45 a fuller discussion, see Camp and Hawthorne 2008.) First, sarcastic Like
46 is only felicitous when combined with declarative sentences. Thus, none of
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 16 NOUS
2
3 NPIs are expressions, like ever, any, yet, lift a finger and budge an
4 inch, which are syntactically restricted to environments with certain inferen-
5 tial properties. Thus, NPIs occur happily in simple sentences containing the
6 determiner No, but cannot occur when No is replaced by Some:
7
8 (28) No dog has ever bothered me./No dog has any courage.
9 (29) #Some dog has ever bothered me./#Some dog has any courage.
10
11 There are many NPI licensers, and its a matter of significant controversy
12 what distinctive property they all share. One important trait displayed by
13 many licensers is downward monotonicity (Ladusaw 1979): from the truth
14 of sentences like those in (28), one can infer the truth of a more restrictive
15 claim, as in
16
17 (30) No yellow dog has ever bothered me./No yellow dog has any courage.
18
19 This cant be the whole story about NPI licensing, not least because an-
20 tecedents of conditionals and questions also license NPIs, but arent down-
21 ward entailing in any straightforward sense (Fauconnier 1978, Heim 1984,
22 Progovac 1994, Zwarts 1995). Further, the relevant notion of entailment
23 seems to be closer to contextually-justified inference than to semantic en-
24 tailment (Linebarger 1987, Krifka 1995, Israel 1996, von Fintel 1999). The
25 precise characterization and explanation of these licensing environments thus
26 remains a matter of heated dispute, although several theorists have focused
27 on a connection with scalar implicature (e.g. Kadmon and Ladman 1993,
28 Israel 2001, Chierchia 2004), which well return to in 4.4.
29 The remarkable fact about Like-prefixed sarcasm is that it clearly and
30 consistently licenses NPIs where bare sarcasm does not.21 Thus,
31
32 (31) {Like/As if} I was going to give him any money.
33
34 is perfectly fine, on a par with
35
36 (32) Its not true that I was going to give him any money./I wasnt going to
37 give him any money.
38
39 while
40
41 (33) # I was going to give him any money.
42
43 is terrible, even with a drippingly scornful intonation. This pattern generalizes
44 quite freely: Like licenses nearly all NPIs, including strong NPIs like yet
45 and lift a finger, which require not just that their licenser be downward
46 monotonic, but also anti-additive22 :
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 18 NOUS
2
3 (41) No, tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but tis
4 enough, twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave
5 man.
6
7 At the same time, there is also wide agreement that the two phenomena are
8 closely related. Many people use the terms nearly interchangeably. More im-
9 portantly, expressivists have taken themselves to be showing that traditional
10 theorists like Quintillian and Grice are wrong in their analysis of a relatively
11 unified and encompassing class of utterances, of which utterances like
12
13 (1) Your plan sounds fantastic.
14 (42) Hes a fine friend.
15
16 are paradigmatic instances.25 Merely imposing different labels does nothing
17 to elucidate how the various phenomena actually work, and threatens to
18 distract us from a close examination of their similarities and differences.
19 Although we should expect some vague and ragged boundaries, I think
20 we can develop a fairly systematic and substantive topography of the overall
21 terrain if we begin by characterizing the genus of verbal irony, and then
22 home in on sarcasm as a potentially more restricted class. In the end, I
23 believe an analysis of sarcasm in terms of meaning inversion can explain all
24 of the examples discussed both by traditional implicature theorists and by
25 expressivistsso long as we are prepared to construe meaning more broadly
26 than just semantic meaning, what is said, or even propositional speakers
27 meaning, and instead as encompassing a speakers reflexive intention to be
28 recognized as holding some attitude.
29 The best characterization of the broad genus of verbal irony, I believe,
30 derives from Kumon-Nakamura et als (1995) allusional pretense theory.
31 Their view consists of two claims, each generalizing the core commitment of
32 the two main expressivist rivals. First, ironic utterances are allusive, in the
33 sense of call[ing] the listeners attention to some expectation that has been
34 violated in some way; where this violation of expectation itself entails a
35 discrepancy between what is expected (what should be) and what actually
36 is (Kumon-Nakamura et al 1995, 5). Typically, a speaker draws attention
37 to this discrepancy in order to communicate a negative evaluation of the
38 actual circumstances; but as Kumon-Nakamura et al note, the expressed
39 attitude may also be positive.26 Second, ironic utterances involve pretense,
40 in the sense that the speech act is presented as not being straightforwardly
41 genuine or sincere.27
42 I think this view is basically correct, as far as it goes. The fundamental
43 problem with expressivism lies in its negative claim that irony doesnt involve
44 meaning inversion. To their credit, Kumon-Nakamura et al remain fairly
45 neutral about this negative claim; however, they also remain studiously silent
46 about how meaning inversion, if it were to exist, might work. I believe that if
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 20 NOUS
2
3 when the relationship between speaker and hearer is antagonistic, as is often
4 the case in sarcastic exchanges.
5 So far, Ive just spelled out and motivated Kumon-Nakamura et als appeal
6 to allusion in a little more detail, as a form of conspicuous presupposition.
7 Kumon-Nakamura et al present allusion as a single criterion. But for our
8 purposes, it is more useful to separate it into two distinct factors: appealing
9 to an established expectation, and drawing attention to the violation of
10 this expectation. This provides the basis for two of our criteria. First, in
11 place of Kumon-Nakamura et als general appeal to an expectation, I
12 propose that sarcasm always presupposes or at least evokes a normative scale,
13 according to which some quality, person, fact, or situation X is valorized,
14 and others comparatively disvalued, in some ranked order.29 Second, in place
15 of their criterion of drawing attention to a violation of expectation, I propose
16 that sarcasm always involves some sort of inversion of the evoked scale. In
17 the canonical case, the speaker pretends to treat some situation, person, or
18 feature Y as falling at the top of the scale, and thereby communicates that Y
19 lies at or near the bottom. In cases of positive sarcasm, though, the situation
20 is reversed. In either case, it is precisely because Y so flagrantly departs from
21 the normative value exemplified by X, either positive or negative, that it
22 warrants being assigned the contrary value from what the speaker pretends
23 to express.
24 The third modification to Kumon-Nakamura et als view centers on the
25 role of pretense or insincerity. As I noted in 2, one of their papers great
26 virtues was to bring attention to non-assertional irony, which cannot be
27 analyzed propositionally. In establishing this general point, they also cited
28 ironic assertions, such as
29
30 (18) You sure know a lot.
31
32 where the speaker is genuinely committed to the literally encoded content.
33 However, they failed to note the full significance of these sorts of examples:
34 that the insincerity associated with sarcasm can be very precisely targeted.
35 Different types of sarcasm take different scopes, and thereby produce very
36 different illocutionary and rhetorical results.
37 Putting these modifications to Kumon-Nakamura et als view together
38 with a modified version of the traditional claim about meaning inversion,
39 we get the view that sarcastic utterances presuppose a normative scale; they
40 pretend to undertake (or at least, evoke) one commitment with respect to this
41 scale; and they thereby communicate some sort of inversion of this pretended
42 commitment. The sarcastic pretense can take four different scopes. Propo-
43 sitional sarcasm targets and inverts a proposition that would have been asso-
44 ciated with a sincere assertion of the uttered sentence; lexical sarcasm targets
45 just a single expression or phrase within the uttered sentence; Like-prefixed
46 sarcasm targets the focal content of an embedded declarative sentence; and
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 22 NOUS
2
3 (17) A: Im sorry Aunt Louisa is such a bother.
4 B: Oh, she never stays for more than a month at a time, and she always
5 confines her three cats to the upper two floors of our house.
6
7 In (17), B evokes a scale of ease and burdensomeness of guests and pretends
8 to implicate that Aunt Louisas described actions place her at the easy end
9 of the scale, but thereby implicates the contrary proposition: that her visits
10 are quite burdensome.
11 Although these cases make trouble for a traditional view of sarcasm as
12 meaning the opposite of what is said, they do not undermine the more
13 general claim that sarcasm implicates the contrary of some proposition
14 associated with the utterance. In every case of propositional sarcasm, the
15 targeted proposition P is associated in some, perhaps merely pragmatic
16 way, with some evaluative scale; and the speaker implicates the contrary
17 of P with respect to that scale, along with a correlative evaluative attitude
18 toward Q.
19 It might seem paradoxical that a speaker could implicate Q without first
20 making a genuine assertion or other direct illocutionary act. In particular, I
21 said in 4.1 that sarcastic speakers often attempt to manipulate the common
22 ground without making a move that is itself recorded on the conversational
23 scoreboard. But many theorists take a speakers meaning P to be equiva-
24 lent to her recording her commitment to P on the scoreboard (Lewis 1979,
25 Brandom 1983). Thus, perhaps either the speaker of a sarcastic utterance
26 like
27
28 (1) Your plan sounds fantastic.
29
30 must really be asserting that the plan is terrible, as Bach and Harnish (1979,
31 74) claim; or else she must not really mean that it is terrible at all, as expres-
32 sivists maintain.
33 I think it is important to explaining the nuanced rhetorical role of these
34 sarcastic utterances that the speaker merely implicates, and does not assert or
35 otherwise directly commit herself to, the inverted content Q. Assertion, I take
36 it, is an act of open and overt illocutionary commitment: a matter of placing
37 oneself on the conversational record as committed to a certain attitude or
38 content. But a speaker employing propositional sarcasm does not directly
39 and overtly commit herself to Q in this way; this is what makes her utterance
40 a kind of communicative bluff. As a result, a flat-footed hearer can call
41 this bluff by responding as if the speaker really did mean P. For instance,
42 a hearer H might respond to a sarcastic utterance of (1) with something
43 like:
44
45 (44) Since youre so enthusiastic, lets have you present the plan to the Dean
46 at next weeks meeting.
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 24 NOUS
2
3 speaker does not mean what she says makes her vulnerable to a flat-footedly
4 literal response (Camp 2006a). And here too, the fact that the speaker does
5 not explicitly say what she means allows her some leeway about the precise
6 content of her claim. However, in contrast both to sarcasm and to utterances
7 which merely juxtapose the two subjects that a metaphor yokes together,
8 the speaker of a metaphor cannot deny that she has committed herself to
9 some content or other by her utteranceeven if her main perlocutionary
10 aim is to induce a non-propositional perspective on the subject in the hearer
11 (Camp 2008). Thus, while expressivists about sarcasm and metaphor are
12 right to emphasize that both of these figures of speech engage in something
13 other than just the communication of propositions, they seriously miscon-
14 strue the communicative role that both sorts of figurative utterances actually
15 play.30 Further, because both expressivists and implicature theorists neglect
16 the fine-grained rhetorical and conversational consequences of sarcasm and
17 metaphor, they miss out on important differences between them.
18 What, then, about the other side of the coin: if speakers dont assert the
19 inverted contents in sarcastic utterances like (1) and (41) through (43), why
20 should we think that they mean those contents at all? Bach and Harnish
21 (1979, 101), for instance, hold that devious acts of innuendo, deliberate
22 ambiguity, and sneaky presupposition do not count as cases of speakers
23 meaning, precisely because these acts are designed to preserve deniability. The
24 only way to achieve deniability, they think, is for the speaker to intend that
25 her intention to get the hearer to think Q not itself be recognized by the hearer
26 as her communicative intention; and if that is right, then such devious acts
27 lack the reflexive structure essential to speakers meaning (cf. also Lepore
28 and Stone, forthcoming). I agree that some sorts of devious communicative
29 acts, such as subliminal advertising, lack reflexive intentions. But innuendo,
30 hints and insinuations are not like this: in these cases, the speaker does intend
31 for the hearer to recognize that she is trying to communicate some attitude;
32 and she intends for his recognition of her intention to play a crucial role in his
33 making sense of her utterance. That is, she does intend for her communicative
34 intentions to be manifest to the hearer. Its just that she doesnt intend those
35 intentions to be fully publically manifest, in a way that would allow even
36 someone who was not fully attuned to the specific, nuanced presuppositions
37 operative in that particular conversation to recover her meaning.
38 By trading on this gap between what is mutually believed by the immediate
39 conversationalists and what would be mutually believed by a wider, less
40 informed audience, the speaker preserves at least the technical rhetorical
41 right to pretend that she was not assuming the truth of presuppositions that
42 are in fact crucial to deriving her actually intended meaning. The degree of
43 deniability available to the speaker depends on how specific the operative
44 assumptions are to the particular conversation at hand, and how highly
45 explicit or salient they are within that conversation. At the same time, in
46 canonical cases of sarcasm where the speaker neither means what she says
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 26 NOUS
2
3 one hand, they may allude to some mutually recognized and highly salient
4 features(s) in the world which obviously warrant the opposite evaluation
5 from the one the speaker pretends to express, as in (3). On the other hand,
6 they may allude to a previous, genuine evaluation of the same subject with
7 the opposite valence from the one the speaker now pretends to express, as in
8 (8), or
9
10
(6) If Alice is so brilliant, then shell be the perfect dupe for our little plan,
11
12
13
which is felicitous only if another conversational participant has just de-
14
scribed Alices various intellectual blunders, or if Alices great ineptitude is
15
otherwise extremely salient.31
16
The speaker of an utterance containing lexical sarcasm does undertake a
17
genuine primary assertion or other illocutionary act: for instance, an utter-
18
ance of
19
20 (47) Get your witty, sophisticated friends out of here now, before they cause
21 any more damage.
22
23 does order the hearer to remove his friends. Further, the inverted normative
24 value is not itself merely implicated; at least when located in an appropriate
25 syntactic position, it contributes compositionally to the content of what is
26 asserted, ordered, or asked.32 This both considerably lessens the speakers
27 deniability, and makes flat-footedly literal responses along the lines of (44)
28 more difficult, because there is often no coherent alternative assertion or
29 other primary speech act which the speaker could pretend to have been
30 intending to make, or which the hearer could insist on construing the speaker
31 as having undertaken.
32 Although in principle propositional and lexical sarcasm differ signifi-
33 cantly, in practice they can be difficult to tell apart, as in:
34
35 (1) Your plan sounds fantastic.
36 (42) Hes a fine friend.
37 (48) Thats a brilliant idea.
38 (49) Thats a good idea.
39 (50) Im sure Jane will be thrilled to hear your good news.
40
41 In some cases there may be no determinate fact of the matter about which
42 type of sarcasm the speaker intended. But often, we can discern some dif-
43 ferences between the two types. First, lexical sarcasm tends to employ an
44 intonational contour emphasizing the targeted evaluative expression, while
45 propositional sarcasm more nearly approaches an exaggerated version of a
46 normal contour. (So, for instance, sarcastic utterances of (1) and (48) are
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 28 NOUS
2
3 flat-footedly sincere replies along the lines of (44) are ruled out, and speak-
4 ers cannot object to reports of them as having committed themselves to the
5 denial of that content. For instance, a speaker who uttered
6
7 (37) Like Ive talked to George in weeks.
8
9 cannot pretend to have intended to claim that she has in fact spoken to
10 George recently, and could fairly be reported as having denied speaking with
11 George recently; while even a speaker who employed a heavily sneering tone
12 to utter
13
14 (51) Oh, I talk with George all the time.
15
16 could pretend, albeit disingenuously, that her utterance was sincere, and
17 could technically object to such an indirect report.35
18 Given that a speaker employing Like-prefixed sarcasm does undertake a
19 primary illocutionary act and not just an implicature, and given that sarcastic
20 Like only combines with declarative sentences, it might seem natural to
21 analyze sarcastic Like and As if as forms of sentential negation, perhaps
22 as simply elliptical for Its not like/as if. This would support the intuition
23 that in many cases, such as
24
25 (24) Like thats a good idea,
26
27 the insertion of Like appears to function as a stylistic variant on bare
28 sarcasm, and suggests that we might be able to subsume Like-prefixed
29 sarcasm within propositional sarcasm. However, in Camp and Hawthorne
30 2008, we argue that the distinctive behavior of Like-prefixed sarcasm is bet-
31 ter captured by analyzing Like in illocutionary terms. More specifically, we
32 propose that Like encodes a function from propositions to a force/content
33 complex with denial as its illocutionary act type.36 This model explains most
34 of the distinctive syntactic constraints displayed by Like: its restriction to
35 declarative sentences; its prohibition from the consequents of conditionals;
36 and its incompatibility with illocutionary adverbs like luckily or unfortu-
37 nately. It also offers a better explanation for the infelicity of replying to
38 Like-prefixed utterances with Thats true/false, and of substituting Like-
39 prefixed sentences for Its not true that/Its not like P in response to previous
40 utterances. Finally, it can explain the infelicity of reporting speakers beliefs
41 with demonstratives which are anaphoric on Like-prefixed sentences, as in
42
43 (52) Like Alan has any money. #She believes that.
44
45 On our account, such reports are ruled out because the demonstrative in
46 the second sentence has as its referent an illocutionary act rather than a
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 30 NOUS
2
3 (48 L ) Like thats a brilliant idea.
4
5
even though the bare sarcastic counterpart of (48 L ) (that is, [48]) would be at
6
least as if not more natural than the bare counterpart of (24) (that is, [49]).
7
Worse, the contents of many Like-prefixed sentences, such as
8
9
10 (55) Like shes coming to your party.
11
12 lack any obvious connection to an evaluative scale at all.
13 To uncover the role that evaluative scales play in Like-prefixed sarcasm,
14 and to see more clearly the role of evocation or allusion, it is useful to re-
15 turn to the most surprising feature of sarcastic Like: its licensing NPIs.
16 A variety of theorists have argued that polarity items are intimately con-
17 nected to scales, and that NPI licensers in particular are scale reversing
18 contexts. More specifically, although the details of their accounts differ con-
19 siderably, Kadmon and Landman (1993), Israel (1996, 2001) and Chierchia
20 (2004, 2009) have all argued that NPI licensing involves emphatic exhaus-
21 tion: the emphatic presentation of content in a way that rules out all of its
22 alternatives along some scale. Canonical minimizing NPIs, like any and a
23 wink, denote a maximally minimal quantity. As a result, in positive contexts
24 they make extremely weak, irrelevantly trivial statements. But once they are
25 embedded in scale reversing contexts like negation, they produce extremely
26 strong statements, by ruling out the possibility that any alternatives higher
27 on the scale might obtain.39
28 By themselves, these observations dont get us very far in the analysis of
29 Like: even if NPIs do evoke scales, the evoked scale need not be a normative
30 one; and many sentences embedded under Like dont contain NPIs at all.
31 However, I want to suggest that Like itself serves as an operator of emphatic
32 exhaustion, and so that it expresses a strong evaluative attitude which locates
33 the embedded content at the extreme end of a scale, just as our account of
34 sarcasm predicts. More specifically, the speakers use of Like in (55) doesnt
35 merely deny the content expressed by the embedded sentence: it expresses
36 the speakers evaluation of that content as falling at the very low end of
37 the scale of epistemic probability, and thereby exhausts or rules out the
38 assignment of any higher epistemic value to it. Further, the emphatic nature
39 of the speakers evaluation expresses scorn toward any higher assignment of
40 probability to that content.40
41 Finally, the scale of epistemic probability is clearly presupposed, in a way
42 that further supports our illocutionary analysis in terms of denial. An ut-
43 terance of (55), like denials generally, only makes sense against the back-
44 ground of a presupposition that someonewhether the addressee or some
45 other salient partyendorses at least the probability, if not the actuality, of
46 the described situation. Indeed, the role of presupposition in Like-prefixed
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 32 NOUS
2
3 should combine more effectively with the weaker than the stronger positive
4 evaluation.
5
6 4.5: Illocutionary Sarcasm
7 The final species of sarcasm to consider is what I am calling illocutionary
8 sarcasm. These are cases, like those offered by Kumon-Nakamura et al, where
9 the sarcasms scope encompasses not just some element within the uttered
10 sentence, or some proposition associated with the utterance, but the entire
11 illocutionary act that a sincere utterance of the relevant sentence would have
12 undertaken. Often, as we saw, this targets speech acts with an illocutionary
13 force other than assertion:
14
15 (19) Thanks for holding the door.
16 (20) How old did you say you were?
17 (21) Could I entice you to eat another small slice of pizza?
18
19 It can also include the full range of implicatures, including especially im-
20 plicatures that express evaluative attitudes such as pity, admiration, or
21 surprise.
22 These are the cases for which a pretense account seems most apt: the
23 speaker makes as if to undertake a certain speech act S, where S would
24 be appropriate in some counterfactual situation X that contrasts with the
25 current situation Y . They are also the cases that seem least amenable to an
26 analysis in terms of meaning inversion. Nonetheless, I think that normative
27 scales and meaning inversion still play an important role in all of the examples
28 discussed.
29 Examples like (19) through (21) function, just as expressivists claim, to
30 evoke or allude to a situation X in which their sincere utterance would be
31 apt; and they thereby draw attention to a disparity between X and the actual
32 circumstances Y . But that disparity always has a specific structure: the two
33 situations occupy opposite extremes of an evoked scale, and the speakers
34 utterance draws attention to the fact that Y lies at the opposite or inverse end
35 from X. As a result, these utterances serve to express an evaluative attitude
36 toward the actual circumstances Y which is the opposite of the attitude that
37 they pretend to express toward X. For instance, in (19) the speaker pretends
38 to undertake an utterance which would be appropriate if the addressee had
39 held the door, where door-holding ranks high on a scale of politeness. This
40 pretense draws attention to the disparity between that evoked situation and
41 the actual one, and thereby communicates the speakers evaluation of the
42 addressees actual behavior as rude. Likewise, in (21), the speaker pretends to
43 ask a question which would be appropriate in a situation where the addressee
44 was behaving maturely for his age, and by drawing attention to the disparity
45 between this situation and the actual one, expresses her evaluation of the
46 addressees behavior as immature.41
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 34 NOUS
2
3 truth-conditional. Speakers regularly undertake such commitments in ordi-
4 nary conversation, by exploiting both conventional and rational interpretive
5 mechanisms in all the usual ways: for instance, by employing thick and thin
6 moral terms and slurs, and by speaking metaphorically. An adequate theory
7 of meaning, and not just of sarcasm, needs to explain this.
8
9
10 5. Implications and Conclusions
11 Although sarcasm has received considerably less attention from philosophers
12 of language than metaphor, it arguably presents more interesting challenges
13 for them. (Metaphor may hold more important lessons for philosophers of
14 mind, however). The traditional implicature model, its upstart semanticist
15 cousin, and its expressivist adversary all assume an overly narrow and simpli-
16 fied model of meaning and communication, which prevents them from cap-
17 turing the nuanced interactions that sarcasm exploits between conventional
18 meaning and speakers manipulation of it, and between the determination
19 of truth-conditions and the expression of attitudes. I hope to have developed
20 a more adequate, unified, and substantive account of sarcasm. On my view,
21 sarcasm always evokes a normative scale, always pretends to undertake one
22 commitment or express one attitude with respect to this scale (or, in the case
23 of Like-prefixed sarcasm, alludes to a previous commitment), and always
24 thereby communicates a commitment or attitude which counts as the inverse
25 of this pretended commitment or attitude relative to that scale.
26 In this section, I want to articulate three main lessons from our investi-
27 gation of sarcasm for the broader theory of meaning. The first major lesson
28 is that neither semantics nor the general theory of meaning can concern
29 themselves solely with the determination of propositional, truth-conditional
30 contentor rather, that if they insist on so restricting themselves, then they
31 must be supplemented with parallel, systematic and intimately interacting
32 theories of attitude expression and illocutionary force. The semanticist, the
33 implicature theorist, and the expressivist all analyze what is said, and often
34 also what is meant, in narrowly truth-conditional terms. But sarcasm, like
35 many other uses of language, intertwines the communication of information
36 with the expression of, and exhortation to, evaluative attitudes. The exclu-
37 sion of norms and emotions from the realm of meaning becomes increasingly
38 unpalatable as the range of cases widens to include not just figurative speech
39 like sarcasm and metaphor, but also sincere, direct, and literal speech, as in
40 the case of slurs and moral terms.
41 Sarcastic Like and illocutionary sarcasm introduce the complexity of
42 illocutionary force into this mix. Both Likes robust syntactic constraints
43 and its distinctive rhetorical effects suggest that it conventionally expresses
44 a speech act type of denial, distinct from the assertion of negation. Many
45 theorists, most prominently Frege (1918) and Geach (1965), have held that
46 treating denial as something other than the assertion of negation is at best
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 36 NOUS
2
3 (2005, 153, fn. 53). However, the ordinary speakers Ive consulted all find
4 the examples Ive cited to be perfectly acceptable.
5 Philosophers of language with a semanticist orientation, like King, Stan-
6 ley, and Szabo, thus face a stark choice. On the one hand, they can hold
7 on to the view that all of these apparent cases of strong intrusion are really
8 generated at LF as part of the conventionally-driven compositional process.
9 This is at least somewhat plausible for the case of lexical sarcasm, given
10 the constraint and systematicity of sarcastic inversion that we used to moti-
11 vate a semanticist analysis in 1although the attractiveness of this model
12 is significantly tempered by the fact that not all cases of sarcasm, or even
13 embedded sarcasm, are lexical. There is also some (though I believe, much
14 less) plausibility to modeling metaphor semantically, as Stern (2000) and
15 Leezenberg (2001) have done. But loose use and especially deferred reference
16 display very little systematicity. As Stanley (2005) acknowledges, postulating
17 LF representations for all of these possible uses would effectively trivialize
18 the notion of conventional composition and undermine the search for pre-
19 dictive power that motivated a methodological bias for semantic analyses in
20 the first place.
21 On the other hand, semanticists can allow strong intrusion into the com-
22 positional process. Grice himself eventually chose the latter option, at least
23 for generalized implicatures:
24
25 It certainly does not seem reasonable to subscribe to an absolute ban on the
26 possibility that an embedding locution may govern the standard nonconven-
27 tional implicatum rather than the conventional import of the embedded sentence
28 (1989c, 375).
29
30 However, I think its fair to say that the range of cases in which an embed-
31 ding locution governs something other than conventionally-encoded mean-
32 ing is much wider than the standard nonconventional implicata that Grice
33 envisioned.
34 The admission of strong intrusion into composition might seem like a clear
35 triumph for contextualists, since most theorists who have drawn attention to
36 strong intrusion have done so in order to argue for a permissive, contextualist
37 notion of what is said (e.g. Travis 2000, Bezuidenhout 2001, Recanati 2003).
38 However, even the most permissive contextualists want what is said to be
39 intuitively tied to the modulation or enrichment of lexical meaning, and regu-
40 larly claim that only the enriched or modulated meaning has any psychologi-
41 cal reality.48 But sarcasm does not intuitively belong within what is said un-
42 derstood in this way: on the contrary, its a commonplace, and not a rarefied
43 theoretical postulate, that a sarcastic speaker means the opposite of what they
44 say. Indeed, those who argue for including metaphor within what is said or
45 semantics often do so by contrasting metaphor with irony (e.g. Bezuidenhout
46 2001, Stern 2000). In my (2006a), I argue that ordinary intuitions and
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 38 NOUS
2
3 in the hearer by way of his recognizing her reflexive communicative intentions.
4 These go beyond the speakers illocutionary act in requiring for their success
5 that the effect actually be produced in the hearer, as opposed to the hearers
6 mere uptake of the speakers communicative intention.
7
8 Speakers and hearers regularly display their implicit sensitivity to all four
9 levels of meaning in the course of ordinary conversation. In particular, the
10 conversational status of sarcasm and metaphor underscores the important
11 distinction between what is locuted and what is asserted. On the one hand,
12 in both sorts of figurative speech, ordinary speakers and hearers recognize
13 both the authority of what is locuted when faced with uncharitable, non-
14 accommodating responses, and also the deniability of what is not actually
15 locuted. On the other hand, both lexical sarcasm and metaphor can con-
16 tribute to determining what is asserted/asked/ordered.
17 The other three species of sarcasm also exploit these levels of meaning in
18 systematic ways. Like-prefixed sarcasm denies the content of what would
19 be asserted by a sincere utterance of the embedded declarative sentence.
20 Propositional sarcasm implicates the negation of some proposition associ-
21 ated with what is asserted/asked/ordered or implicated. And illocutionary
22 sarcasm implicates the contrary evaluative attitude from one that would be
23 expressed by a sincere utterance. If we insist on lumping all of these kinds of
24 meaning together, we cannot clearly describe the similarities and differences
25 among these types of sarcasm, or among other types of utterances more
26 generally.
27 The third and final lesson is in a way the inverse of the first two. Al-
28 though an investigation of sarcasm helps to bring out just how intimate
29 and nuanced the interactions are among propositional contents, evaluative
30 attitudes, and illocutionary force, and between conventional meaning and
31 contextual exploitation, it also reveals that these interactions depend upon
32 complex, systematic structures, with genuine constraints on all sides. Not just
33 anything goes. In a deep sense, sarcasm is something that speakers do with
34 their utterances. But this general operation can take a variety of fairly precise
35 scopes, with distinctive, robust consequences in each case, and with at least
36 oneLike-prefixed sarcasmstaking a strong claim to semantic status.
37 In this respect, sarcasm is not so different from negation.50 Negation,
38 too, can be accomplished by various means, some semantic and others prag-
39 matic, each with distinct effects: from external, propositional negation (Its
40 not the case that) to internal, lexical negation (non-) and illocutionary
41 denial (I deny/reject the claim that), and on to merely implicit rejection
42 (Yeah, right/Anyway, as I was saying . . .). Sarcasm is considerably more
43 complex, in that it also involves evaluative attitudes, and engages in pretense.
44 But in both cases, we can discern a unified phenomenon across its various
45 manifestations; and in both cases we can make substantive claims about the
46 behavior of each of the various species. Thus, what we might have expected
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 40 NOUS
2
3 (i) If you want a tasty, healthy, gourmet meal, then you should head over to KFC.
4 (ii) If hes been rejected by four women in a month, then he must be a real charmer.
5 Second, there may be metalinguistic constructions, such as
6
(iii) Hes not a real genius, hes a genuinely good philosopher!
7
8 uttered in response to a free-standing sarcastic utterance of the antecedent. The possibility of
9 metalinguistic negation cant show anything about semantic content per se, because it is a
device for objecting to a previous utterance on any grounds whatever, including the . . . implicata
10
it potentially induces, its morphology, its style or register, or its phonetic realization (Horn
11 1989, 363).
12 7 Examples (4) and (9) are from in Levinson 2000, 210; (4) is originally due to Ivan Sag.
8 From Bach and Harnish 1979, 71.
13
9 As I noted in fn. 1, so far I have been talking about sarcasm, but both expressivists and
14
traditional implicature theorists like Grice discuss verbal irony. In 4, I will argue that sarcasm
15
is a species of verbal irony; here, I follow expressivists talk of verbal irony, where its denotation
16 at least largely overlaps with that of sarcasm.
17 10 See fn. 4.
11 Stern (2000, 235), Bezuidenhout (2001, 161), Camp (2006a, 291). Example (11) is from
18
19 Bezuidenhout.
12 I discuss some cases of irony directed at manner below (e.g. ex. [18]). Indeed, I think this
20
is the best analysis of (12) and (13); see fn. 43 below. But this does not affect the point in the
21 text, about the relative order of metaphorical and ironic interpretation.
22 13 Bach and Harnish (1979, 69) claim that ironic interpretation generally precedes metaphor-
23 ical interpretation. But they attempt to establish this by appealing to just one, fairly convention-
24 alized example (hot/cold applied to cars), and by suggesting that the order of interpretation
doesnt matter in that case. Stern (2000, 235) argues that it is only in conventionalized cases
25
that the order of interpretation is reversible. See Popa (2009, ch. 9) for extensive argument that
26 metaphor is interpreted before irony in combined cases, including discussion of psycholinguistic
27 evidence.
14 See my (2005) for criticism of Sterns view of metaphor.
28
15 I argue against contextualist assimilations of metaphor to what is said in my
29
(2006a).
30 16 Note in particular that the implicatures in (15) through (18) are highly particularized,
31 unlike the scalar implicatures that theorists like Chierchia (2004) have argued are marked within
32 the grammar.
17 Note that in (19) through (21), the dissociative attitude is directed toward the actual
33
34 circumstances, and not a person or perspective associated with the pretended utterance, as
Sperber and Wilson maintain. The expressivist should thus merely claim that irony draws
35
attention to a disparity between the actual circumstances and some evoked one, and expresses
36 some evaluative attitude about this disparity. See 4.1.
37 18 In this section, I revert to talking about sarcasm instead of verbal irony; I discuss the
32 license:
33 (v) #Like she woke up until 8.
34 (vi) #Like she can seem to figure this out.
35
Likewise, Larry Horn (p.c.) offers the following infelicities:
36
37 (vii) #Like/As if Ive been back there again in years.
(viii) #Like Im gonna get tenure until I write a book.
38
39 While this brings out the complexity of NPI licensing, note that none of these are licensed in
40 the paradigmatic licensing environments of conditionals or questions, either.
24 Horn (2001, 2009) argues that the orthodox requirement of overt licensing must be
41
weakened, in response to what he calls Flaubert licensingso-called because it is a kind
42 of negation that, like God in the deist universe and the author in the Flaubertian novel, is
43 everywhere present yet nowhere visible (Horn 2001, 176):
44
(xi) San Francisco is beating anyone these days as often as the Atlantic City Seagulls
45 beat the Harlem Globetrotters.
46
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 42 NOUS
2
3 (xii) The tone [of Germaine Greers attack on manufacturers of vaginal deodorants]
4 wasnt light-hearted, which might have justified touching the subject at all.
5 However, the range of cases which permit Flaubert licensing are still quite restricted, and seems
6 to require a negative or exhaustive content as its primary communicative point. Further, Larry
7 Horn (p.c.) also points out that retro-Not, as in
8 (ix) Shes a good teacher. Not!
9
does not license NPIs:
10
11 (x) # James has ever lifted a finger to help you. Not!
12 Thus, the point remains that in general, even flagrant pragmatic signaling of a negative or
13 otherwise downward-entailing proposition does not suffice for NPI-licensing.
25 For instance, although Wilson (2006, 1732) denies that (what she calls) verbal irony
14
15 constitutes a natural kind, because it shades off into other phenomena such as indirect quotation,
she still assumes that there is a unified phenomenon of verbal irony, which the echoic theory
16
explains, and which includes all of the cases discussed in 1 and 3.
17 26 More generally, Gibbs (2000, 18) found that while 90% of sarcastic utterances involved
18 mocking, only 54% were critical, and only 69% made a negative point by saying something
19 apparently positive.
27 Kumon-Nakamura et al claim that irony involves pragmatic insincerity rather than
20
insincerity at the substantive level, as occurs with lying. Their distinction between substantive
21
and pragmatic forms of insincerity is misleading; the appropriate contrast is rather between the
22 insinceritys overtness or covertness.
23 28 I defend the claim that the speaker does not claim her communicated content
24 in 4.2.
29 The most familiar scales are semantic, in the sense that they impose this ordering by
25
entailment; but as well see, scales can also be generated pragmatically, via contextually salient
26
assumptions (cf. Horn 1989). Thus, a scale may be implicitly operative even if no expression
27 within the embedded sentence directly entails a quantitative ordering.
28 30 An expressivist analysis of irony as merely drawing attention to a discrepancy between
29 expectation and reality suffers from a further problem, which is precisely parallel to one faced
30 by Davidsons analysis of metaphor as merely drawing attention to a similarity between two
situations. Expressivists cannot explain the fact that ironic and metaphorical utterances can be
31
genuinely informative, in the sense of making a (potentially false) claim about something which
32 the hearer isnt just failing to remember or notice. For further discussion on difficulties for
33 juxtaposition theories of metaphor, see my (2006b).
31 The allusion operative in this second class differs from those we have discussed so
34
35 far: instead of the speaker pretending to conform to an evoked expectation in order to draw
attention to its actual violation, here the speaker pretends to express the contrary of the evoked
36
expectation, in order to uphold it. Even here, though, I suspect that there must still be at least
37 a hinted allusion to someones genuinely subscribing to the evaluation that the speaker merely
38 pretends to express: in (6), for instance, there is at least a suggestion that Alice is an ideal dupe
39 because she believes herself to be smarter than she is.
32 In some cases, like (47) or the examples discussed by expressivists, such as
40
41 (23) As I reached the bank at closing time, the bank clerk helpfully shut the door in
42 my face,
43 the inverted material is not part of the focal, at issue content. But as examples like (3) and (6)
44 show, this is a function of syntactic position only.
33 I return to the difference between good and brilliant in 4.4, in connection with
45
46 Like-prefixed sarcasm.
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
4 times target presuppositions as well: for instance, to my ear the preferred reading of
5 (27 L ) Like the man who rescued this city from ruin is now planning to run for mayor.
6
expresses a sincere presupposition that the man in question satisfies the description; but the
7
sentence might also be used to express skepticism about his efficacy in addition to denying that
8 he is running for mayor. Second, just like propositional sarcasm, sarcastic Like can often target
9 content fixed by metaphorical interpretation, as in
10
(11 ) Like shes the Taj Mahal.
11 (xiii) Like the fountain of youth has managed to convert anyone to his bizarre
12 doctrines in years.
13 (xiv) Like Id ever make the beast with two backs with him.
14 I hope to return to the interaction between sarcasm and metaphor, and to iterated sarcasm, in
15 future work.
35 Note that there is a reading of sentences like (37) on which the speaker could be claiming
16
17 to have spoken with George: one with a significant pause between Like and the rest of the
sentence. However, this reading is not available for (37), because introductory Like, as we
18
might call it, does not license NPIs; it is also not intersubstitutable with As if in the way that
19 sarcastic Like is in (37) and more generally.
20 36 For this analysis to be plausible, it is essential to acknowledge that no linguistic expression
21 has the magical property of engendering a commitment for its utterer simply in virtue of
22 tokening the expressionas Frege (1918) and Davidson (1979) point out, actors, journalists
engaged in quotation and court recorders all token expressions without actually undertaking
23
the concomitant illocutionary acts. However, as Mitchell Green (1997, 2000) has argued, it is
24 possible for an expression or construction to have an illocutionary-act type as its semantic value,
25 in the sense that if one does undertake an outright commitment to a sentence containing that
26 expression or construction, then one thereby undertakes an illocutionary act of the relevant
27 type.
37 Though related, the two uses of Like are again clearly distinct: only sarcastic Like can
28
freely intersubstitute with As if, and the quasi-quotative use can be applied to non-declarative
29 sentences.
30 38 Further, Michael Israel (p.c.) notes that Like, As if and Als ob all have a literal
31 function as comparatives, which presupposes the non-identity of the compared items, and
32 thereby draws attention to the disparity between them.
39 Israel (2001) discusses a range of NPIs other than the canonical minimizers, and incor-
33
porates them into a more sophisticated scalar analysis. I use them here merely to bring out the
34 role of emphatic exhaustion, which can happen in a variety of ways.
35 40 Note that bare propositional sarcasm can also target epistemic probability as its evalua-
1 44 NOUS
2
3 43 I noted above, in 4.2 and fn. 34, that metaphor can fall within the scope of both
1 46 NOUS
2
3 (1979): Moods and performances, in Meaning and Use, ed. A. Margalit (Dordrecht:
4 Reidel), 920.
5 (1978): What Metaphors Mean, Critical Inquiry 5:1, 3147.
Fauconnier, Gilles (1978): Implication reversal in natural language, in Formal Semantics and
6
Pragmatics for Natural Languages, ed. F. Guenthner and S. J. Schmidt (Dordrecht: D.
7 Reidel), 289301.
8 Fogelin, Robert (1988): Figuratively Speaking (New Haven: Yale University Press).
9 Frege, Gottlob (1918/1977): Negation, in Logical Investigations, ed. Frege (Blackwell,
10 Oxford).
Geach, Peter (1965): Assertion, Philosophical Review 74, 449465.
11
Gibbs, Ray (2000): Irony in Talk among Friends, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 15, 527.
12 Glanzberg, Michael (2005): Focus: A Case Study on the Semantics/Pragmatics Boundary, in
13 Semantics vs. Pragmatics, ed. Zoltan Szabo (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
14 Fogelin, Robert (1988): Figuratively Speaking (New Haven: Yale University Press).
15 Geach, Peter (1965): Assertion, Philosophical Review 74, 449465.
Green, Mitchell (2000): Illocutionary Force and Semantic Content, Linguistics and Philosophy
16
23: 435473.
17 (1997): On the Autonomy of Linguistic Meaning, Mind 106(422): 217243.
18 Grice, Paul (1975/1989a): Logic and Conversation, in Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge
19 MA: Harvard University Press).
20 (1978/1989b): Further Notes on Logic and Conversation, reprinted in Studies in the
Way of Words.
21
(1989c): Retrospective Epilogue, in Studies in the Way of Words, 339385.
22 Haiman, John (1998): Talk is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation, and the Evolution of Language (Ox-
23 ford: Oxford University Press).
24 Heim, Irene (1984): A Note on Negative Polarity and Downward Entailingness, in Proceedings
25 of NELS 14, ed. C. Jones and P. Sells (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts
GLSA) 98107.
26
Hills, David (1997): Aptness And Truth In Verbal Metaphor, Philosophical Topics 25:1, 117
27 153.
28 Horn, Laurence (2009): Hypernegation, Hyponegation, and Parole Violations, Berkeley Lin-
29 guistics Society 35.
30 (2001): Flaubert Triggers, squatitive negation, and other quirks of grammar, in Per-
spectives on Negation and Polarity Items, ed. J. Hoeksema, H. Rullmann, V. Sanchez-
31
Valencia and T. van der Wouden (Amsterdam: John Benjamins).
32 (1989): A Natural History of Negation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
33 Israel, Michael (2001): Minimizers, Maximizers and the Rhetoric of Scalar Reasoning, Journal
34 of Semantics 18: 297331.
35 (1996): Polarity Sensitivity as Lexical Semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy 19: 619
666.
36
Kadmon, Nirit and Fred Landman (1993): Any, Linguistics and Philosophy 4.2, 279298.
37 King, Jeffrey C. and Jason Stanley (2005): Semantics, Pragmatics, and The Role of Semantic
38 Content, in Semantics vs. Pragmatics, ed. Z. Szabo (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
39 Kreuz, Roger and Richard Roberts (1995): Two Cues For Verbal Irony: Hyperbole And Ironic
40 Tone Of Voice, Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10, 2130.
Krifka, Manfred (1995): The Semantics and Pragmatics of Polarity Items, Linguistic Analysis
41
25:209257.
42 Kripke, Saul (1977): Speakers reference and semantic reference, Midwest Studies in Philosophy
43 2, 255276.
44 Kumon-Nakamura, Sachi, Sam Glucksberg, and Mary Brown (1995): How About Another
45 Piece Of Pie? The Allusional Pretense Theory Of Discourse Irony, Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology: General 124:1, 321.
46
nous_822 nousxml-als.cls (1994/07/13 v1.2u Standard LaTeX document class) 1-7-2011 :815
1 48 NOUS
2
3 Williamson, Timothy (2009): Reference, Inference, and the Semantics of Pejoratives, in The
4 Philosophy of David Kaplan, ed. Almog and Leonardi (Oxford: Oxford University
5 Press).
Wilson, Deirdre (2006): The pragmatics of verbal irony: Echo or pretence? Lingua 116, 1722
6
1743.
7 and Dan Sperber (1992): On Verbal Irony, Lingua 87: 5376.
8 Winner, E., Levy, J., Kaplan, J., and Rosenblatt, E. (1988): Childrens understanding of non-
9 literal language, Journal of Aesthetic Education 22, 5163.
10 Zwarts, Frans (1995): Nonveridical contexts, Linguistic Analysis 25:3/4, 286312.
Zwicky, Arnold and Jerrold Sadock (1975): Ambiguity Tests and How to Fail Them, in J.
11
Kimball (ed.), Syntax and Semantics vol. 4, (New York: Academic Press).
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46