Irony in communicative behaviour of Elite in Edwardian Britain

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of little-studied specific in functioning of irony in the speech of English social elite. The aim of the study is to conduct sociolinguistic analysis of Julian Fellowes’s TV series script "Downton Abbey" to identify the language markers of irony, used by English aristocrats in the early XXth century, describe tactics and types of speech acts attached to irony, its impact on communicants. The main methods used in the study include sociolinguistic analysis of character's speech by means of sociolinguistic categories. Analysis of the contexts, where irony is used, allowed us to come to conclusion that the information plan of the ironic statement is expressed implicitly, includes methods of labeling, devaluation of interlocutor’s merits, humiliation, and mockery by means of hyperbolic metaphor, ironic pejorative, allusion and antithesis. The data, obtained in the process of research, can be used in the course of intercultural communication, stylistics, translation and semiotics.