Journal of Pragmatics 5 (1981) 323-334 North-Holland Publishing Company

323

WHO'S A F R A I D OF IRONY? AN ANALYSIS OF UNCOOPERATIVE BEHAVIOR IN EDWARD ALBEE'S w H g ' s A F R A I D OF V~rRGINIA W,9OLF? *

ENIKO BOLLOB/i,S

IRONY. a verbal expression of 'uncooperative behavior', is by its nature at hem,. ~ in modem drama, especially the theater of the absurd: it absurdly violates the Gricean coop ~rati':e prin- ciple, and the maxim of quality in particular. In Edward Atbee's 'Who's Afraic~ of Virginia Wool~', irony becomes an intricate language game. The dissonance between intended com~ municative content and apprehended content basic to irony develops into at [east three differ- ent mechanisms: (i) the simple negation of literal meaning gives the intended meaaing; (ii)by violating the sincerity condition of the illocutionary act, the illocutionary Jorce cf the ironic speech act is reversed; (iii) the meaning conveyed by irony is presupposition (and al:;o downgra- ded predication, entailment and expectation) logically implying its own negation In Albee's masterpiece piay~ irony serves the game of exorcism.

H.P. Grice, in his influential article on 'Logic and conversation' , assume.,, on com- mon sense grounds, the existence of what he labels ' the cooperative principle' (1975:45) : "a rough genera! principle which participants will be expec t (d (ceteris

panous) to observe, namely: Make your conversational contr ibut ion ~uch as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of

the talk exchange in which you are engaged" [1 ]. Among other things, Grice pre-

supposes that

-- our talk exchanges are not a succession of disconnected remarks;

- these exchanges are characteristically cooperative efforts;

'~ 1 am grateful to Ferenc Kiefer (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and Jacob L. Me) (Odense Uniiversity) for reading an earlier draft of this manuscript and suggesting many improve- merits. I would also like to thank Robert L. Brown (University of Minne:;ota) and Martin Stein- mann (University of Illinois, Chicago Circle) for discussing various point.,; of the paper with me. The remaining ntistakes are, of course~ my ~w~.

Mailing addr~;ss: Enik6 Bollob~is, Orgona ut. 8, H-1023 Budapest, Hur~gary. [1] When J.R, 8earle (1969,) put down the rules regulating the act of promising and the

conditions allowing for the illocutionary forces of illocutionary acts, he, too, clarified conversa- tional prin~ple~ finfilar to the later Gricean tenets, except within the more restricted territory of protnising.

0378-2 ~ 6 6 / 8 1 / 0 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 / $ 0 2 . 5 0 © 1981 North-Holland

324 E. BoUob~s / Who °s afraid of irony

- each participant rec¢,gnizes in them a common purpose, or :at least a mutually accepted direction.

Not all of this is self-evident, however; some conversations are totally uncooperative. Often, what is commu,~icated is just that the speakers cannot and will not corn- mur~icate. Such talk e:tchanges are not cooperative efforts and lack a mutually acc,~pted direction.

Modern plays: modern :~ames

Modem drama, especia ly the theater of the absurd, very often exploits this lack of cooperation. Yet this ~ces not mean that Grice's maxim of quality is wrongly for- mulated; it tells us so~nething about the theater of the absurd, namely, that it is absurd in a pragrnatic-li lguistic sense, as well as from a ,dramaturgic and other points of view: modern the::tter turns on some 'uncooperative principle'. In Eugene Ionesco's Ba/d $opran~, Edward Albee's The Sandbox, Harolld Pinter's Endgame, the conversations have hardly any direction. Others reveal d~fferent forms of un- social behavior: dishore:.ty, deception, pretense, irony. The present paper sets out to investigate one of these cases: irony as uncooperatiw., behavior in Edward Albee's Wh:~ ~ Afraid o f Virgi~ffa Woolf? (1962), a play, as the literary critic Harold Clur- man puts it (1975: 76), '~Packed with talent" - and with much more.

The play has a reautation for ala:ost lacking an), so-called 'action': nothing 'happens' beside talkh~g. Having met for the first time that night, the characters - new colleagues and their wives - are on the road to becoming intimate. Yet their through-~he-looking-gl.~ss self-introduction has a special axis: we learn their 'vices' (such as alcoholism, lack of motivation in careers) befole their 'virtues' i!like getting a Master's degree at 19 and being intelcollegiate state middleweight champion). - Of course, why shoulJn't we? The eve3r-concevled layers of our personalities are at least as characteristi~ as the valued capacities and achievements we mistakenly identify with ourselv,.~s. We have to agree with Sonya Rudikoff (1978: 245), that this :~pecial axis gives the play "the distinctively cheeky tone of the sixties"; that its through-the-looking-$iass vision and "domesticated il~,tellectual teasing" make it "emblematic of the n~odernist moveraent".

Indeed, the audiel~ce witnesses a modernist game [2], whose rules are principles of uncoo~rative belJtavivr. At least three different games are played ('Humiliate the Host', 'Hump th,: Hostess', and 'Get the Guests'), each introducing new consti-

[2] The who~ phy is rich la references to gam~ and rules, beginning with 'Fun and games' as the subtitle of the first act. Others are: 'The game is ove~,!" (136); "you can make your own rules (.. .) But some.bedy else try it . . . no, sir! (152-1~3); ~'Aw, sure you do, Martha . . . original game-girl, and ~11" (207); "You know the ru,!es, Mw'tha, for Christ'~ sake, you know the rules!" (235). Referenc ~s throu[,.hot~t the paper are to Albee (1962).

E, Bollobtis / Who’s afraid of irony 3.25

tutive rules to define: the new game; yet none of these rul,es reveals any possib’le way of cooperatian. Thti,;se game:; are similar to Wittgenstein’s language games in that

here, too, the on11 way to lcxn or teach a rule is through use; meaning is use its& (Wittgensteirl 195%). Tht: players in the drama are engaged in language games also in the sense Jtins Allwood defines the phenomenon. The receivers not only apprehend and reconstruct the information given by the sender, but shcw an understanding, take a stand and behaviorally react to the information; in short, “communicatively releiant behavior is exhibited by both sender and receiver” (Allwood 1976: 2 17). Martha and George may be said to be unfair to their guests in the sense that these newcomers had no knowledge of either the faculty’s favored genres and rhetorical practices, or the particular facts of George’s and Martha’s life, which would imme- diately throw light on the validity of their remarks. Yet in another serlse the hosts do play a fair game: by their nature, the rules are capable of being worked out; on the basis of our intuitive knowledge of what Martin Steinmann (1976) described as rule-, speech act-, genre-, and rhetorical competences, their use reveals their meaning. In this light, we are all the more strtick how ‘meaning blind’ the guests,

especially Honey, are, to use Wittgenstein’s fitting metaphor (I958:17) - assump- tions should be presumptive!; the meaning of rules could be deduced.

Irony

Perhaps the most important of the games Martha and George play - and one for which ordinary language has a name, too - is irony.

Albee’s play present’s an ideal situation for irony; we have all kinds of players required. One of the two ironists, George and Martha, is always on stage, with enough objectivity, disengagement, freedom, dispassion and critical attitude to per- fectlw fulfil his role, yet never completely detat:hed. (The ironist basically cares for . the person he is demeaning and ridiculing, otilerwis Jhy bother?) We have two objects of irony, ?&A and Honey, to whom ir$Jnic s :h acts: are addressed. Their ignorance and involvement are constantly char ging, but in tnost cases, they are in ironic situations without knowing it, They ar:! unable to recognize, for itistance, that they are ironically addressed.

Geoee: That what you were drinking over a.t P~nassus? Nick: 0vcr at . + .? &owe: Parnassus. Ni’ck: I don’t undersiand a . . Geowe: Skip it. (30);

unable t(ll recognize how they are victims of intrigue:

Hone>): I[ want to hear the story. I love stories,

Geoae: AN.!! And Mousie’s father was a holy man, see, and he ran sort of traveling clip joiftt, based on Christ and all those girls, and he took the faithful . . .

that’s a iP . . . just ,look ‘em . . _ Honey: This is F&miIiar . . w

Honey: I’ve he ird this story before (142-143);

unable to ident fy the ironic tone of the conversation:

You think I’m kidding? You think I’m joking? I never joke . . . I don’t have a sense of humor. I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humo :. I have no sense of humor! I haven’t either. Yes, ! ou have, IJnney . . . a quiet one (76-77);

unable to recognize that their own wor2s betray them:

George: (. . .) Things are simpler with you . . . you marry a woman because she’s allblDwnup... while I, in my clumsy, old-fashioned way . . .

Nick : Ther: was mere to it than that! George: Sure I I’ll bet :;he has money, too! Nick: Yes. George: Yes? Yes! You mean I was right? I hit it? AVc k : Wctll, you see . . . George: My 304, what archery! First try, too. How about that! (102-103)

Although N:k does reveal a certain sense to understand I:oncrete ironic situations:

Geoee: (. . .) I asked you how you liked that for a decler sion: Good; better; best; bested. Hm? Well?

Nick: I really don’t know what to :;ay. George: Yc u really don’t know wat to say? Nick: A31 right . . . what do you want me to say? IJo you want me to say it’s

fufmy, so you can contradict me and say it’s sad? or do you want me to sa\r it’s sad so you can turn around and s,iy nq it’s ‘irnny. YOU can play th tt damn little game any way you want to, you know (32-33);

he ins completely unable to recognize honest remarks iii ironic contexts. He cannot e how love and care can be at home in irony.

A&V&Q: (. . .) There is only one man in my life who hris ever e . . made me happy. I! o you know that? One!

NzCk-. Ihe... the what-do-you-c&it? . . . uh . . a the lawn mower, or something?

E. Bollobds / Who's afraid of irony 327

Martha:

Nick: Martha: Nick: Martha: "Nick"

( . . . ) No; I didn't mean him; I meant George, of cours:. Uh . . . George; my husband 'You're kidd'ng. ,Mn I? You must be. Hi,a? Him. Su re, su re.

Martha: O h . . . you know so little. And you're goim, to take over the world, hunh? ( ! 89-192)

The role of the victim is always changii~Jg --each player gets his share; everybody is ridiculed in due time.

We can ignore the role of the passive observers in the audience. Although by their presence and understanding, they intensify the effecls of ironic remarks, their role is not essential. In our analysis of ironic speech r;ituations, we can disregard the literary dimension of the play; it is as complete in itself as any real life situation.

Irony belongs - together with hints, insinuation:'., metaphors - to the class of indirect speech acts as defined by Searle (1975: 59-82) . Here the speaker's utterance meaning and sentence meaning come aparl; the speaker cc,mmunicates solnething different and something more, too, than what he actually says. Or, to use Allwood's terminology (1976:134): intended communicative content and al:p,'ehended con- tent differ. The ironist u.;ually intends to communicate the somehow opposite of what is literally expressed. But not ordy this: he/she also conveys h2s/her distance to the situation, his/her detachment, and his/her superiority. Comraon background assumptions have a lot to do in the interpretation of irony. Thus, as Allwood puts it (1976:134): "A can communicate something about his relation to a certain situ- ation by concurrently communicating the conventional cow:cnt of a certain linguis- tic expression and intending that B, through his Camiliarity with the situatioJ~, [and] the conventional content of the exp~ression . . . . should draw the conclusion that A does not mean what he is literally saying.'

As a tbrm of uncooperative behavior, irony violates the Gricean maxims ~f quality: it says something, but means something else. This is the element that tl,,e orig!nal meaning of the word eironeia suggests, too: 'assumed ignorance in ques- tioning'. Irony most often leaves the listener as well as the speaker in ignorance, ~n doubt: "successful irony", Allwood claim.,; modestly in a footnote (1976: 241), "do~.s not u.~ually involve completely obvious flouting ol ,'he no,ms [of the maxim of quality, that is], but rather leaves the receiver in some doubt'about whether ~t~e norms have been flouted or not".

I~ronic speech acts are similar to lies in that ,;entences used in both are untrue. ~-~ 2nstanees of uncooperative behavior, they both violate the Gricean coopera,i~e 9rinciple; but while lies have no implicatures, irony does imply, among othe.r thi,ags, the opposite of the literal meaning, somethir, g about the intentions of the spanker

to leave &/her listener in dloubt, about the speaker’s distance from the situaton, and his/her willingness to pia;y a semi-serious game.

Albee realized this close relationship of irony to lies. His play is packed with I sometimes undistinguishable manner.

Our son does not have blue hair . . . or blue eyes, for that matter. He has green eyes . . . like me. He has blue eyes, Martha. Green. Blue, l4artha. Greeri! He has the loveliest green eyes . . . they aren’t all flaked with brown and grey, you know . . . hazel . . . they’re real green . . . deep, pure green eyes . . . like mine. Your eyes arc: . a . brown, aren’t they? Green! Well, in some lights they lock brown, but they’re green. Not green h&e his . . . more Xz~ei. George has watery blue eyes . . , nrilky blue,

Make up your mind, Martha (74-75).

This COI xersation has absolutely no relation to reality; everything happens accord- ing to the wish of Martha (‘Make up your mind, Martha’). Are the players ironic or simply lying -- or both?

Nbe 3 knew not only the c!ose kinship of irony and lie:s, but also the difference betweer them. In the following conversation he points out the feature distinpluishinl; lies frorr other games of deceit, such as irony.

Tfiere is a moon; the mcJ0i-I is up. I’m afraid you’re mistaken. No; no.

(. . .) the moon went down, thought about it for ;tl little . . . considered it, you know what I mean? . . . and then, pp, came up agiain. Just like that. That is not true! That is such a lie!! You must not call everything a lie, Martha. Must she”? Hell, I don’t know when you people are lying, or what. You’re damned right! You’re not supposeid to (19%-200).

Yc?u - the addressee, the hearer, the audience - are not salpposed to! In lies, the listener is not supposed to detect the flouting of the maxim of quality: we lie when we do not want to say the truth, but neither do we want to be caught. In ironic

ch acts, on the other hand, ive blring the hearers, through factors making the receiver daubt what he/she hears, to understzznd the somehow lopposite of what is being z:aid.

E. Bollobeis / Who's aft'aid of irony 329

Let us see three ways intended meaning may relate to literal meaning in irony. [it In some cases the opposition of ~:neanings is quite simple' the negation of

literal mean~.ng gives the intended meaning of the ironic proposition.

Martha., ( . . . ) 1 never joke . . . I don' t have a sense o f humor . I have a fine sense o f

the ridiculous, but no sense of humo~ (76).

Marrha; Very good, George. • • t

Martha: It's the mos t . . , life you've shown a long time. George.: You bring out the best in me, baby (I 50-151).

Martha: Why don't you want to kiss me? George: Well dear, if i kissed you i'd get all excited .. I'd get beside myself, and

I'd take you, by force, right here on the living room rug, and then our little guests would walk in, a n d . . , well, just think what your father would say about that (15).

Martha." ( . . . ) You have a poetic nature, Gee, rge .... a Dylan Thomas-y quality that gets me right where I live (24).

In these sentences, the intended meaning of the ironic utterances is the simple .nega- tion of the propositions asserted: 'Martha always jokes, and has the finest ~ense of humor'; 'Martha brings ou'~ the worst in George'; 'Eve~l ii George kissed Martha, he would not get excited, would not get beside hiraself, and would certainly not take her, by force, on the living room rug'; 'George does not have poetic nature'.

(ii) But most of the cases are much more complicat~.'d. By flouting the maxim of quality., we violate the sincerity condition of' the illocutionary act.. Irony is thus the intentional exp~,ession of insincerity. This claim deri'~es flom what Brown rightly calls the key of the phenomenon (1978:10): "only illocutionary acts with sincerity conditions can be ironically performed". Indeed,. we cannot perform ironic opera- tives, such a~ marrying, christ(~nin~, assessinl;, appointing, nominati.~g, precisely because they do not have sincerity condition but only, as CampbeU suggests (1975: 12), a ,:ondition o r a "knowledge that speaker is duly constituted auti~ority". If the person sayin(, ']I hereby nominate John Kay for the office' has no authority to per- form the speech act of nominating, this sentence will not be taken as ironic, but merely as a joke.

Illocutionary acts expressing psychological states -- among wltich Searle (1977: 29) collects main headings such as belief, intention, desire, pleasure - all, of course, have sincerity conditions. If this condition is viola~:ed, when the speaker does not

330 E. Bollobds / Who's afraid of irony

believe what he/she states, or doe,,: not believe or intend that his/her wish be ful- filled, or does not believe that the addressee can supply information, then, ~ illo- cutionary act may be ironic, as in the following examples.

George: What made you decide to be a teacher? Nick: O h , . . . well, the same things t h a t . . , u h . . . motivated you, I imagine. George: What were they? Nick: PardoT:? George: I said, what were they? What were the things that motivated me? (31)

George's question is h onic because the sincerity condition is intentionally and overtly vio:~ated: by repeating and completing his original question, George wants it known that he lacks this condition.

/ '~.orlr~z,. I ' m n n ~ t r w i n o t n t p a r h i m r h ~ n I - I ~ ¢ a ~c~r l ~,~, al~ lrnc~ll l t h a t / ~ K ~ q, , . , ,e 'F , , 'L , ,~e~ l . , . ,I, a z . a a - . . i - . ~ u ~ a,a.m~ 9 ,u. 'v" I , , ~ , l , mu a z a a a a ~ , , J ~ , * * a a . 8 A ~ , ~ ~ ' ~ . p ~ 1 ~ , ~ , v * ~ , u , a a ~ i i ~ v v nI, Jl, gqLIl, ll, ~ , l p .

In this ironic metaphor, George again wants it knowa that his verdictive expressing judgment on his fathe~-in-law lacks sincerity; it is meant not as a praise, but as an assault•

There are, in Albee's masterpiece play, some more intricate instances of ironic judgment. In ~he following, George violates the sincerity condition of the speech act. but this sincerity condition does not refer to the belief in the validity of the judgment.

George:

Mart ha : George:

• ° .

George:

Martha's tastes in liquor have come down . . . simplified over the years . . . crystallized. Back when I was courting M a r t h a - well, I dori't know if that's exactly the right word far it - but back when I was courting Martha

Screw, sweetie! A~ any rater [back when I was courting Marllha, she'd order the damnest things! You wouldn't believe it! We'd go into a bar . . . you know, a bar . . . a whiskey, beer, and bourbon bar. . , a,Ld what she'd do would be, she'd screw up her face, think real hard, awd come up with . . . brandy Alexanders, creme de cacao frappes, gimlets, flaming punch b o w l s . . . seven-layer liquor things

Real lady-like little drinkies.

George: But the yeaxs have brought to Martha a sens~:~ of essentials . . . the know- ledge that cream is for coffee, lime juice for p i e s . . , and alcohol pure and shnple ] . . . here you are, ang le . . , for the pure an(~ simple (23-24).

The propositions be)ween the brackets may well be true, yet the evaluation is ironic: this crystallization in taste is by no means a virtue. Or:

33 1.

Nick: Don’t Zry to put me in the same &ss with you! Geo~e: Oh,,, No, of cou.rse not. Things UC simpler with you . . . ycu marry a

womari because she3 all blown up L . . while I, in my clumsy, ol&fashioned way . . . (102).

Lacking the sincerity condition in the validity of his own evaluation, George here, too, is ironic: his wey may be old fashioned enough, but not clump, and certain- ly morafly superior tc.1 Nick’s,

(iii) Digging deeper in the nature of the dissonanse fretwcen utterer’s meaning and sentence meaning inherent in irony, we find other examples.

IWurtha: What the he91 ;Ic you meitn screarnillg up the stairs at me like that? Geotge.~ We got lonel:~, darling . . . we got lonely for the soft purr of yo3r little

voice (47).

IronJv S.s at Ic 1st twofold here. The illocutionary force is reversed: flatter) becomes assault because there is irony already L1 saying that Martha’s ‘little voice’ 9ias a ‘soft purr’. Yet George r:oes not assert thas; he takes it for granted that the hearer agrees with this proposition. Tlaus, it is the truth o7f the presuppositions that is qdestioneci in thesc3 ironic utterances: by bringing about some incompatibility betlween presupposition and the suggested mesni,lg ot the sentence. The dissonarhce inherent in some way w other in the nature of irony is here embodied in a mechanism making presuppositions logically imply their own negations. Anyone *ho utters ‘We got lonely for the soft purr of your littte voice’ takes it for granted that ‘Her little veice has a soft purr’. Yet, exactly by being ironic the remark implies th,e negation of the presupposition: Cfeorgl: brin,gs it to understand that Martha has no little voice with a soft purr.

;n lthe following example, iron) again turns on 13resupposition.

Martha: Get over there and open the door! . . .

Geurge: All right, love . . . whatever lo-+e wants. Isn’t it nice the day SOS::;: jpcgpie have manners, though, even in thi:; dayi anil a;:e’! Isn’t It nice that some people won’t just come breaking irat\a at :ler people’s houses even if they d’u hear some sub-human monster yowling at ‘em insid.e . . .? (19)

Had C;eorge only stated that ‘Some people have manner:, . . .’ his negative assertion would have been ironic enough. But irony lhere turns on a contradiction between presuppositions (‘Some people have manners’ arid ‘Some people won’t come break- ing into other people’s houses’) and their logical implications (“Some people do not have mzlnners’ and *Some people do come brcakirig inta other people’s blouses’).. Thus, by hiding the opposition into the lrayer of the embedded (implied) presupp~o- sition, Ckorg2 adds another dimension to the complexity of his ironic remark.

332 E. Bollobds / Who's afraid of irony

Ironic presuppositions can be built by negating some down-graded predication and incorporating it into presuppositions, too. Downgrading, Leech clakns (2!975: 149), is the way "in which one predicatie, n may be included within a n o t h e r - . . . to reduce its position in the semantic hierarchy of analysis still further: to the status not of an argument but of a feature". Downgraded predication, then, is the semantic element which is the equivalent to a feature in function, but which has the structure of a predication. Playing with down-graded predication offers some hard- to-detect ways of hiding negative assertions for the ironis~t.

George." ( . . . ) the one thing in this whole sinking world that I am sure of is my partnership, my chromosomological partnership in t h e . . , creation of our . . . blond-eyed, blue-haired. . , son (72).

an w~a~ way is George ironic here: - Leech's 'Rule of predication' may offer some help (1975" 296): "I f a predication X ctmtains within it (either directly of indirectly) a downgraded predication Y, then X presupposes Y' (where Y' is an independent assertion equivalent to Y". The opposite of the downgraded predication of 'chro- moso:~ological pannership' and of the 'blond-eyed blue-haired son' is :guggested here, giving the whole proposition its witty irony. By this mechanism, the non- existence of both 'chromosomological partnership'and 'blond-eyed blue-haired son' is conveyed. This second case ofirony-in..presupposition, then, turns on d~wngraded preaications logically implying their negations.

It is, of course~ an absurdity to say that one is s,are of something that does not (b ; .x,st. But how do we know that it does not exist? - H e r e Albec gives a clue to his i:'ony: the phrase 'blond-eyed blue-haired son' is not just a slip of the to~ gue, but a deliberate absurdity wIfich sets fie unmistakably ironic tone. Booth (1974: 57) calls such a c!ae a "known error proclaimed", a straightforward warning about irony: here the speaker "betrays ignorance or foolishness that is simply incredible".

Beside presuppositions, other types of semanticoI'ragmatic relatiot~s, such as entailment and expectation may also play a role in irory.

George: Yes, Martha? Car~ I get you something? Martha: Well . . . uh . . . sure, you can light my cigarette, if you're of a mind to. George': N o . . . there are limits. I mean, man can put up with only so much ( . . . )

I'll hold your hand when it's dark and you're afraid of the bogey man, and I'll tote your gin bottles out after midnight, so no one'll see . . . but I will not light your cigarette. And that, as they say, is that (50-51).

Irony here attacks the assumption of the 'marriage contract' entailed, on common sense grounds, by the p:roposition. It also inveTrts gorae 'normal' scale of values: to comfort somebody in his/her nightmares is ordinarily an effort not comparable to lighting his/her cigarette. Yet, by refusing to light her cigarette, George negates the pragmatic expectation of the sentence: wc do not believe that 'he usually holds

E. Bollobds / Who’s afraid of irony 333

her hand when it’s dark wbn she’s afraid of the bogey man’ and that ‘he usually

totes her gin bGttles out after midnight so no on41 see’. By violat mg some com- monly accepted prag;natic rules, George shows the clearest forms of uncooperative behavior. He does not comfort her; he does not help concealing her alcoholism; beside all this, he will not even light her cigarette.

An assertion’s opposite, the absence of sincerity, the reverse of implication mean: no assertion, no sincerity, no implication,. But i!; there really nothing stated in irrtny? Does it really commImicate nothing? Doe:* avant-garde theater, to which irony had such a great appeal, communicate nothing e:ither?

The meanings behind iron:/ are difficult to find but still, they arc3 there. George and Martha admit, through irnny, their dissatisfaction with the faults, blemishes, and failures t h(:ir ironic: remarks are meant to attack. They express a desirable con- dition as oppo::ed to the presen-i unsatisfactory state of affairs. Yei this is not all. Ajtahnoucrh i’nr 2 wf& rmonw ironir llttoratwoc rniafitr, (spa XVI ..ILII,, h\, t+ ,~a-,,4 r\f tho mlc,tr asv,**w UCL”IM,‘~~O rrlaarlrw, ‘/J L ‘U 1.01‘U U‘ CL‘U jJ’c4-J all the players are involved in the game: irony bei:omes a pe rfect language game. ?Jick and Honey, the receivers, t 00, exhibit that commuruz::tivcly relevant b::havior which Allwood expects of participants in a proper language grllme (1976: 2 17). The Sprach- spiel of irony requires a lot from the newcomers. It requires an active verbal and non-verbal interaction, the reconstruction and also the undertaking of the problem which lurks behind the ironic attitude of George and Martlha: the unborn child. Through this cruel but effective game, the ironists achieve a. tremerdous perlocu- tionary effect: by the end, they will have dumped their hidden problem on the new couple through forcing them to take part in, their game of exorcism.

References

Albee, Edward. 1962. Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? New k’urk: Atheneum. Allw(jod, Jaw. 1976. Linguistic communication as action and cooperation. .i study in prag-

matics. University of Goteborg. Boot I, Wayne C. 1974. A rhetoric of irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Pre;s Brown, Jr., Robert L. 1978. Tho pragmatics of verbal irony. University of Milm.:sota (mimeu-

graphcti). Campbell, B.G. 1975. Toward a workable ta,xonomy of illocutionary forces and its implicatic n

to works of imaginative litcraturc. Lanpuagc and Style 8: 3-20. Clurman, Harold. 1975. ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf’l In: C.W.E. Bigsby, cd., 18 dward Albee.

Twcnticth century views. l:nglewood-Clift’s: Prentice Hall. pp. 76-“79. Grice, HP. 1975. ‘Logic and conversation‘. In: Peter Cole and Jerry L. Iblorgan, eds., Syntax

and semantics, vol. 3. New York: Academic Press. pp. 41-.58. Leech, Geoffrey N. !975. Semantics. London: Penguin Rooks. Rudikoff, Sonya. 1978. Afraid jf Virginia Woolf? 14merir:an Scholar 47: 2415-27 1. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech act!. An essay in the philosophy of language. Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press. Searle, John R, 1975. ‘Indirect sp:;ech acts’. In: Peter Colt and. Jerry L. Mor;l3n, cds., Syntax

and semantic>;, vol. 3. New Yor?: Academic Press. pp, 59-82. Scarle, John, R. 1977. ‘A ciassific;:tion of illocutionary rtcts’. In: Andy Rogers, Bob Wail, and

bhy, eds., Procucdings of the TWW cznfcroncc on pcrformativcs, pn:supptxG- tions and impticaturcs. Arlington, VA: Canter for Applied Linguist& pp. 2?-45.

Steinmann, Jr., Martin. ‘Rule competences and rhetorical competences’. In: Sulikok S. Vuiwenc, Carol A. Walker, and Stanford B % Stecvcr, cds., Papc;rs from the twelfth rc@ncrl meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: Chicago Univawsity Frcss sgcr. WI-616.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. The blue ard brown books, NW York: Harp and Row.

E. B~llobds (b. 1952) studied English and general linguistics in Budapest and Minneapolis. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the typology of 20th century American free verse, and is prcscntly a Research Fellow at thee University of Budapest. Her main flcld of interest is lingu.Wc and lit+ rary stylistics, cspccially poetics and the study of functional aesthetic-linguistic t’orms m litcra- turc.