Testing, stretching, and aligning : Using ‘ironic personae’ to make sense of complicated issues

Kwon, W. and Mackay, R. and Clarke, I. and Wodak, R. and Vaara, E. (2020) Testing, stretching, and aligning : Using ‘ironic personae’ to make sense of complicated issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 166. pp. 44-58. ISSN 0378-2166

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Abstract

Irony and humor play an important role in both organizing and organizations, because they both help to collide and contrast ideas as well as mitigate and moderate criticism. Our empirical observations of a senior management team suggest participants frequently use verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor through ‘ironic personae’ – a cast of characters, real or imaginary – as a vehicle for pragmatically making sense of complicated topics. We show how ironic personae perform three functions: (i) testing new positions on topics in a non-committal way; (ii) stretching the frame of comparison of a group; and (iii) aligning shared understanding and commitment. Thus, our analysis sheds light on an underexplored and undertheorised pragmatic vehicle for the expression of humorous verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Pragmatics
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1700/1702
Subjects:
?? carnivalcomplexitydiscourse analysishumorironic personaesensemakingartificial intelligencelinguistics and languagelanguage and linguistics ??
ID Code:
150330
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
04 Jan 2021 15:50
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
07 Nov 2023 23:47