Explicitating Irony in a Cross-Cultural Perspective: Discursive Practices in Online Op-eds in French and in Hebrew

Abstract

Abstract This paper sets up to show how irony and reservations are explicitated in online media discourse, comparing their realizations in French and Hebrew online op-eds in leading journals. A corpus-based qualitative and quantitative analysis relies on two sets of big corpora for each language. The pragmatic analysis distinguishes between explicitating self- and other’s presumed ironic intents, the target of irony, its locus and overall speaker’s meanings. The findings indicate that the French data-set uses the verb ironiser, which has no comparable equivalent in Hebrew. More puzzling are the similarities between the two data-sets: both in French and in Hebrew journalists choose to explicitate irony and reservations, and they do so using similar discursive patterns. Conflicting forces are at play: interpretation paths are opened by irony, and are then narrowed down by the journalist’s interpretations. The results are interpreted in terms of informativeness, accountability and commitment to speaker’s meaning.