https:/ /doi.org/10.1075/j lac.00007 .

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Journal oflanguage Aggression and Conflict 6:1 (2018), pp. 149-165

Theoretically on Mock Politeness in English

and Italian
Marta Dynel
University of Łódź

This ess ay offers insights into the problematic notions of irony, sarcasm and
mock politeness, inspired by Charlotte Taylor's recent monograph Mock
Politeness in English and Italian. A Corpus-Assisted Metalanguage Analysis.
Different understandings of the concept of mock politeness, as well as sar­
casm and irony, are succinctly depicted. Some explanation is also provided
for the contradictory findings reported in previous scholarship with regard
to the im/politeness effects of irony. Additionally, this paper revisits Taylor's
select conclusions about the use of the first-order labels that she considers
pertinent to mock politeness (i.e. labels used by lay language users).

Keywords: im/politeness, first-order label, irony, metapragmatics, mock

politeness, sarcasm

1. Introduction

Charlotte Taylor's recent monograph entitled Mock Politeness in English and Ital­
ian. A Corpus-Assisted Metalanguage Analysis (2016, Pragmatics & Beyond New
Series, John Benjamins) is a much-needed contribution to the field of im/polite­
ness research. The book aims to explore the under-investigated notion of mock
politeness from first-order and second-order perspectives (for the distinction and
the interdependence of the two, see e.g. Craig et al. 1986; Watts et al. 1992; Eelen
2001; Bousfield 2010; Haugh 2012). Essentially, the former is concerned with l ay
language users' evaluations of communicative practices, and the latter refers to
researchers' technical labelling and academic discussions of such practices. A
strong need for this two-pronged approach is best captured by the following
passage:

there has been a pattern of researchers, even in the same field, talking about sim­
ilar concepts by different names and using the same name for different concepts
and this is what frequently makes research in this area challenging. Furthermore,
150

to <late, there has been very little attention paid to the first-order labelling of these
behaviours, with two notable exceptions ... This means that the second-order
terms may be indexing very different behaviours to the first-order understand-
� ��

Together with her several journal papers (e.g. Taylor 2015, 2016, 2017), Taylor's
book, largely based on her PhD thesis, is bound to stimulate further research on
first-order metapragmatic evaluations of im/polite behaviours across languages
and/or cultures (see also Sinkeviciute 2017a, b).
The first part ofTaylor's monograph is devoted to an overview ofthe previous
research on im/politeness, mock politeness, sarcasm and irony, all seen as second­
order (academic) labels. Taylor duły proceeds with a meticulous description ofthe
relevant methodology and the data method collection for her investigation into
first-order labels which she deems indicative of mock politeness. The empirical
study is based on a corpus culled from two Internet forums, one in British Eng­
lish, the other in Italian, which the author analyses from various angles and with
reference to various criteria.
The monograph presents several interesting research mergers: irony and sar­
casm, irony/sarcasm and im/politeness, theoretical pragmatics and corpus lin­
guistics, first-order and second-order approaches, and English and Italian lan­
guage data. This eclectic choice of topics and fields of investigation is an indu -
bitable merit of Taylor's work. The discussion moves swiftly from one problem to
another, testifying to the author's awareness of the various research strands and
the vexing issues addressed therein. However, the combination ofdiversified top­
ics is, at the same time, the reason for a potentia! weakness ofthe monograph. Not
all of the issues raised could have been discussed at length, and not all relevant
literature seems to have been quoted. Also, much simplification can be felt in
the survey of some of the previous scholarship (e.g. the different definitions or
conceptualisations of irony within pragmatics and cognitivism, or the studies on
participation frameworks). These are not major problems, especially given the
author's perspective and focus of attention, but the readers should be cognisant
of the fact that they need to acquaint themselves with pertinent literature beyond
the field of im/politeness research for a better grasp of a few crucial concepts
at hand. In addition, some of the generalisations made need to be taken with
caution. For instance, summarising the various "types of investigation into mock
politeness" (p. 74), Taylor lists a range of studies (mostly on irony and sarcasm)
that do not address mock politeness or consider im/politeness as such. For these
reasons, although the book is directed at a wide readership, the readers with little
background knowledge of some of the concepts tangential to the notion of mock
politeness may be left (partly) in the dark after perusal.
 151

Charlotte Taylor concludes her monograph with the apt statement that "one
of the great virtues of research'' is that " it constantly leads forwards to new expe­
ditions and explorations" (p. 210). In the three sections below, I intend to revisit
a selection of the conundrums Taylor discusses in her work and provide further
explanation for her findings. Section 2 concerns the problem of defining mock
politeness, Section 3 addresses the question of im/politeness effects that irony has,
and Section 4 briefly reports on Taylor's findings about first-order labels.

2. (Re)defining mock politeness: Beyond sarcasm and irony

The technical notion of mock politeness is rooted in Leech's (1983) Irony Principle
and his conceptualisation of irony as "an apparently friendly way of being offen­
sive (mock-politeness)" (Leech 1983, 144, emphasis added). The Irony Principle
allows people to "byp ass politeness" and consists in "politeness that is obvi­
ously insincere" (Leech 1983, 142). According to the prevalent view, originally
inspired by Leech's (1983) thought, mock politeness is orientated towards impo­
liteness (e.g. Culpeper 1996, 2005, 2011; Culpeper et al. 2003; Bousfield 2008;
Haugh and Bousfield 2012) and is tantamount to pretended politeness strategies
that necessarily "have as one of their defining features some claim, no matter
how superficial, to be polite" (Culpeper 2005, 44). Observing that irony can be
non-offensive or can be used "for enjoyment and comedy': Culpeper (1996, 357)
re-labels mock politeness sarcasm (see also Culpeper et al. 2003; Culpeper 2005;
Bousfield 2008). Similarly, Leech (2014, 232) regards "conversational irony" as
being synonymous with "sarcasm':
Sarcasm is another problematic notion. Contrary to what Culpeper (2005)
tacitly suggests, sarcasm may also serve enjoyment and humour, yet not for the
target of offence, largely overlapping with disparagement humour and putdown
humour (see Dynel 2013a, 2014 and references therein). Most importantly, sarcasm
may be taken to refer to any jibe and taunt and does not necessarily display the
characteristics of irony (e.g. Partington 2006; Dynel 2017a), which always com­
municates implicated evaluation. As Taylor observes, some authors regard sar­
casm as a construct distinct from irony, others as a synonym for irony, and still
others as a typ e of irony. This last case may be called sarcastic irony, an interper­
sonally disruptive species of the trope (see the overview in Dynel 2017a). Sarcas­
tic irony is essentially what mock politeness is traditionally taken to denote (see
Dynel 2016a). However, sarcasm (understood as sarcastic irony) need not coin­
cide with mock politeness; sarcastic irony does not always exploit ostensibly polite
expressions, and vice versa ostensibly polite expressions need not involve sarcastic
irony.
152

From the outset, im/politeness researchers seem to have narrowed down the
scope of irony/sarcasm to (overtly) pretended polite utterances (e.g. overtly pre­
tended thanking, compliments, empathetie comments, etc.). Nevertheless, it may
be argued that mock politeness can be realised without the use of (sarcastie) irony
because it need not recruit evaluative implicature, as irony always does. Such non­
ironie mock politeness may rest on politeness formulae from whose meanings the
speakers dissociate themselves, not intending to communieate the meanings that
the politeness formulae typieally carry (see Dynel 2016a).
On the other hand, like sarcasm, the figure of irony need not be amenable
to a mock politeness interpretation, not involving any clearly detectable polite
expression. For instance, in response to a na'ive observation "Oh, it's raining'' when
it's been raining cats and dogs for two hours, an ironie speaker may say smugly:
"No, it's not raining:' It would be counter-intuitive to claim that this utterance
exhibits overtly pretended politeness. Be that as it may, this instance is indeed sub­
ject to im/politeness considerations. The thrust of all this, as Taylor (p.19) rightly
observes, is that "the second-order concepts of irony and mock politeness are
large, autonomous areas whieh overlap at points:'
Another vexing problem concerns the relationship between sarcasm and off­
record impoliteness. The term "off-record': originally proposed by Brown and
Levinson (1987) with regard to the politeness strategies that are based on the
exploitation of Griee's maxims, is most frequently employed with reference to
impoliteness acts "performed by means of an implicature" (see Culpeper 2005,
44). Irony or sarcasm (deemed a type of irony) is also considered a type of off­
record impoliteness (e.g. Brown and Levinson 1987; Bousfield 2008; Garces-Cone­
jos Blitvieh 2010), as Taylor reports. Essentially, the figure of (sarcastie) irony
necessarily involves conversational implicature (Griee [1975] 1989) or otherwise
conceptualised intended implicit meaning (whieh stands in marked contrast to
the literał meaning). However, Garces-Conejos Blitvich (2010, 71) differentiates
between three strategies of "off record impoliteness": "implicated impoliteness':
"sarcasm'' and "withhold politeness': This tripartite division seems to lead to a
conclusion that, according to Garces-Conejos Blitvich, off-record impoliteness
and sarcasm, "where the use of politeness is obviously insincere" (2010, 71), do not
(need to) involve implicating. This tallies with a view that sarcasm is not synony­
mous with irony (a figure that always entails implicating) and may involve witty
but literał jibes and taunts (see Partington 2006; Kapogianni 2011; Dynel 2017a).
Also, this is in accord with Culpeper's (1996) original view of mock politeness.
In his first proposal for an impoliteness framework, Culpeper (1996, 356) lists
"sarcasm or mock politeness" in a position whieh may suggest that this is the coun­
terpart of Brown and Levinson's (1987) "off-record" superstrategy for performing
a face-threatening act. Nonetheless, in his first conceptualisation of the "super-
 153

strategy'' of"off-record impoliteness': Culpeper (2005, 42) does not conceive sar­
casm as its subtype but as a meta-strategy "which can be separated out as distinct
from the others" (2005, 44) insofar as it communicates impoliteness by means of
politeness. Culpeper (2005) then does not appear to conceptualise sarcasm/mock
politeness as inherently associated with Gricean implicature/implicating.
Based on this brief overview, one can conclude that there is no agreement
among im/politeness researchers about the status ofmock politeness and its rela­
tionship with the Gricean notion of(conversational) implicature, even though the
figure of [sarcastic] irony, with which mock politeness is typically equated (but
which it may not involve in practice), always entails implicating (see Section 3).
In her monograph, Taylor adopts yet another approach to mock politeness,
going beyond any ofthe views summarised above. Taylor (p.18) sees mock polite­
ness as occurring whenever "there is an imlpoliteness mismatch leading to an
implicature of impoliteness" (emphasis in original). This implicature should not
be understood in the classical Gricean sense as implicated speaker meaning (see
Haugh 2016). Although Taylor does address irony and sarcasm as realisations
of mock politeness and discusses the problems with which these concepts are
burdened, she recognises im/politeness mismatch in other linguistic forms. She
thus indicates that her view ofmock politeness transcends off-record impoliteness
(p.7) and implicatures (which the rhetorical figure of irony alw ays involves).
Instead, she endorses Culpeper's (2011, 17) notion of implicational impoliteness
("an impoliteness understanding that does not match the surface form or seman­
tics ofthe utterance or the symbolic meaning ofthe behaviour"), which she claims
to be the "best fit for the kinds offeatures" (p. 21) that her study addresses.
Taylor also extends her definition ofmock politeness to patronising and con­
descending behaviours. The latter term is an echo ofone ofCulpeper's (1996, 358)
negative impoliteness strategies, and both bring to mind dominant metalinguistic
labels arising from Culpeper's (2011, 94) study on l ay language users' evaluations
ofimpolite behaviours, as Taylor reports (pp.27, 28). This indicates the impact of
first-order terms on the theoretical (second-order) labels that Taylor endorses.
The pivot ofTaylor's definition ofmock politeness is some kind ofim/polite­
ness mismatch, which she associates (p.13) with Culpeper's (2011) notion of"mixed
messages': These kinds of messages "mix features which point towards a polite
interpretation and features that point towards an impolite interpretation"
(Culpeper 2011, 165-166). In the light ofwhat Taylor presents over the course of
the theoretical chapters, im/politeness mismatch is an internally heterogeneous
construct that includes "a kind ofabuse ofpower" (p.28), as well as various forms
of contrast addressed in the research on irony. The ones that Taylor lists are:
"cognitive structure" (p.32), which is essentially the uttered vs intended mean­
ing distinction, which appears to overlap with the "levels ofmismatch" (p.35) that
154

account for various subtypes of irony depending on the type of meaning reversal
(see e.g. Camp 2012; Dynel 2013b), as well as "cues to irony" (p.36), an umbrella
term for various verbal and non-verbal indicators of the presence of the figure. It
is open to question whether bringing together these different descriptions of irony
under the header "mismatch" is conducive to a solid description of irony as based
on im/politeness mismatch, or mock politeness, especially when combined with
other forms of im/politeness mismatch unrelated to irony. Taylor attempts some
further divisions of im/politeness mismatch to buttress her proposal.
Taylor distinguishes between interna! mismatch and external mismatch.
External mismatch originates in contextual mismatch and corresponds to sar­
casm/irony (serving mock politeness). Interna! mismatch encompasses several
different structures: a combination of a polite grammatical structure and an impo­
lite (vulgar) word (e.g. "Could you just fuck off?" p. 23), or what she sees as a gar­
den-path structure (discussed in humour research). However, the few examples
that Taylor provides over the course of the volume do not unequivocally manifest
the central feature of the mechanism in question. A canonical garden-path struc­
ture centres on an initially covert ambiguity, which is duły revealed to the hearer,
who has to backtrack and recognise the alternative, hitherto hidden, meaning of
the ambiguous chunk of text, which leads to a markedly different interpretation
of the whole utterance (see e.g. Dynel 2009 and references therein). The instances
that Taylor provides such as "You're amazing, amazingly dreadful" (p. 24) do, how­
ever, exploit the mechanism of surprise and defeated expectations in a way that
an utterance progresses from an act of ostensible politeness (e.g. a compliment) to
an act of impoliteness (e.g. an insult). Another example of the garden-path struc­
ture that Taylor gives seems to deploy initially covert, or at least unavailable (as
predicted by the speaker), irony, which is duły made overt so that the initially
made literał interpretation should tum out not to be the intended one: "Very use­
ful advice I must say. .... I'm being 100% sarcastic!" (p.150). On the whole, what
the instances of interna! mismatch have in common is some "verbal formula mis­
match'' (Culpeper 2011). Taylor (p. 23) also sees this kind of interna! mismatch in
irony performed in a special tone (see Leech 2014, 237). It is then not entirely elear
(at least to me) whether irony (sarcasm) belongs to the external or interna! mis­
match category, or perhaps both.
From a different angle, Taylor (pp. 24-25) places mock politeness structures
on a covert - overt continuum, which concerns the transparency of the communi­
cator's mock politeness from a receiver's perspective. The position of the examples
on the scale appears to depend on the ease with which the presence of the "mock''
intention can be recognised. Tuus, irony devoid of any indicators/cues (e.g. an
indication of a sarcastic tone of voice) will be more covert than irony where such
cues are given, or than an utterance that capitalises on a juxtaposition of polite
 155

and impolite verbal expressions. However, contrary to what Taylor suggests, one
may venture to claim that, thanks to common ground and/or contextual factors,
irony devoid of any cues may, in practice, be as transparent to the receivers (with
suflicient background knowledge) as irony which is not signposted by such cues.
This leads to a crucial observation about mock politeness: it should ultimately
be made overt in the hope of the underlying impolite message being recognised
by the hearer. In reference to the traditional conceptualisation of mock politeness
as "pretended politeness': it must be stressed that what the various authors may
have in mind is overt pretence, rather than covert pretence, which is sometimes
discussed in the context of deception (e.g. Vincent Marrelli 2004; see Dynel 2018a,
b). Deception (or covert pretence) is tantamount to causing the hearer to (con­
tinue to) believe something that the speaker believes to be false (see e.g. Meibauer
2014; Mahon 2015; Dynel 2016b, 2018b). By contrast, overt pretence is the kind of
pretence that the speakers wish to be recognised (as in some forms of humour, or
in irony).
Interestingly, some of the examples that Taylor considers manifestations of
mock politeness (e.g. the "garden-path structure" or covert irony) depend on
deception which is instantly revealed to its target, who is (typically) also the target
of impoliteness. Hence, the hearer is led to draw an inference only to have to can­
cel it in the light of the new chunk of text, as a result of which a seeming act of
politeness develops into impoliteness. On the other hand, a statement may be ven­
tured that mock politeness could also be performed by dint of standard decep­
tion, with the target not being intended to recognise the speaker's true belief at
all, not even with the benefit of hindsight. The speaker may perform an act of
ostensible politeness whilst having a covert impolite intent. This is the case with
a backhanded compliment "I admire your peachy skin'' based on covert ambigu­
ity ("peachy colour" vs "covered in soft fuzz': the latter of which the hearer is not
meant to recognise (and does not recognise when the deception is successful),
with the salient polite interpretation eclipsing the non-salient impolite one.

3. Im/politeness effects of irony

There is an ongoing debate concerning the interpersonal functions of the figure of

irony, the central query being whether it mitigates or exacerbates criticism, and,
therefore, whether it promotes politeness or impoliteness. As reported in the sec­
tion above, Leech (1983) is famously known to have presented irony as coinciding
with pretended/not genuine politeness. This is the bedrock premise underlying
the concept of mock politeness, widely understood as a salient category of impo­
liteness. Addressing mock politeness, Culpeper (1996, 357) underscores that his
156

focus is the irony used for "social disharmony': In other words, the prevalent view
of mock politeness hinges on the notion of irony/sarcasm that produces negative
interpersonal effects. Technieally, therefore, mock politeness, as originally concep­
tualised by Culpeper (1996), coincides with sarcastie irony, a species of irony that
is orientated towards face damage.
Nonetheless, Leech (1983,143) seems to have held an opinion that irony may
actually displ ay different forms and perform different functions (from "comie" to
"offensive"/"sarcastie"). Interestingly enough, Leech's main proposal in reference
to irony is that it exerts mitigating effects on offensiveness, keeping "aggression
away from the brink of confliet" (1983, 144) and being "a substitute for impo­
liteness" (1983, 142). It seems that Leech deems irony a vehicle for politeness, a
mitigating tool used while communieating face-threatening messages. In Leech's
(1983, 82) words, "if you must cause offence, at least do so in a way whieh doesn't
confliet with the PP [Politeness Principle], but allows the hearer to arrive at the
offensive point of your remark indirectly, by way of implicature:' In this vein,
Brown and Levinson (1987, 222) famously classify irony as a type of off-record
politeness (i.e. implicature-based politeness), as Taylor (p.19) reports.
Leech (1983) claims that ironie criticism prevents confliet because the speaker
seems to be overtly polite, whieh is why the hearer cannot respond impolitely (as
if following a tit-for-tat principle). This line of argumentation is not partieularly
appealing. In standard communieative situations, even l ay language users tacitly
accept, whether or not being cognisant of the linguistie mechanies of implicit­
ness and im/politeness, that the intended meaning is the implicated one. The fact
that this meaning is not stated by the speaker and has to be worked out by the
hearer (for instance, based on a seemingly polite expression) does not change
anything. Irony coinciding with overt politeness does carry implicit face-threat,
whieh both the speaker and the hearer will intuitively appreciate in prototypieal
situations (as long as no misunderstanding arises in this respect). Tuus, one may
venture to claim that the hearer's reaction to irony may actually be impolite or
polite, whether or not involving implicitness. The reaction is contingent on vari­
ous contextual, interpersonal and individual factors.
Another dubious argument for politeness effects of irony concerns the
retractability of the implicated message, whieh Taylor actually endorses in the
course of her monograph. Brown and Levinson (1987) are credited for the claim
that, because of its intrinsie "indirectness" (implicitness), ironie criticism is less
face-threatening than literał criticism. This is because it is the hearer that decides
on how an ironie utterance should be interpreted, while the speaker is not entirely
responsible for the hearer's inference (as if the speaker had not intended it to be
made). Consequently, irony allows the withdrawal of a message and facilitates the
<leniał of intent and responsibility for the attack should such a need arise, that is,
if
 1 57

the hearer should find a given critieal proposition immensely offensive (Jorgensen
1996). Tuus, if need be, the speaker can retract an ironie remark on the grounds
of the hearer's (alleged) misinterpretation. In this vein, Taylor holds an opinion
that irony/sarcasm used for mock politeness manifests the property of deniability
(see also Mills 2003, 124). Taylor (p. 45) suggests that due to its inherent ambiguity
(Whalen et al. 2013), irony allows the speaker to "absolve him/herself from respon­
sibility': As she makes this point, Taylor refers also to (unrelated) claims about the
retractability function of humour. Essentially, as numerous humour researchers
argue (e.g. Haddington 2011; Sinkeviciute 2013; Haugh 2016; see Dynel 2017b and
references therein), humour sometimes facilitates the expression of truthful (fre­
quently, face-threatening) messages, whieh speakers may attempt to disavow on
the "only joking" pretext. This, however, need not involve cancelling implicatures
but (potentia!) retracting messages produced (allegedly) within a "humorous
frame':
Deniability or cancellability is indeed known to be a litmus test for the presence
of an implicature, as opposed to what is said (Griee [1975] 1989). However, it is not
the case that all implicatures must be subject to explicit cancellation, whieh has
sparked a discussion about whether or not cancellability is a good test for impli­
cature (see Jaszczolt 2009 and references therein). Jaszczolt (2009) convincingly
argues that strongly intended implicit meanings often surface as primary meanings,
as intended by the model speaker and recovered by the model addressee and these
may not lend themselves to unproblematie cancellation. However, this does not
change their status as regular implicatures, whieh are juxtaposed with literał
intended meanings. This is because even if implicatures cannot be cancelled explic­
itly by adding " but not p': they will be subject to the alternative test of contextual
cancellability (Jaszczolt 2009). In other words, there will be an imaginable situation
in whieh a given implicature will not arise (Griee [1975] 1989, 44, Meibauer 2014).
As irony researchers (e.g. Dynel 2015; Kapogianni 2016) point out, impli­
catures arising from ironie language use constitute primary intended meanings.
These are the central meanings that ironie speakers wish to communieate and
that can hardly be plausibly cancelled by means of any textual elaboration. This
is because there are rarely alternative (rational and contextually adequate) mean­
ings that the speakers could claim to have been willing to communieate. The sit­
uations when implicatures invited by irony can be plausibly withdrawn (e.g. on
a pretext of a misunderstanding) 1 are only intermittent. Cancellability, therefore,
cannot be proposed as a hallmark of irony-based implicature that can explain why

1. Misunderstandings can sometimes happen indeed, especially when the hearer has little
knowledge of the speaker and his/her preferences or feelings key to understanding a given utter­
ance. For instance, "I love dry meat" may be taken as irony given the prevalent view that dry
158

irony is used for the sake of mitigation. The mere possibility of the speaker's with­
drawal of the ironie meaning in some sporadic cases should not be taken as an
argument that irony has mitigating effects. What is of central importance to an
ironie communieative act is that the speaker intends to communieate some poten­
tially face-threatening meaning and that the hearer's recognition of this, necessar­
ily negatively evaluative, meaning is the speaker's goal.
The main thrust of this is that the claims about the mitigating potentia! of
irony made by politeness researchers (Leech 1983; Brown and Levinson 1987) do
not appear to be theoretieally substantiated. They have not been tested empirieally,
either. However, several studies do adduce evidence that irony mitigates the harsh­
ness of negative evaluation (Dews et al. 1995; Jorgensen 1996; Dews and Winner
1997). According to the tinge hypothesis (Dews et al. 1995; Dews and Winner 1997),
irony mutes criticism (or praise) since it takes longer to process than literał utter­
ances. What can be extrapolated from such findings is that irony serves politeness
(see also Kumon-Nakamura et al. 1995). By contrast, other researchers argue that
irony is a tool of impoliteness. Some empirieal studies indieate that irony renders
negative evaluation more virulent and hurtful in comparison to its non-ironie
counterpart (e.g. Kreuz et al. 1991; Colston 1997, 2002; Colston and O'Brien 2000;
Toplak and Katz 2000). This criticism-exacerbating function ofirony seems to have
preoccupied impoliteness researchers studying mock politeness.
Taylor (p. 43) does recognise the fact that the findings about the functions
of irony are contradietory, but her attempt to account for them in the very brief
discussions of "acceptable aggression': "participation role': and "deniability" (see
above) may not be sufficient. The explanation for the contradietory findings can
be sought in irony's heterogeneous nature, and hence diversified examples used
by researchers, as well as their different methodologies (see Dynel 2018b). Irony
has many forms and it serves many functional goals, such as humour, condem­
nation or self-protection (Roberts and Kreuz 1994; Jorgensen 1996; Colston 1997,
2002; Colston and Keller 1998; Colston and O'Brien 2000; Toplak and Katz 2000).
Whieh of these functions and aims comes into play is determined by conversa­
tionalists' partieular aims and contextual factors (Gibbs and Colston 2002). These
are only rarely taken into account in empirieal experiments. The precious few are
worth mentioning. For instance, Colston (2002) suggests that subjects' interpreta­
tion of irony depends on the consequences of the situation for the listener. More­
over, Dews et al. (1995) point to the fact that the impact of irony hinges on who
the target is and on whether the criticism is merited. The study by Toplak and Katz

meat is simply poorly prepared, but it may actually be defended as a non-ironie utterance given
the speaker's personal preference for dry meat over fatty or underdone meat.
 159

(2000) indieates that the perception of irony (the severity of the criticism or inter­
personal effects) relies on what role a given individual assumes in an interaction.
Whilst irony is typieally used to criticise, politeness effects of irony may occur,
for instance, when the hearer is not the target of the negative evaluation, and the
target is someone else, a non-participant, or there is no human target involved (for
a different view, see Jorgensen 1996). In such cases, irony may promote humour
to be appreciated by at least some non-targeted interactants (see Dynel 2013c,
2014, 2016a, 20186). This is why in multi-party interactions, irony may bring about
politeness effects to one individual and impoliteness effects to another. Over­
all, it seems that whether irony promotes politeness or impoliteness depends on
the contextual factors, the participatory framework, the relationship between the
interlocutors, and the form of the ironie utterance (i.e. how exactly the negative
evaluation is communieated).
It must be underscored that irony must communieate negative evaluation (see
Garmendia 2010, 2011, 2015; Dynel 20186 and references therein). This is actu­
ally where its face-threatening/impoliteness potentia! resides; irony may boost the
critieal evaluation rather than mitigating it. In contrast, Taylor (p.19) suggests that
some politeness (face-enhancing) effects of irony can be explained by the fact
that this figure of speech may involve positive evaluation. Indeed, irony may be
couched in a negatively evaluative lexieal item that implicates positive evaluation
of a chosen referent (that is an entity evaluated positively). If this referent should
be relevant to a hearer of irony, the ironie utterance may indeed count as exerting
politeness effects on this hearer. However, this kind of irony (in practiee, infre­
quent) necessarily involves further implicated negative evaluation of another ref­
erent, whieh is the driving force of the ironie language use per se. This negative
evaluation is amenable to distinct im/politeness considerations.

4. First-order mock politeness labels

As Taylor points out, "mock polite(ness)" does not appear to be a first-order

label, a lexieal item that ordinary language users are likely to apply. Tuus, an
investigation into British English and Italian speakers' mock politeness meta­
language necessitates the choiee of other relevant metalinguistie labels. Taylor
starts her discussion by examining "irony" and "sarcasm': the two problematie
(as evidenced by the previous sections) notions traditionally associated with
mock politeness in second-order approaches, only to move to a range of other
labels, the list not being exhaustive, as Taylor admits. These labels are "identified
through an iterative process" (p.159) in the light of the presence of im/politeness
mismatch in the evaluated chunk of text and a language user's metapragmatie
160

evaluation. Taylor's corpus of metapragmatic labels (together with the verbal

behaviours to which they refer) extracted from the database - the chosen British
and Italian Internet forums - are subject to various quantitative analyses, which
reveal that the select labels are not necessarily indicative of mock politeness
(even though Taylor's technical definition encompasses a wide range of phenom­
ena, much wider than previously assumed). In her conclusions, Taylor reports:

The analysis of over 3,500 labels and 800 behaviours has shown that there are no
metapragmatic labels which consistently refer to mock politeness, but many that
do so on at least some occasions; that the evaluation of mock polite behaviours is
closely tied to the participation role and contextual features; and that the struc­
tures of mock behaviours are far more creative and varied than anticipated from
second-order academic models. (p. 203)

Some remarks on lay uses of "irony" and "sarcasm" in English and Italian are in
order here. Overall, Taylor's findings indicate a disjunction between first-order
"irony" and "sarcasm'' labels (used by lay language users) and second-order labels,
which academics use within or outside im/politeness studies (see also Dynel
2017a). Moreover, in British and American English, labels used in popular par­
lance show incompatibility with their academic applications, which are not con­
sistent either (see Dynel 2017a). Taylor's findings should not be taken to mean that
second-order conceptualisations of irony are wrong, though. The results merely
testify that language users and researchers apply these labels differently. Tuus, for
example, it seems wrong to conclude (as Taylor does on p.207) that, contrary
to the standard academic definition following Gricean thought, irony need not
involve implicitness. This lack of implicitness only shows that in popular parlance
"irony" does not denote the stylistic figure in question, which must indeed involve
implicitness. Speakers of both Italian and British English use the label "irony" with
regard to the rhetorical figure only rarely, as Taylor reports.
Moreover, Taylor concludes that the "ironic/ironico'' and "sarcastic/sarcas­
tico" labels do not prevail in the descriptions of mock politeness, contrary to the
second-order (academic) uses of these terms. This is hardly surprising. Whatever
second-order labels may be said to coincide with the second-order notion of mock
politeness, l ay language users' evaluations need not (and frequently do not) cor­
respond to technical labels pertaining to the rhetorical figure of irony or sarcasm
(whether or not they are used synonymously), not to mention the specialist notion
of mock politeness. This m ay be also because mock politeness appears to concern
only some proportion of sarcastic irony and, as Taylor claims, mock politeness
exhibits other forms.
In addition, Taylor (pp.146-147) reports that in Italian, "a third of the occur­
rences of SARCASTICO and over half of the occurrences of !RONICO did not
 161

involve any kind of mismatch': which she seems to equate with im/politeness mis­
match. This prompts Taylor to make a critical comment on the strongly anglo­
centric bias pervading the existing scholarship. However, it needs to be stressed
that the hulk of the existing scholarship on irony and sarcasm (written in English,
but not always about English data) is mostly theoretical (with hardly any focus
on first-order labels) and concerns the rhetorical figure of irony, which need not
qualify as mock politeness or display the contrast typical of it. The figure of irony
(regardless of how native language users label it) may be a universal phenomenon
present in most (if not all) languages and cultures, even if it should show cross­
cultural variability (e.g. how often native speakers of a given language use irony,
or what forms it may take). What Taylor's study does corroborate is that the uses
of the labels "sarcastic" and "ironie" and their counterparts in ltalian are indeed
culturally diversified.

5. Conclusion

This short discussion has borne out that mock politeness, irony and sarcasm
(whether observed as first-order or second-order labels), as well as the relation­
ships between them, are extremely complex and problematic topics of inves­
tigation within im/politeness research and beyond. Charlotte Taylor's volume
helps appreciate many theoretical and methodological issues that im/politeness
researchers need to address and, at the same time, it provides new avenues for
future studies.

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