Hiniku (‘irony/sarcasm’) and non-propositional irony in Japanese: a metapragmatic perspective

Abstract While it is widely accepted that irony can give rise to various kinds of non-propositional effects, it has generally been assumed that irony itself is a propositional phenomenon since it unfolds through some form of conflict between what is said and what is (taken to be) intended. However, recent work indicates that in some cases, although there is no such propositional conflict, the utterances in question are nevertheless treated by users as instances of hiniku (‘irony’, ‘sarcasm’). Examples of what is called ‘non-propositional irony’ abound in Japanese. The aim of this paper is to further explore phenomena of non-propositional irony through an analysis of examples that are metapragmatically labelled as hiniku in Japanese novels. Close analysis of these cases of non-propositional irony demonstrates that they arise primarily due to some form of pragmatic disruption of the ongoing discourse. These pragmatic disruptions arise through violations of social norms, including but not limited to non-conventional use of honorifics, violation of interactional expectations, and the unexpected use of downgrading expressions. It is concluded that hiniku should not be dealt with separately from verbal irony just because it often does not involve propositional conflict. Instead, it is suggested that the theorisation of irony arguably needs to be able to accommodate irony phenomena across a range of different languages, including hiniku .