Irony, Deception and Humour: Seeking the Truth about Overt and Covert Untruthfulness

by Marta Dynel

This book offers fresh perspectives on untruthfulness entailed in various forms of irony, deception and humour, which have so far constituted independent foci of linguistic and philosophical investigation. These three distinct (albeit sometimes co-occurring) notions are brought together within a neo-Gricean framework and consistently discussed as representing overt or covert untruthfulness. The postulates that represent the interface between language philosophy and pragmatics are illustrated with scripted interactions culled from the series House, which help appreciate the complexities of the three concepts at hand. Apart from affording new insights into the nature of irony, deception and humour, this book critically examines previous literature on these notions, as well as relevant aspects of Grice's philosophy of language. Giving a state-of-the-art picture of untruthfulness, this publication will be of interest to both experienced and inexperienced researchers studying Grice's philosophy, irony, deception and/or humour.

503 pages, Hardcover

Published March 19, 2018

Reviews

[Nanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ironically, linguist Marta Dynel’s book Irony, Deception and Humour seeks to find the truth about untruthfulness. (Because of the book’s title and use of quotations, I choose to use the global spelling of humour throughout this review instead of the shorter, Americanized version of the word.) This monograph includes five chapters which begin with an overview of “notions central to the discussion” (x) and the methodologies Dynel uses in her analysis with the second chapter providing an “exhaustive account of the relevant aspects of [Paul] Grice’s” 1989 work. Subsequent chapters immerse the reader in Dynel’s analysis of irony, deception and the “(un)truthfulness of conversational humour,” in that order. A visual representation of both overt untruthfulness and covert untruthfulness, according to Dynel’s theory, is presented in the “Epilogue” (p. 448-453).
An unusual aspect of Dynel’s treatment is her use of the contemporary television series House, M.D. (House), instead of the traditionally contrived “fabricated specimens of language use” (ix) found in most scholarship on linguistic irony and deception, arguing that the drama’s script provides life-like opportunities to “facilitate…the study of the three communicative phenomena [on which Dynel focuses] that are heavily dependent on not only context but also the speaker’s intentions and beliefs…[with] characters’ mental states…conjectured much more easily” (ix-x). From this reader’s point of view, Dynel’s strategy privileges House fans and is less effective for a reader unfamiliar with the television series, even perhaps creating confirmational biases for those who are. However, a dedicated reader could access the cited episodes via various media platforms, even watching the ironic performances dramatized, thereby benefiting from this unique pedagogical possibility.
The book’s “Table of Contents” is helpfully extensive, directing a reader to specific figures they may wish to consider within a narrow one or two page location, making Dynel’s text a ready reference resource for understanding how irony is and is not a function of lying or insincerity. Dynel complicates this standard binary definition of irony. Dynel’s work looks at “[a] body of research across disciplines, notably linguistics, psychology and sociology” with contributions from “socio-psychological and socio-pragmatic studies” to create the “cross-talk” collaborative exercise of which Irony speaks. Dynel’s work is tightly focused on ironic utterances. As indicated by its title, Dynel’s text explores the tangential expressions of deception and humour.
Working to reify irony studies, Dynel discusses the “Interfaces between humour and (un)truthfulness” in her fifth chapter, exploring “Previous conceptualizations of humour” (388) and how an “ironic utterance may carry a ‘metamessage’ along the lines of ‘I don’t mean this message’ or ‘I’m not serious,’” (389). Dynel clarifies that although humor may be embedded in the ironic utterance, “it typically does carry a serious meaning, whether or not it is simultaneously humorous” (389). Dynel’s inspection of irony and its relation to humor extends as an “agent of change” paradigm. Dynel reminds readers that “humour cannot be set diametrically in opposition to seriousness, since it can have serious implications” and can be an “useful resource for accomplishing serious tasks” (qtd. 393). This is a dense text negotiating the complicated relationship between the ironic, deceptive and humorous.