Facilities of expression of irony

George Mikes describes an unusual episode from usual life, the Irony of life that sometimes happens to everyone. To some people it can seem like a bad luck or disappointment. However, the author perceives it positively, with Irony and makes us smile at life surprises too.

9) Study these rules, and imitate the English. There can be only one result: if you don't succeed in imitating them you become ridiculous; if you do, you become even more ridiculous.

Given sample is represented by epithets that are included into a two-step climax, in which the second part repeats the first one and is further strengthened by an intensifier, as in our instance. Climax is a type of semantically complicated parallelism, in which each next word combination (clause, sentence) is logically more important or emotionally stronger and more explicit [Kucharenko V.A. Practical course of English Language Stylistics, 1986:86].

Mikes again defines the British as reserved and determined nation, that doesn't accept other theories, lifestyle and concepts, but their own. From the other hand, the Irony is that every people guards their traditions and any of us looks ridiculous.

10) You must not forget that the farmers do grand work of national importance and deserve better weather.

In this example we observe the hyperbole. a deliberate overstatement or exaggeration of a feature essential to the object or phenomenon [Galperin I.R., 2009:ch4:42 ].

Of course, farming and agriculture is vital for every country and every state supports it as it can, the ironical aspect is that one of the ways of Britain helping its farmers is to compose weather forecast.

To summarize we should note that as seen from the analyzed examples, Irony has as many manifestation as there are lexical syntactical and stylistic devices, as regarded above: hyperbole, understatement, pun, epithet, bathos, climax, repetition. Though not all Stylistic Means were examined here we can conclude, that Irony and its means of expression are incredibly various, emotional, affective, colorfully marked and rather evaluative.

Conclusion

The interaction or interplay between the primary dictionary meaning (the meaning which is registered in the language code as an easily recog- nized sign for an abstract notion designating a certain phenomenon or object) and a meaning which is imposed on the word by a micro-context may be maintained along different lines. One line is when the author identifies two objects which have nothing in common, but in which he subjectively sees a function, or a property, or a feature, or a quality that may make the reader perceive these two objects as identical. An- other line is when the author finds it possible to substitute one object for another on the grounds that there is some kind of interdependence or interrelation between the two corresponding objects. A third line is when a certain property or quality of an object is used in an opposite or contra- dictory sense.

The stylistic device based on contrary concepts is called irony.

It has its interrelated terms such as Sarcasm and Satire. But Irony has positive, encouraging colouring while Sarcasm and Satire are negative, even insulting in a way. All these notions are to ridicule, to joke, to make tricks, consequently, as it's clear from this work, they can be generalized by such category as Humour.

In the stylistic device of irony it is always possible to indicate the exact word whose contextual meaning diametrically opposes its dictionary meaning, as it was in analyzed examples. As it was already mentioned, it can be any lexical device. This is why this type of irony is called verbal irony.

There are very many cases, though, which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the reversal of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can trace the contra-diction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. This type of irony is called sustained, and it is formed by the contradiction of the speaker's (writer's) considerations and the generally accepted moral and ethical codes.

We face Irony everywhere, not only in its linguistic form. It can be actions, images, signs. But Linguistic Irony in its various manifestations is the most vivid, evaluative, flamboyant, powerful, intense.

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