HUMOROUS IRONY IN SPONTANEOUS SPEECH: FROM THE FLOUTING OF EXPECTATIONS TO NON-SERIOUSNESS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18690/scn.19.1.%25p.2026Keywords:
spontaneous speech, humorous irony, pragmatics, Slovene, Krohot corpusAbstract
The paper examines humorous irony in spontaneous speech based on a corpus-based analysis of the Krohot (Corpus of Conversational Humor in the Slovene Language) 1.0 data. Irony is conceptualized as a context-dependent, metarepresentational form of indirect expression in which the listener reconstructs the speaker’s implicit stance based on a contrast between what is said and what is expected. Irony becomes humorous when this contrast triggers a playful shift into non-seriousness and enables a tension-relieving resolution of incongruity. The quantitative-qualitative analysis shows that humorous irony most frequently co-occurs with the combination of the corpus annotations ‘vocabulary’ and ‘attitude’. In the former, humorousness arises from word choice while in the latter it comes from the speaker’s attitude toward the content.
Downloads
References
VIR
Mira KRAJNC IVIČ, Larisa MIHAILOVIĆ, Dominik IVIČ, Darinka VERDONIK, 2025: Corpus of conversational humor Krohot 1.0. Slovenian language resource repository CLARIN.SI. http://hdl.handle.net/11356/2065 (17. 4. 2026).
LITERATURA
Salvatore ATTARDO, 2001: Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Salvatore ATTARDO, 2017: Humor and Pragmatics. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York, London: Routledge. 174–188.
Salvatore ATTARDO, Victor RASKIN, 2017: Linguistics and Humor Theory. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York, London: Routledge. 49–63.
Saša BABIČ, 2018: Stereotipi in predsodki o ženskah in moških v šaljivih vprašanjih. Humor u svakodnevnoj komunikaciji. Ur. Renata Jambrešić Kirin et al. Zagreb: Institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku. 81–95. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323393811_Stereotipi_in_predsodki_o_zenskah_in_moskih_v_saljivih_vprasanjih (24. 11. 2025).
Silvija BOROVNIK, 1997: Humor, ironija in groteska v delih Janka Messnerja. Slavistična revija 45/2–1, 127–134.
Christian BURGERS, Margot van MULKEN, 2017: Humor Markers. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York, London: Routledge. 385–399.
Herbert L. COLSTON, 2017: Irony and Sarcasm. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York, London: Routledge. 234–249.
Marta DYNEL, 2009: Beyond a Joke: Types of Conversational Humour. Language and Linguistics Compass 3/5, 1284–1299. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220531770_Beyond_a_Joke_Types_of_Conversational_Humour (25. 5. 2025). DOI 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2009.00152.x
e-SSKJ. Portal Fran. Slovarji Inštituta za slovenski jezik Frana Ramovša ZRC SAZU. https://www.fran.si/iskanje?FilteredDictionaryIds=201&View=1&Query=%2A (17. 1. 2026).
Paul GRICE, 1989: Logic and Conversation. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 22–40.
Urška JARNOVIČ, 2008: 7. mednarodna poletna šola in simpozij o humorju in smehu, Aberdeen, 9.–14. julij 2007. Jezik in slovstvo 53/1, 155–160.
Marko JESENŠEK, 2010: Humornost v kratki pripovedi Prežihovega Voranca. Jezik in slovstvo 55/3–4, 111–121.
Helga KOTTHOFF, 2006: Pragmatics of Performance and the Analysis of Conversational Humor. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 19/3, 271–304.
Mira KRAJNC IVIČ, 2009: Razgovor kot vrsta komunikacijskega stika. (Zora, 63). Maribor: Filozofska fakulteta, Mednarodna založba Oddelka za slovanske jezike in književnosti.
Mira KRAJNC IVIČ, 2017: Humorja ni nikoli preveč – ali pač. Slovenistika 10. Zbornik predavanj, Budimpešta, 26. oktober 2016. Ur. Marija Bajzek Lukač. Budapest: ELTE BTK, Szláv Filológiai Tanszék. 157–168. https://real.mtak.hu/102609/1/Szlovenkotetlegutolsovaltozat.pdf (12. 1. 2026).
Mira KRAJNC IVIČ, Špela ANTLOGA, 2024: Predlog izdelave korpusa humorja v govoru za slovenščino. Stanje in perspektive uporabe govornih virov v raziskavah govora. Ur. Mira Krajnc Ivič. Maribor: Univerza v Mariboru, Univerzitetna založba. 195–219. https://press.um.si/index.php/ump/sl/catalog/book/898/chapter/54 (3. 1. 2026). DOI https://doi.org/10.18690/um.ff.4.2024.10
Cristina LARKIN-GALINANES, 2017: An Overview of Humor Theory. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York: Routledge. 4–16.
Geoffrey LEECH, 1991: Principles of Pragmatics. 11th impression. London, New York: Longman.
Neal R. NORRICK, 2010: Humor in Interaction. Language and Linguistics Compass 4/4, 232–244. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220531531_Humor_in_Interaction (15. 11. 2025). DOI 10.1111/j.1749-818X.2010.00189.x
Paul SIMPSON, Derek BOUSFIELD, 2017: Humor and Stylistics. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Humor. Ur. Salvatore Attardo. New York, London: Routledge. 158–173.
Irena STRAMLJIČ BREZNIK, 2002: Besedoslovne lastnosti Gomilšakovega sestavka Čujte, čujte možje! Zbornik razprav. Mednarodni znanstveni simpozij o Jakobu Gomilšaku. Ur. Simona Krajnc. Trnovska vas: Občina (Ptuj: Senčar). 99–109.
Mojca STRITAR, 1999/2000: Šale. Analiza besedilne zgradbe in pojasnitev poante. Jezik in slovstvo 45/4, 148–161.
Dan SPERBER, 1984: Verbal Irony: Pretence or Echoic Mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 113/1, 130–136. https://www.dan.sperber.fr/wp-content/uploads/1984_verbal-irony-pretense-or-echoic-mention.pdf (12. 12. 2025).
Deirdre WILSON, Dan SPERBER, 1992: On Verbal Irony. Lingua 87/1–2, 53–76. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002438419290025E (12. 12. 2025).
Downloads
Published
Data Availability Statement
Raziskovalni podatki, ki so uporabljeni v članku, se hranijo v Repozitoriju spletišča CLARIN.SI in so javno dostopni na povezavi: https://www.clarin.si/repository/xmlui/handle/11356/2065.
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 University of Maribor, University Press
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyrights
This journal is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License (CC BY-SA). https://opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by-sa/
Plagiarism Policy
Slavia Centralis is a non-commercial, open access, electronic research journal. As such it pledges to uphold certain ethical principles regarding confidentiality, originality and intellectual fair play. Slavia Centralis takes copyright infringement and plagiarism very seriously and all submissions may be checked with duplication detection software.
Authors must:
- Ensure that all work submitted is original, fully referenced and that all authors are represented accurately. The submission must be exclusive and not under consideration elsewhere.
- Obtain all permissions from copyright owners for 3rd party material (e.g. quotations, illustrations, tables, etc.).