反语

I. Concept of Irony

1. Irony ---“eironeia” (Greek: dissembler in speech)

2. Interpretation:

“A method of humorous or subtly sarcastic expression in which the intended meaning of the words used is the direct opposite of their usual sense.”

(Webster’s New World Dictionary)

3. Irony in Chinese:

a. 有几个“慈祥”的老板到菜场去收集一些菜叶，用盐水一浸，这就是他们难得的佳肴。

（夏衍：《包身工》）

b. 好在愿意我活下去的已经没有了，再也没有谁痛心。使这样的人痛心，我是不愿意的。然而现在是没有了，连这一个也没有了。快活极了，舒服极了，我已经躬行我先前所憎恶，所反对的一切，拒斥我先前所崇仰、所主张的一切了。

（鲁迅：《孤独者》）

c. 丁四：怎样？

娘子：挺好！挺合身儿！

大妈：就怕呀，一下水就得抽一大块！

丁四：大妈，您专会说吉祥话儿！

（老舍：《龙须沟》）

d. 几个女人有点失望，也有点伤心，各人在自己心里“骂着”自己的“狠心贼”。

（孙犁：《荷花淀》）

4. Some examples of English Irony:

a. “Could you wait a few days for the money? I haven’t any small change about me.”

“Oh, you haven’t? Well, of course I know that gentlemen like you carry only large notes.”

(Mark Twain: One Million Pound Bank-note)

b. An Englishman does everything on principle; he fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.

(Bernard Shaw)

c. He was such a marvelous teacher that whenever he recognized a spark of genius you could be sure he’d water it.

(Charlws Kay Smith: Style and Structures)

d. “Did you have a nice lunch?” she asked sweetly. I had had a marvelous steak, but knew better by now than to say so.

“Awful,” I reported, “some sort of sour fish, eel, I think.”

“Good…”

e. “Generally speaking,” said Miss Murdstone, “I don’t like boys. How d’ye do, boy?”

Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well and that I hoped she was the same, with such an indifferent grace that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words, “Wants manner!”

(Charles Dickens: David Copperfield)

II. Modes of Irony

1. Antiphrases (词义反语)

a. We are lucky. It’s the other side on the thirteenth of December. That makes us feel very good.

(David Parks: G. I. Diary)

b. A bronco often becomes so attached to his master that he will lay down his life necessary --- his master’s life, I mean.

(Bill Bye)

c. It saves a lot of trouble if, instead of having to earn money and save it, you can just go and borrow it.

(Winston Churchill)

d. I stayed in the hospital ten days with my sister who was dying. Babara, my ex-best friend, came to my house to look after my children. She helped things out and took my things out. She did help. e. The Chinese should thank Acheson also because he has fabricated wild tales about modern Chinese history.

f. The whole outfit could be purchased for about $5 and Gandhi’s sins; at least his fleshly sins would make the same sort of appearance if placed all in one

heap. A few cigarettes, a few mouthfuls of meat, a few annas pilfered in childhood from the maidservant, two visits to a brothel (on each occasion he got away

without “doing anything”;), one narrowly escaped lapse with his landlady in Plymouth, one out burst of temper --- that is about the whole collection.

(George Orwell: Reflections on Gandhi)

g. The virtuous, dignified bishop has four illegitimate children.

h. If people keep telling you to quit smoking cigarette, don’t listen --- They’re probably trying to trick you into living.

(American Cancer Society)

2. Situation Irony

Irony depends on the context to be detected.

For example:

a. He’s a fine friend.

b. You’re really a genius. (Look what a great mess you’ve made of it.)

c. You should have been a fiction writer.

d. “It’s no use going to see little Hans in writer,” the miller used to say to his wife. “When people are in trouble we must leave them alone and not

bother them, that is my idea of friendship and I am right. So I shall wait till

spring comes, and then I shall visit him and he will give me a large bouquet, and that will make him very happy.”

“You think so much about others,” said his wife. “It’s pleasure to hear what you say about friendship. I am sure the priest himself cannot say such beautiful things as you do, though he lives in a three-storied house, and wears a

gold ring on his little finger!”

(Oscar Wilde: The Devoted Friend)

e. He tried soldiering for two weeks with a motley band of Confederate guerrillas who diligently avoided contact with the enemy. Twain quit after deciding, “--- I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.”

(Mark Twain)

f. For instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time, when asked why, since no man can see them, they reply, “Oh, but you forget the good God.” Apparently they conceive the Deity as a peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes me as curious.

(Bertrand Russell: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, Basic Writin

3. Quotation Irony

a. He was “extremely kind” to me, and I shall never forget it.

b. Miss Maria Osborne, it is true, was “attached” to Mr. Augustus Bullock, of the firm of Hulker, Bullock & Bullock; but hers was a most respectable attachment, and she would have taken Bullock Senior, just the same, her mind being fixed as that of a well-bred young woman should be --- upon a house in Park Lane, a country house at Wimbledon, a handsome chariot, and two prodigious tall horses and footmen, and a forth of the annual profits of the eminent firm of Hulker & bullock, all of which advantages were represented in the person of Frederick Augustus.

(W. M. Thackeray: Vanity Fair)

c. “The moon,” writes Lawrence, “certainly isn’t a snowy cold world, like a world of our own gone cold. Nonsense, it is a globe of dynamic substance, like radium or phosphorus, coagulated upon a vivid pole of energy.” The

defect of this statement is that it happens to be demonstrably untrue.

(Aldous L. Huxley: Meditation on the Moon)