A pragmatic Study of Irony in Selected Iraqi Episodes

Abstract

Irony is one of the universal linguistic phenomena that has been studied widely in different languages and from different points of view. The current paper, however, presents it from a pragmatic point of view in order to highlight its use and its implied meaning or purpose in a famous Iraqi episode belonged to a famous actor. This actor is known for his humorous prestige in criticizing things related to Iraqi society. Therefore, his language is full of linguistic devices that have rarely been studied by other scholars. Thus, the current paper hypothesizes that irony and its purposes are used effectively in the selected episode. In addition to that, Grice's maxims and another theory are appropriate to determine irony in the selected episode. This is actually concluded when a model has been applied to the analysis of this episode.