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Foregrounding norms and ironic communication

David S. Kaufer & Christine M. Neuwirth

To cite this article: David S. Kaufer & Christine M. Neuwirth (1982) Foregrounding
norms and ironic communication, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68:1, 28-36, DOI:
10.1080/00335638209383589

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 QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH,
68 (1982), 28-36
FOREGROUNDING NORMS AND IRONIC
COMMUNICATION
David S. Kaufer and Christine M. Neuwirth
R ECENT work in the pragmatics of
ironic communication has focused
primarily on classifying its interpersonal
uses. Theorists in literary criticism,1
linguistic pragmatics,2 and rhetoric3
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have noted that irony can be used in one
of two ways: (1) to emphasize or rein-
force points before friendly audiences,
and (2) to attack or ridicule the opposing
values of hostile or unsuspecting listen-
ers. Meyers observes, "In conversational
use, irony serves two purposes that I can
ascertain from observation, one inclu-
sive, the other exclusive. That is, some-
times irony is used to reinforce solidari-
ty, camaraderie between or among
members. The exclusive function serves
to elevate the speaker's own position at
the expense of his hearer, via a put-
down or a one-up ploy. It is in this latter
category that sarcasm belongs, as a use
of irony for the particular purpose of
causing hurt." 4
Booth recognized that these "two
purposes" of irony are not mutually
exclusive and that ironists can simulta-
Mr. Kaufer is Assistant Professor of English and
Ms. Neuwirth is a doctoral student in English,
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA
15213.
1 Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1974).
2
Alice R. Myers, "Toward a Definition of Irony," in
Studies in Language Variation, ed. R.W. Fasold
(Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press), pp.
171-183.
3 Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The
New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), pp.
205-210; David Kaufer, "Irony and Rhetorical Strate-
gy," Philosophy and Rhetoric, 10 (1977), 90-110.
4
Meyers, pp. 179-180.
neously "build amiable communities"
while "excluding victims." He writes,
"Even irony that does imply victims, as
in all ironic satire, is often much more
clearly directed to more affirmative
matters."5 Perelman has also hinted at
this double-edged character of irony,
noting not only that it is one species of
ridicule but also that ridicule "works
toward the preservation of what is
accepted."6 Kaufer has offered an analy-
sis of this multifunctionality of ironic
utterances by proposing that they "bi-
furcate" listeners into confederates and
victims.7 Confederates cfosociate them-
selves from the ironist's literal utterance;
victims associate themselves with the
literal utterance.
Muecke pointed out that ironies can
also be used heuristically, as in Socratic
irony, for refuting an interlocutor's posi-
tion.8 Summarizing the three principal
communicative functions of irony,
Muecke notes that irony may be used as
a device to "enforce one's meaning," to
"attack a point of view or to expose folly,
hypocrisy, or vanity," or to "lead one's
readers to see that things are not so
simple or certain as they seem or
perhaps not so complex as they seem."9
These three uses of irony we call
reinforcing, ridiculing, and refutative.
Of course, "real world" ironies are
multifunctional, often combining shades
and nuances of these three functions.10
5
Booth, p. 28.
6 Perelman, p. 206.
7 Kaufer, pp. 94-98.
8 Douglous C. Muecke, The Compass of Irony (Lon-
don: Metheun, 1969), pp. 232-233.

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
Although a good deal may be learned by
exploring the interaction of these ironic
functions, we shall mainly be concerned
with ironies that fall primarily into one
category or another. One of our aims is
to find out how ironically intended utter-
ances can be used to reinforce, ridicule,
or refute. We also want to know what
properties distinguish ironies specifically
tailored to one or another of these
different purposes.
I confirmed Chafe's observations in the
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IRONY AND THE FOREGROUNDING OF
NORMS
Before addressing these concerns, we
first must discuss a psychological process
Chafe labels "foregrounding."11 A con-
cept is "foregrounded" or "in the fore-
ground" if a speaker or writer can
assume that the audience has the concept
actively in mind. Chafe writes, "We
might think of what is going on in a
discourse as if it described states and
events unfolding on a stage. We could
then say that at any particular point in
the discourse there are certain things
which are 'on stage.' It is whatever is on
stage that I am calling foregrounded."12
Chafe appeals to foregrounding while
explaining certain semantic properties of
texts, especially pronominalization, as in
the following text: "Yesterday I saw a
little girl get bitten by a dog. I tried to
catch the dog but it ran away. The little
girl was scared but she wasn't hurt."
Chafe observes that the first sentence
foregrounds the concepts /, little girl,
dog, and the event of biting. The second
sentence keeps / and dog "on stage" but
9 Ibid.
10
See, for example, Booth's extended discussion of
Swift's irony in "A Modest Proposal," pp. 105-123. route to foregrounding information is to
11 Wallace Chafe, "Discourse Structure and Human
Knowledge," in Language Comprehension and the
Acquisition of Knowledge, ed. R.O. Freedle and J.B. Curtis, "Foregrounding Effects in Discourse Compre-
Carroll (New York: Winston, 1972), pp. 41-69.
l2
Ibid., p. 50.
29
KAUFER AND NEUWIRTH
backgrounds little girl and the event of
biting. Chafe's point is that pronominal-
ization cannot occur unless the concept
pronominalized is foregrounded. This
observation, according to Chafe, ex-
plains why the third sentence is prob-
lematic: Once a concept falls out of the
foreground (as does little girl), it can no
longer be pronominalized without re-
sulting in some loss of discourse coher-
ence.
Lesgold, Roth, and Curtis13 have
laboratory by observing that subjects
take less time to understand coherent
discourses like the following fairly
easily: "I am trying to find a black dog.
Yesterday that dog bit a little girl. She
was scared but wasn't hurt." Examples
like the following cause subjects difficul-
ty: "Yesterday a black dog bit a little
girl. It got away and we are still trying to
find it. She was scared but she wasn't
really hurt."
In the first discourse, a listener
evidently hears the word "she" when the
concept little girl is foregrounded (i.e.,
still activated in short-term memory).
Because this word-concept pairing is
coreferential, the discourse is coherent.
In the second discourse, however, the
listener hears the "she" when little girl
is no longer "activated." The lack of a
foregrounded antecedent results in the
loss of some coherence—and this, appar-
ently, inhibits processing of the second
discourse.
Our interest in foregrounding, howev-
er, is not tied to issues of discourse
coherence per se, but rather to the role
this process seems to play in ironic
communication. As a basis of non-ironic
contrast, consider that the most direct
13
Alan M. Lesgold, Steven F. Roth, and Mary E.
hension," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal
Behavior, 18 (1979), 291-308.
 30
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
mention it. We notice that the dog wants
to leave the house. We plan that a
listener near the door will open it if we
can foreground this information. We
utter "the dog wants to leave," and
thereby foreground this information.
Because of its conventional use as a
foregrounding strategy, let us think of
explicit mention as the prototypical fore-
grounding mechanism.
Ironists seem to exploit a type of fore-
grounding strategy that is both less
direct and more restricted than the
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prototype. Ironic foregrounding is less
direct than explicit mention in that the
ironist implies but does not say what she
or he wants foregrounded. There must,
of course, be some inferential link
between what the ironist says and what
is foregrounded. The listener's task in
understanding an irony is to discover
this link. The ironist's task is to put the
listener on the right trail of discovery.
But ironic foregrounding is also more
restricted than explicit mention for, as
we shall argue, the ironist can put the
listener on the right trail of discovery
only by inferentially foregrounding
norms. We must parcel out nonironic
and ironic routes a speaker may take
when foregrounding norms.
First, we can identify "applicative"
routes to norm foregrounding. These
refer to the straightforward application
of norms a speaker makes when issuing
a literal evaluative utterance. A speaker
tells a companion, "The movie was
fantastic!" and thereby foregrounds
norms about good movies by issuing a
predication which conventionally ap-
plies them. Norms are also straightfor-
wardly "applied" when the evaluation is
negative. A speaker says, "the weather is
miserable," and thereby applies a norm
of beautiful weather by suggesting that
the present weather fails to meet it.
Norms can be applied even when the
surface utterance does not look like an
FEBRUARY 1982
evaluation. A utters "the keys are not on
the table," to B in a context where both
know it was B's responsibility that the
keys be there. Here A's statement
mentions neither a norm nor norm viola-
tion but contextually implies the latter,14
which is a less direct and non-ironic
route to norm foregrounding.
Second, then, we can identify "viola-
tive" routes in which the speaker fore-
grounds norms by violating them.
Suppose a librarian happens to notice a
patron conversing in a "talking forbid-
den" section of the library. We can
expect the patron's violation to fore-
ground conventional norms of silence
which the librarian invokes when taking
action to correct the patron's behavior.
Ironic foregrounding of norms relies
on a combination of both applicative and
violative routes: the ironist foregrounds
norms, intending to apply them, by
pretending to violate them. Conversely,
perceiving irony requires that one rein-
terpret what initially seems a speaker's
violation of norms as a deliberate,
although indirect, application. What
clues does a listener use to direct this
reinterpretation? Two important ones
seem to be the listener's recognition that
(1) both violating and applying norms
imply their being foregrounded; and (2)
wanting the norms both foregrounded
and applied is consistent with the speak-
er's rhetorical purposes.
For example, when Shakespeare has
Antony say, "Brutus is an honorable
man," the audience knows full well that
Brutus has failed to meet Antony's stan-
dards of honorability and recognizes that
he is violating his own norms. But the
audience also recognizes that it would be
consistent with Antony's rhetorical pur-
14
For an insightful discussion of how seemingly "val-
ue-neutral" statements can contextually imply the
application of strong evaluative norms, see William
Labov and David Fanshel, Therapeutic Discourse (New
York: Academic Press, 1977), pp. 71-110.
 31
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH KAUFER AND NEUWIRTH

pose to foreground these norms to apply
them against Brutus. What Antony
presents as a violation of transparent
norms can thus be reinterpreted as a
deliberate application of them. Hence,
knowing that a speaker has a rhetorical
purpose consistent with foregrounding a
norm in order to apply it, a listener can
reinterpret a speaker's apparent norm
violation as an unstated application.
II
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and transparency.15 For it may well be
that ironies work more effectively within
tight-knit groups in which group stan-
dards are highly transparent than within
loosely defined social practices. It may
well be that it is easier to carry out ironic
masquerades when acting out an imper-
sonal role standard (e.g., mimicking the
President of the United States) than
when acting in institutions, like li-
braries, where .regulations are rigidly
enforced.
Our purpose is not to develop a

NORMATIVE APPLICATIONS AND

TYPES general classification of norms, but
rather a theory of how norms effectively
As just argued, the ironist's transpar- figure in the three uses of irony
ent violation of norms is only a pretense, discussed in the literature. To this end,
an ostensible violation that thinly we need only reduce the vagueness
disguises a genuine application. Yet it is enough to address two problems. First,
clear that not all actions easily submit to although we have established that norms
this kind of masquerade. Return for a can be foregrounded either through
moment to our librarian example. application or violation, we still need to
Suppose the conversing patron had understand what it is about norms that
pleaded "irony" in defense of his or her makes them contextually violable or
action. The defense might go something applicable in the first place. Second,
like this: "There is no reason to scold me while we cannot possibly survey the
for talking. My conversing, after all, was various notions (i.e., regulation, stan-
only a pretended violation of the rules. dard, etc.) that seem to divide norms by
Indeed when I was talking, I was merely type, we must nonetheless come up with
ironically ridiculing people who always an understanding of "normative type"
talk in libraries!" This defense would that is meaningful for distinguishing our
surely be unconvincing, but why? Why three ironic uses.
is it that some sorts of evaluative behav- As for the contextual applicability/
ior are more easily feigned than others, violability of norms, we follow Taylor
and thus more ripe for ironic masquer- and Toulmin's association of norms with
ade? This is far from a trivial problem, context-sensitive argumentative war-
one that would involve us in a discussion rants used to justify evaluative or
of the relative transparency and rigidity prescriptive statements.16 Suppose a
of norms across different social contexts. shopper in a fruit market says of an
A related problem concerns the vague- apple on display, "it's green," meaning
ness of the concept of norm and the
cluster of notions associated with it: 15
Bach and Harnish offer a nice preliminary effort
personal standards, social norms, social toward such a sorting. Kent Bach and Robert M.
regularities, social standards, practices, Harnish, Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts
(New York: M.I.T. Press, 1979), pp. 267-283.
rules, role standards, group standards, 16
Paul W. Taylor, Normative Discourse (Westport:
and so on. It is likely that sorting Greenwood Press, 1961), pp. 3-59; Stephen Toulmin,
through these notions would bring us to Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik, An Introduction to
Reasoning (New York: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 309-
a fuller understanding of norm rigidity 337.
 32
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
that the apple is unripe and not fit for
buying. According to Taylor, one must
logically distinguish the evaluative state-
ment ("it's green"), the attitude ex-
pressed (against buying the apple), and
the norm used to justify the implied
attitude (one should not buy green
apples).17 This example typifies the
general relationship among norms, atti-
tudes, and evaluative statements: Evalu-
ative statements and the pro- or con-
attitudes they imply are justified by
norms.
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The distinction between norms and
attitudes is important because irony
could not work as a communicative
device if it were merely the expression of
obviously insincere attitudes. If one is
known to like the color blue and then
happens to utter, "I don't like blue," it is
clear that we might recognize the
speaker as deliberately insincere, but we
would hardly recognize him or her as
ironically applying the genuine attitude
(the liking of blue) to the evaluation of
anything. While one can avow or disa-
vow attitudes, one cannot apply them in
the service of justifying an evaluation.
Norms do justify evaluations, howev-
er, and their applicability as justifica-
tions is contextually triggered. That is to
say, norms are generally contextually
enforced without explicitly being put
into force. Although the ironist gives the
appearance of contradicting a norm, this
appearance is invariably set against a
background where there is an overriding
justification to apply it. The only
"pointed" information the ironist com-
municates is that the background is of
this particular sort. Once the audience
understands this information, it will
know that the literal utterance is not
being used to alter the background but
rather to activate the norms already in
force.
17
Taylor, pp. 5-15.
FEBRUARY 1982
As for norm types, we need only make
one division between substantive and
formal norms. Substantive norms refer
to norms which offer positive directives
like "brush your teeth three times a
day," or "vote communist." Formal
norms, on the other hand, refer to norms
which do not in themselves commit one
to a substantive content but which
instead are directives for assessing
normative and even nonnormative sys-
tems. Formal norms include norms of
consistency, coherence, and so on. Iron-
ies used to reinforce or ridicule fore-
ground substantive norms, but in rein-
forcement the foregrounded norms are
shared, in ridicule they are not; refuta-
tive ironists, on the other hand, fore-
ground shared formal norms.
Ill
FOREGROUNDING AND THREE IRONIC
USES
Now that we have some notion of the
particular foregrounding mechanism by
which ironists communicate irony, we
address our second question: How can
this mechanism be exploited in the
service of the distinct rhetorical purposes
associated with reinforcement, ridicule,
and refutation? In what follows we
consider the relationship of foreground-
ing to each of these purposes.
Ironic Reinforcement: Foregrounding
Shared Substantive Norms. Muecke
offers the following description of how
reinforcing ironies work: "Such irony
works by asserting a "falsehood" and
relying upon the reader's or listener's
prior knowledge of the truth to contra-
dict it mentally or vocally by an
emphatic counter-assertion, the counter-
assertion with all its emphasis being the
ironist's real meaning.18 In our terms,
the reinforcing ironist issues a norm-
l8
Muecke, p. 51.

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
violating utterance to signal his/her
application of the norm. Of course, for
the ironist to pursue a strategy of rein-
forcement rather than simple emphasis,
she or he must make sure that the norms
on which the irony will turn are shared.
Let us say that both A and B do not
want it to rain on a particular day and
each knows the other has this preference.
It rains on the day in question and A
says to B: "Lovely day.'" B recognizes
A's utterance as a violation of norms.
This recognition in turn brings into the
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foreground (for B) the norms (of beauti-
ful weather) violated. But B can also
recognize that it is consistent with A's
rhetorical purpose that A should fore-
ground these norms anyway—so as to
apply them at the expense of the current
weather. B thus uses this information
about A's rhetorical purposes to inter-
pret A as applying a norm by pretending
to violate it. In addition, A is applying
B's norms as well. Because A fore-
grounds a substantive norm to which B
agrees, A's irony has a reinforcing func-
tion beyond its communicative one.
Ironic Ridicule: Foregrounding Non-
Shared Substantive Norms. Ironies serve
a ridiculing function when made in the
environment of listeners or third parties
who either do not subscribe or conform
tö the norms foregrounded by the ironist.
We are less likely to find such ridiculing
ironies in the discussion of noncontro-
versial topics (like weather) and more
likely to find them in the discussion of
controversies where competing value
systems emerge. Seldom do we find ridi-
culing ironies that do not also reinforce
the values of an "in group" audience.
The ironist's intent will be to reinforce
the values of some listeners and ridicule
the opposing values of other listeners or
third parties. However, as we see below,
sometimes the same listener can be ironi-
cally reinforced and ridiculed.
While the situations fostering ironic
33
KAUFER AND NEUWIRTH
ridicule are varied and complex, often
involving ironically knowledgeable as
well as ironically naive listeners, we
limit this discussion to two contrasting
types of ridiculing ironists.
1. Ironists who ridicule listeners who
subscribe to but fail to conform to
commonly held norms. Ironists use this
type of ridicule correctively—as a way of
correcting in-group cohorts whose be-
havior has lapsed from orthodox values.
Suppose A is driving carelessly and
nearly causes an accident. B, a passen-
ger, sarcastically utters, "Smooth move!"
If we assume that A and B both under-
stand A's driving to be reckless, there is
no reason to consider B as excluding A
from an "in group." Rather, B seems to
assume that A shares his/her standards
of good driving, but nonetheless ridicules
A for acting like a person who does not
hold these standards.
How through foregrounding mecha-
nisms does A understand B's irony as
ridicule? Much of it has to do with
timing. Because they know one another's
norms for good driving, A will under-
stand B's remark as irony in the manner
one would understand a reinforcing
irony. But (A might reason), why does B
pick this moment to reinforce values—
the monent when I have seemed to lapse
from them. The timing suggests that B's
attempted reinforcement is not gratu-
itous, that B may think A needs such
reinforcement. To suggest that one needs
reinforcing in a value to which one is
intrinsically committed can be taken as a
form of ridicule.19 A can thus interpret
the irony as being both reinforcing and
ridiculing.
2. Ironists who ridicule listeners or
19 Labov and Fanshel describe in great detail how
suggestions of this kind can be interpreted as ridiculing
challenges. See Therapeutic Discourse, pp. 93-98. Note
that had B said something like, "Gee, you should be
more careful," the sense of ridicule would have been
reduced. B's statement would have functioned more to
caution A than to question his/her norms.
 34
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
third parties who do not share their
values. Perelman observes, "A statement
is ridiculous as soon as it conflicts, with-
out justification, with an accepted opin-
ion."20 In this sense, ironists often delib-
erately voice "ridiculous" views before
in-groups in an attempt to ridicule the
views of out-groups. Imagine a Demo-
cratic speaker quipping in a politically
mixed gathering: "The Republicans
really care about welfare." The listeners
will fall into an assortment of groups
depending upon their awareness of the
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speaker's real values as well as their
political affiliations.
The groups who do not recognize the
irony will falsely assume that the
speaker has avowed Republican norms
when in fact s/he has only pretended to
avow them. They will react to the irony
as if it were a sincere utterance. Of the
groups who do recognize the irony, all
will likely construe it as reinforcing for
the Democrats and ridiculing for the
Republicans. The irony-sensitive listen-
ers, further, are likely to put an addi-
tional subjective interpretation on the
utterance depending upon whether they
are Republicans or Democrats. If they
are Democrats, they may well be
disposed to see the utterance as a proper
attack on the hypocrisy of Republicans
who pay lip service to social welfare
programs.
If they are Republicans, they may be
more disposed to regard the irony as-a
real violation of Republican norms—for,
these listeners may reason, Republicans
do in fact care about social welfare. Of
course, the Republicans in the audience
will still understand the irony as
intended ridicule even if they readily
concede that social welfare is low on
their list of priorities. One will under-
stand a statement as ridicule, in other
words, merely if it foregrounds substan-
20
Perelman, p. 206.
FEBRUARY 1982
tive norms to which one does not whole-
heartedly subscribe.
We can however further elaborate the
way ridicule is ironically conveyed by
considering another feature associated
with the ironic foregrounding of norms:
implicit value hierarchies. Let us refer to
the values the ironist applies as the
ironist's "applied values." Let us refer to
the (contrary) values implied by the
ironist's pretended violation as the "pre-
tended values." Then the implicit value
hierarchy associated with the ironic fore-
grounding of norms can be stated this
way: An ironist presupposes that his/
her applied values override the pre-
tended ones.
This hierarchy is illustrated most
clearly when it is uncontested. Suppose
one were to say, "drink diet soda and
you'll be the leanest patient on the
cancer ward." Here it is clear that the
ironist erects a value hierarchy that
undermines the imperative plea to drink
diet soda. The pretended values asso-
ciated with drinking diet soda (weight
control) are obviously overridden by the
applied values (cancer control). When
expecting a listener to understand an
irony, an ironist often assumes that these
value rankings are obvious to the listen-
er. If they were not obvious, a listener
might reason, how could the speaker
expect me to recover the irony?
Similarly, by constructing implicit
hierarchies that are not obvious or above
controversy, an ironist can nonetheless
convey the impression that she or he
thinks they are. Returning then to our
earlier example, should a speaker build
implicit hierarchies that presume Demo-
cratic values override Republican, (i.e.,
social welfare overrides national de-
fense), the speaker will be understood as
ridiculing a Republican with reverse
value rankings. The ridicule will derive
from the speaker's mimicry of the
Republicans; but it will also derive from

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
the fact that in mimicking Republicans,
the speaker will be implying that the
Democratic priorities are self-evident
and need no explicit justification.
Ironic Refutation: Foregrounding
Shared Formal Norms. We have thus far
seen that to understand an irony, one
must perceive the ironist as attempting
to apply certain norms by pretending to
violate them. To appreciate or agree to
an irony, one must agree with the ironist
that the norms she or he applies override
the pretended norms. Like the ridiculing
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ironist, the refutative ironist applies
norms which she or he believes to over-
ride the norms of the opponent. Unlike
the ridiculing ironist, however, who
applies substantive norms to attack the
opponent's, the refutative ironist applies
formal norms.
Accordingly, the refutative ironist will
try to represent the views of a positive
system as sympathetically as possible—
only to show that the views in question
betray real or prima facie incompatibili-
ties. Consider such an ironist who,
speaking among pro-abortionists, par-
rots their concerns by expressing a
"fear" that the anti-abortionists have not
demonstrated sufficient concern for "hu-
man life." The ironist may then run
down a bill of particulars on the insensi-
tivities of anti-abortionists toward the
lives of women (forced to resort to illegal
abortions) as well as toward the lives of
unwanted children. However, in all this,
the ironist's principle aim may be just to
foreground the norm "protection of
human life" as the key vantage from
which to assess the issue.
This foregrounding strategy reflects
the speaker's gamble that open-minded
advocates of abortion will not fail to see
the curious position into which they fall
when prompted to defend abortion
under the banner of protecting human
life. Even if the gamble succeeds, it is not
likely that the audience will be so
35
KAUFER AND NEUWIRTH
discomfited as to recant their views—but
it may provoke them, and is specifically
designed to provoke them, to rethink
their position more critically, with an
eye to filling in missing premises. For
instance, if the ironic refutation is
competently executed, the pro-abortion-
ists may feel obliged to specify more
carefully the distinction they believe
obtains between human and fetal life.
Refutative ironies of this sort are
designed not to ridicule but to open
minds and deepen understandings. Iron-
ists who play by such subtle rules are
often admired for loosening zealots from
intransigent positions, but they are also
feared, as the Greeks feared Socrates for
loosening upstanding citizens from cul-
turally sanctioned values. Refutative
ironies can also be used to investigate
one's own positive norms under the
rubric of self-reflective irony or the
Socratic examination of assumptions. In
such cases, the ironist reasons about his
or her position from the premise that
incompleteness and inconsistency are
bound to appear. Unlike reinforcing or
ridiculing ironists who wish to fore-
ground substantive norms for friends or
foes, refutative ironists wish to fore-
ground formal norms for anyone's,
including their own, benefit.
IV
Our task has been to bridge prior
classificational work on the functions of
ironic communication with a discussion
of general processes underlying them.
We have argued that these general
processes consist in the foregrounding of
norms whereby a speaker applies a
norm in a certain context by pretending
to violate it. We have sought to account
for differences in a range of well-known
ironic strategies by citing differences in
the type and interpersonal significance
of the norms ironically foregrounded.
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QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF SPEECH
We suggested that ironies play a rein-
forcing role relative to listeners who
agree with the substantive norms fore-
grounded; a ridiculing role relative to
listeners who dissociate themselves from
these norms; and a refutative role rela-
tive to listeners who associate themselves
with a positive system overridden by
formal norms ironically foregrounded.
As one might glean from our review of
literature, we have a long way to go
before we can establish a systematic clas-
sification of "ironic" contexts and the
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principles of rhetoric on which they
FEBRUARY 1982
turn. We also have a long way to go in
refining the classification of ironic func-
tions, and until reinforcing, ridiculing,
and refutative ironies are analyzed in
more detailed and elaborate contexts
categories will remain imprecise. There
are no doubt hundreds of subfunctions
within these functions. Many subfunc-
tions are so context-dependent as to
interest only the topical critic. Others
may be of genuine theoretical interest,
requiring us to extend our basic concep-
tion of how irony works as a tool of
rhetoric.