For citation:
Ermakova O. P. Intensifiers and deintensification in ironic contexts. Speech Genres, 2016, no. 1(13), pp. 137-141. DOI: 10.18500/2311-0740-2016-1-13-137-141
Intensifiers and deintensification in ironic contexts
The article discusses the role of intensifiers and deintensification (the minimised degree sign) in ironic contexts. Pre-analyzes the characteristics of both groups of words, identify their co-occurrence differences, the productivity and dopolnyaet intensifiers and unproductive of deintensification. It is noted that these two types of words used in ironic contexts, «serve» irony in different ways: intensifiers, as a rule, are not mandatory (they «do not work» for irony themselves, they only reinforce the ironic sense, but not mandatory, and may even be omitted), while deintensification, on the contrary, play an active role in ironic combinations: they often embody the irony, and their omission returns the meaning to the literal. A particular issue raised in the article is the dependence of the ironic values on the form of collocations, syntactic function and modality of the utterance. Thus, the shape of comparative and unreal modality of statements are equally opposed to irony. Obviously, the fact that the one and the other denies the conversion actually a sign of how the subject peculiar and ironical approval of its inherence is the essence of irony in such statements.
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