ABSTRACT
Consider the exclamative in 479, for example, if uttered in response to what is mutually
believed by speaker and hearer to be an·· utterly stupid proposal:
(479) What a great idea that is!
well. However, in this chapter I will be examining certain cases of preposing involving
understatement, or meiosis, in which an ironic interpretation can be said to result, in
part, from the use of the preposed word order itself. That is, it will be argued that
IRONIC PREPOSING induces an ironic interpretation which would not necessarily be in-
duced by the corresponding non-preposed utterance. This approach, if correct, will re-
quire an extension of the traditional definition of irony, that based on transparent con-
tradiction, to include meiosis, which involves transparent truth. To this end, I draw upon
Sperber and Wilson's (1981) analysis of irony as a type of ECHOIC MENTION.
