ABSTRACT
In the past, much of the theorizing of irony has been done from the point of view of the ironist, and has therefore been implicitly or explicitly “intentionalist.” Indeed, the understandable urge to anchor the slipperiness of meaning in the intention of the encoder is evident in most studies of figurative language or indirect expression (see Nathan 1982: 254), particularly in historical studies (Green 1979; Gaunt 1989; Swearingen 1991: 209–10). There, the problems of comprehension that face all interpreters of irony, as discussed in the last chapter, are even more evident. As one literary scholar put it: “The only way to be sure that a statement was intended ironically is to have a detailed knowledge of the personal, linguistic, cultural and social references of the speaker and his audience” (Gaunt 1989: 25). The complexity of discursive communities, however, might cast some doubt on the ability of any historical research to “reconstruct” such references—except in the most general and basic of terms. Nevertheless, as I have mentioned before, the most influential theories of irony have asserted that there exist “stable” ironies that are intended, overt, and capable of being reconstructed by the interpreter (Booth 1974: 6). These are usually called “intentional” ironies (Muecke 1969: 42).
