ABSTRACT
To understand how verbal irony works, we need to consider the construction of the meanings that we communicate when we speak or write. A communicated meaning can be analysed into two component parts: (1) a proposition and (2) an attitude towards that proposition. A proposition is a statement about the real world or about some fictional world. The sentences we produce typically encode propositions by containing specific words in a specific order; to be able to speak and understand sentences of a language is to be able to encode and decode a proposition into and from the sentences of that language. However, both our thoughts and hence the meanings we communicate consist of something more than just basic propositions; attached to each proposition is an attitude, usually known as a propositional attitude, which expresses the speaker’s or writer’s relation to that proposition. The most common attitude is belief, but there are other attitudes as well – differing in strength (e.g. basic belief as opposed to strong commitment) as well as in polarity (e.g. belief as opposed to disbelief). If I have an attitude of belief towards a proposition, then that proposition is true for me.
