Study on irony related to female characters in some short stories by w s maugham

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGÔ THANH HUYỀN A STUDY ON IRONY RELATED TO FEMALE CHARACTERS IN S

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGÔ THANH HUYỀN

A STUDY ON IRONY RELATED TO FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SOME SHORT STORIES BY

W.S MAUGHAM

(Nghiên cứu về phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ trong một số

truyện ngắn của W.S.Maugham)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Hanoi - 2016

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NGÔ THANH HUYỀN

A STUDY ON IRONY RELATED TO FEMALE CHARACTERS IN SOME SHORT STORIES BY

W.S MAUGHAM

(Nghiên cứu về phép châm biếm liên quan đến nhân vật nữ trong một số

truyện ngắn của W.S.Maugham)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201

Supervisor: Dương Thị Nụ, PhD

Hanoi - 2016

DECLARATION

I declare that this thesis, entitled, “A Study On Irony Related To Female

Characters In Some Short Stories By W.S Maugham” and the work presented in it

is my own and has been generated by me as the result of my own research

I confirm that when I quoted from the work of others, the source was always given and no part of this work has been published before submission

Hanoi,2016

Ngô Thanh Huyền

Secondly, I want to thank all of the lecturers, professors and doctors teaching

at the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies of ULIS for their lessons and supports during my MA course

I would also like to thank my parents, my dearest friends: Nguyen Linh Chi and Nguyen Hoang Son for their love, support and caring

The research paper could not have been fulfilled without them

ABSTRACT

This study is carried out in an attempt to investigate ironic expressions and their pragmatic functions in the development of female characters in some short stories written by W.S Maugham However, because of the data sources and

knowledge, the writer will only focus on five short stories: “The Three Fat Women

of Antibes”, “The Escape”, “The Luncheon”, “Louise”, and “Winter Cruise” In

order to conduct this thesis, the writer approaches irony from the stand point of Speech Act Theory (Searle, 1969) Through identifying and analyzing ironic expressions, it is revealed that in the selected short stories, verbal irony is the most widely used among three types Verbal and dramatic irony perform representative and expressive speech acts which describe the female characters’ appearance, personalities, dialogues, and express the narrator’s feelings and attitude towards the female characters Meanwhile, situational irony functions as ironic directives which lead readers to expecting a situation which is contrary to what actually happens In the selected short stories, W.S Maugham often combined two or three types of irony Apart from using irony as a means to mock, Maugham also employed it to amuse and to emphasize the female characters’ special features Some implications

in language teaching and learning English are then drawn out Hopefully, the thesis will serve as a useful reference for students who would like to enhance their knowledge about British Literature, the application of Speech Act Theory into studying irony as well as the translation of irony

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 3

4 Significance of the study 3

5 Design of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THEORIES AND RELATED LITERATURE 5 1.1 Theoretical Background 5

a Characterization 5

b An overview of irony 6

c Irony in Pragmatics 9

1.2 Related Literature 14

a W.S.Maugham’s life and career 14

b Previous studies on irony 16

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 19

2.1 Research design 19

2.2 Data and data source 20

2.3 Data collection procedure 20

2.4 Data analysis procedure 20

CHAPTER 3: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 22

3.1 Data Collection 22

3.2 Data Analysis 22

a “The Three Fat Women of Antibes” 22

b “The Escape” 24

c “The Luncheon” 26

d “Louise” 28

e “Winter Cruise” 30

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 33

4.1 Types of irony used in the development of the female characters 33

4.2 Pragmatic functions of these ironic expressions 34

4.3 W.S Maugham’s use of irony in the selected short stories 36

PART III: CONCLUSION 38

1 Recapitulation 38

2 Limitations of the study 38

3 Implications for language teaching and learning 39

4 Suggestions for further study 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDIX……… I

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1 – Classification of Speech Acts (Searle, 1969) 15 Table 2 – Number of ironic expressions in the selected short stories 21

Pie chart 1: Types of irony in the selected short stories 32

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

The term “irony” is derived from the ancient Greek word

εἰρωνεία (eirōneía), which means dissimulation As a rhetorical device, irony refers

to the disagreement between the meaning intended by the author and what is actually said

It is believed that irony plays an important role in literature as one of the most effective rhetorical devices In some cases, it is even more efficient than a direct statement since it helps create a private joke between the author and the readers Besides, irony is also intended to provoke the readers into critical thinking and analyzing a situation By comparing and contrasting what appears to be the case, and what is actually the case, the readers can arrive at a better understanding

of the author’s intent For example, in “Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography”, Snicket writes:

“Today was a very cold and bitter day, as cold and bitter as a cup of hot chocolate; if the cup of hot chocolate had vinegar added to it and was placed

in a refrigerator for several hours.”

As can be seen from the above sentence, Snicket makes an enjoyable ironic statement by creating a structure that is more complex than what a reader may usually expect

In terms of pragmatics, irony can also be considered a subject of interest which has been studied by many linguists such as Grice (1975), Amante (1981), Kaufer (1981), Muecke (1982), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Hutcheon (1992) However, irony has still remained its attraction as well as complexity as Balconi and Amenta (2008, p.9) stated:

“Although frequent in our everyday conversations, irony remains a complex

communicative and pragmatic phenomenon whose correct decoding requires specific linguistic, communicative and cognitive abilities.”

Since how irony works, positively or negatively, depends on several factors such as people’s taste, points of view, habits, education, it seems to be really difficult to fully understand irony in daily communication and especially literary works

Being inspired by the complexity of irony in literary works, the writer of this thesis would like to investigate how ironic expressions are employed in some fiction writings When she approached British Literature, she was strongly impressed by W.S Maugham Maugham is a famous English writer whose writings are characterized by narrative facility, simplicity of style and an ironic point of view After reading a collection of Maugham’s short stories, the writer was fascinated by the way Maugham portrayed his characters, especially female characters They were described not only specifically but also vividly

All of these inspire the study: “A Study On Irony Related To Female

Characters In Some Short Stories By W.S Maugham”

2 Aims of the study

The main aims of the research are as follows:

- To identify different ironic expressions used in the development of female characters in some short stories by W.S Maugham

- To realize the role and contribution of these ironic expressions to the development of female characters in the selected stories

- To propose an insight into Maugham’s use of irony

In order to achieve the above aims, the study is conducted to find out the answer

to the following research questions:

1 What are the ironic expressions used in the development of female characters in some short stories by W.S Maugham?

2 What are the pragmatic functions of these ironic expressions?

3 What are the features of Maugham’s use of irony displayed through the selected short stories?

3 Scope of the study

This study focuses on the ironic expressions in only some short stories written by W.S Maugham The main emphasis of the study is put on identifying these ironic expressions and their pragmatic functions to propose an insight into Maugham’s use of irony

4 Significance of the study

Theoretical significance: This study is expected to verifying the correctness and significance related to pragmatictic theories of irony by working on some fiction works

Practical significance: This thesis helps gaining an insight into the use of ironic expressions in some short stories by W.S Maugham

5 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part 1: Introduction

In this part, the writer would like to present the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions, the significance and the scope of the study as well as the research methodology

Part 2: Development

This is the most important part of the study which consists of the following contents: Review of theory and related literature, Data collection and analysis, and Findings and discussion

Part 3: Conclusion

In the final part, the writer will briefly present the summary of the study, the limitations, the implications in language teaching and learning as well as some suggestions for further study

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF THEORY AND RELATED LITERATURE

In this chapter, the writer presents the theoretical background related to characterization, irony and irony in pragmatics Basic information about W.S Maugham as well as previous studies on irony is also briefly reviewed

“The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose,

shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue…”

Apart from appearance, characters can be created through speech If a story

is told by a first-person narrator, he reveals his personal trait as he tells his own

story as well as what he thinks or feels by using pronouns like I, me or we

However, there are some cases in which some first-person narrators mislead or lie

to the audience Besides, dialogue also reveal a lot about characters and their relationships with each other Therefore, when analyzing the characterization in a story, readers should pay attention to what characters say and do not say and how they respond to each other

Concerning actions, what characters do and how they treat each other often reveal the most about them By observing characters’ actions, readers are able to determine what characters’ personality is, what motivates them and how they deal with conflict

Additionally, writers can take readers into the characters’ minds to describe their thoughts and feelings As reading, readers are able to investigate whether the characters’ thoughts and feelings match their speech and actions

Last but not least, writers also build a character by describing how other characters react to him/her

In terms of types, there are two types of characterization: direct and indirect While direct characterization tells readers directly what characters are like or what

their motives are, indirect characterization shows readers the characters through

speech, appearance, thoughts, actions and other characters’ reactions but allow readers to decide what characters are like

b An over view of irony

Definition of Irony

Until now, it seems that there is no persistent definition for the term “irony” since it depends on the study field in which irony is researched

The term “irony” has its root in Greek and derives from εἰρωνεία (eirōneía),

which means dissimulation Nowadays, irony is widely used to refer to a contradiction between appearance / expectation and reality As a figure of speech, irony refers to the disagreement between the meaning intended by the author and what is actually said

According to Thompson (1948, p.10), irony can be understood as

“a discrepancy or incongruity between expression and meaning, appearance

and reality, expectation and event What we notice and then call irony is a striking discrepancy which is artfully arranged to draw attention to itself, or which, through occurring by chance, likewise compels our attention.”

Specifically, Muecke (1969, p 53) defined irony as

“ways of speaking, writing, acting, behaving, painting, etc., in which the real

or intended meaning presented or evoked intentionally quite other than, and incompatible with, the ostensible or pretended meaning.”

Besides, briefly, Galperin (1971, p.142) claimed that irony was a rhetorical device which based on recognition of the logic – dictionary meaning and contextual meaning while these two coexisting meanings were opposite

From these views, it can be concluded that irony means far more than just

“saying one thing meaning another” The term is used to refer to the way of using words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning In short, an expression or utterance is considered as an ironic one when it

is characterized by a contrast between apparent and intended meanings

Types of irony

There are two classifications of irony; while the first one is based on what the ironist expects from his semantic displacement, the second one takes modern theories of rhetoric as its basis

- Classification based on semantic displacement

First and foremost, irony can be classified on the basis of what the ironist expects from his semantic displacement These are classic irony, romantic irony, and critical irony (Erdogan, 2010)

Classic irony is usually employed in the course of a dialogue in which the speaker intends to contrast his reasoning to the interlocutor’s, thereby pointing to a disparity between the two However, the disparity is intended to resolve immediately on the speaker’s side, giving way to further dialogue to make the interlocutor follow the speaker’s reasoning

Romantic irony, on the other hand, is distinguished by the spirit of romanticism: a conception of “universe founded in chaos and incomprehensibility rather than in a divinely or drained teleology” (Mellor, 1980, as cited in Erdogan, 2010) A romantic ironist employs irony to constantly undermine given meanings, with the hope that this undoing will eventually result in a state of privilege and security he has been longing for (Lang 1996, p.576)

The third type of irony, in terms of the ironist’s intention, is critical irony Critical irony still wants to displace the meaning in traditional and grand narratives, but it differs from the romantic irony in that it does not hope and aim for a greater narrative

- Classification based on modern theories of rhetoric

Within the scope of this study, the writer would like to employ the classification based on the modern theories of rhetoric In terms of rhetoric, irony can be classified into three types: verbal irony, dramatic irony and situational irony (Cuddon, 1998, p.427-432; Colebrook, 2004, p.13)

Verbal irony is a statement in which the meaning intended by a speaker is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed In other words, verbal irony refers to the contradiction between what is intended and what is actually said For example, the Prologue in Act I of “Romeo and Juliet” opens with

“Two households, both alike in dignity,…” however, as the play goes on, the

readers then realize that both of the families are violently competitive, thus, undignified

Another type of irony is dramatic irony which refers to the difference between what the characters believe to be true and the facts that the reader knows More specifically, it denotes the fact that the readers know beforehand more about the situation, truth or end than the character himself For example, in “Romeo and Juliet”, the readers know that Juliet took a sleeping potion and isn’t really dead However, Romeo doesn’t know about this fact Having great sorrow and unceasing anguish, he then commits a suicide

The most common type of irony used in fiction is situational irony It is regarded as the discrepancy between what is expected in a certain situation and what actually happens This type of irony often arises from the circumstances and events of a story For instance, the readers usually expect a happy ending for young lovers In fact, in “Romeo and Juliet”, the couple finally spends eternity together, but not in the way that the readers had hoped

Among these three types, dramatic irony and situational irony usually appear through the macro structure of the fiction; therefore, it requires the reader’s perceptivity to recognize these two types of irony as well as their dramatic effects Meanwhile, verbal irony often appears through the micro structure - the interchange and conversation among characters, or it is expressed through the way the author describes the characters

c Irony in pragmatics

In terms of pragmatics, it seems that irony has been a subject of interest because a number of approaches to this issue have been proposed since 1975 The

study of irony in pragmatic begins with the work of Grice, then moves onwards to Relevance Theory Indirect Negation Theory, Speech Act Theory, and so on

The Cooperative Principle (Grice, 1975)

The cooperative principle includes four maxims of quality, quantity, relation and manner which should not be flouted in order to avoid ambiguity However, the flouting of these maxims allows the speaker to use different figures of speech and enrich the conversation, be more polite or less aggressive than the speaker would be if he followed the rules based on the four maxims If the cooperative principle is fully observed, there is no difference between the sentence and the speaker meaning

Grice later proposed a theory of irony, in which he argued that using irony means flouting at least one of the maxims of the cooperative principle However, it

is not possible to go by this principle in every situation As Barbe (1995, p.54) points out, there are situations when irony is “expected and acceptable” For instance, in the performance of a stand-up comedian, irony is expected by the audience so it is questionable if irony is in fact flouting for example the maxim of relation Barbe (1995) further claimed that not every conversation can be led by the cooperative principle

The Relevance Theory (Sperper & Wilson, 1975)

Later, Sperper and Wilson criticized Grice’s theory of irony, and argued that irony is not always present if at least one of the maxims is flouted They proposed the relevance theory, assuming that every utterance fulfilling or flouting Grice’s maxims was formulated in that way for a reason Therefore, they are relevant, and it

is the interpreter’s job to decode the speaker meaning based on the sentence meaning, the context and on the seemingly irrelevant information that the speaker gives

The Indirect Negation Theory (Giora, 1998)

Giora agreed with Grice in dividing the interpretation of an utterance into two sections, first understanding the literal meaning, secondly the underlying message

Giora’s indirect negation theory argues that the negation in irony cannot be direct, so grammatical, and only indirect She then proposed that irony is a form of indirect negation, which means the ironist negates without using an overt negation marker (Giora, 1998, p 4) She further argued that direct negation cannot be used in interpreting literal irony If a literal ironic utterance is grammatically negated, its meaning will not reflect the underlying ironic meaning For example if the utterance

“This meat is black” is directly negated, it becomes “This meat is not black” which does not correspond with the underlying meaning, “This meat is uneatable”

Speech Act Theory

- Feasibility of applying Speech Act Theory to verbal irony

Several researchers such as Van Dijk (1976), Leech & Short (2001), and Zhang (2013) have approached irony from the standpoint of speech act theory

To begin with, Van Dijk (1976) suggested that “ literature” itself be regarded

as pretended speech act with its own felicity conditions Therefore, fiction can be considered a one-sided conversation between the author and the reader in which the author not only informs the reader “about a particular fictional world, but also needs

to achieve a rapport with his readers, an identity of view point where by the contents of the fiction will be interpreted and evaluated in an appropriate way” (Leech & Short, 2001, p.257)

Based on Van Dijk (1976)’s and Leech & Short (2001)’s opinions, Zhang (2013) claimed that irony, as a technique of expressing the author’s or characters’

attitudes, used by the author in his communication with the reader can be a type of pretended speech act with indirectness and intention as its characteristics and insincerity as a felicity condition Concerning indirectness, irony is a figure of speech expressing purposes in a roundabout way When irony occurs, there is apparently a mismatch or even a contrast between the intended meaning and the literal meaning Hence, it can be inferred that indirectness is a characteristic of irony The second point is that when uttering an irony, a speaker can adjust the level

of emphasis of the ironic comment to affect the interlocutor Therefore, intention is another feature of irony With regard to insincerity, based on Searle’s set of felicity conditions, Zhang (2013) argued that sincerity forms a necessary condition in producing any speech act, and it requires that the utterances the speaker produces be

in absolute consistent with the speaker’s intentions On the contrary, insincerity acts

as a felicity condition in the case of irony because the proposition expressed via irony is usually opposite to the meaning intended by the speaker Moreover, in Van Dijk’s (1976, as cited in Zhang, 2013) point of view, a successful irony depends mainly on the condition of insincerity

Inspired by the feasibility of applying Speech Act Theory in studying irony, the writer of this thesis would like to approach ironic expressions in some of Maugham’s short stories from this point of view

- An overview of speech act

The concept of “speech act” was proposed by Austin in 1962, and later developed by Searle in 1969

More than half a century ago, Austin gave a series of lectures at Harvard,

which were published posthumously as a book entitled “How to Do Things with

Words” In this book, Austin presented a new picture of analyzing meaning

Meaning is described in a relation among linguistic conventions correlated with

words/sentences, the situation where the speaker actually says something to the hearer, and associated intentions of the speaker The idea that meaning exists among these relations is depicted successfully by the concept of acts: in uttering a sentence, the speaker with an associated intention performs a linguistic act (a speech act) to the hearer Speech acts, therefore, can be briefly defined as actions performed via utterances

According to Austin (1962), on any occasion, the action performed by producing

an utterance will consist of three related acts

1 Locutionary act refers to the act of producing a meaningful utterance

2 Illocutionary act can be understood as the intention of the speaker

3 Perlocutionary act refers to the effect of the utterance on the hearer

Austin (1962) then classified illocutionary acts into five types, i.e., verdictives, exercitives, commissives, behabitives, and expositives However, it is often argued that Austin’s classification is not complete and those coined categories are not mutually exclusive

In 1969, Searle inherited his ideas from Austin and elaborated on some of them Searle, then, developed the theory in his own fashion: the essence of it being that to perform an illocutionary act is to express an illocutionary intention

He also proposed a different classification of speech acts as follows:

Declarations Speech acts that change the world via their utterance

Representatives Speech acts which describe states or events in the word, such as

an assertion, a claim, a report

Expressives

Speech acts in which the speaker expresses feelings and attitudes about something, such as an apology, a complaint, to thank someone, to congratulate someone

Directives Speech acts that have the function of getting the listener to do

something, such as a suggestion, a request, or a command

Commissives Speech act that commit the speaker to doing something in the

future, such as a promise, or a threat

Table 1 – Classification of Speech Acts (Searle, 1969)

1.2 Related Literature

a W.S Maugham’s life and career

W.S Maugham was born on the 25th of January, 1874 in Paris His father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British Embassy in Paris Maugham’s mother, Edith Mary, had tuberculosis, for which her doctor prescribed childbirth.Several years after the last of his three older brothers, she gave birth to Maugham

Unfortunately, Maugham’s childhood was awful for him After the death of his mother when he was eight and that of his father when he was ten, Maugham was under the care of his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable,

in Kent Then, Maugham was sent back to England for schooling He attended The King's School in Canterbury, which was difficult for him as he was teased for his bad English and his short stature Suffered from both at his uncle's vicarage and at school, Maugham developed an ability of making wounding remarks to those who displeased him, which is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters

At the age of sixteen, he refused to continue at The King's School, and then went to Germany and studied medicine at the University of Heidleberg After having returned to England, he worked at Saint Thomas’s hospital Though Maugham was a qualified doctor, he devoted his life to literature In fact, there have been several criticisms that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a

creative dead end However, Maugham felt that the experience as a medical student was truly valuable for his writing career

Although Maugham's first and many other relationships were with men, he also had been linked to a number of women In May 1917, he married Syrie Wellcome However, Syrie finally divorced Maugham in 1929 as she found his relationship and travels with Gerald Haxton too difficult to live with

In his sixties, Maugham spent most of his time in the US, first

in Hollywood and later in the South After his companion Haxton died in 1944, Maugham returned to England In 1946 he moved to his villa in France, where he lived until his death in 1965

W.S Maugham first tried his hand at novels and then plays and short stories His rich experience of life and his acute insight into human nature laid the foundation for the analytical and critical quality of his works He wrote 19 novels,

24 plays, and a large number of short stories Some of his most famous short story

collections are: Ashenden (1928), Cosmopolitans(1936) and Quartet (1948)

W.S Maugham is well-known for his unique writing style characterized by exotic situations, engaging characters, riveting plots and ironic tone

In his writings, the characters are portrayed in exotic situations For instance,

in “The moon and sixpence”, Charles is a middle-aged English stockbroker, who

abandons his wife and children abruptly to pursue his desire to become an artist Meanwhile, it is a common belief that when a man abandons his family, it is likely because he has a love affair

Another factor that contributes to Maugham’s writing style is engaging characters The characters are described vividly with their specific characteristics Additionally, like other realist, Maugham pays special attention to make his characters not only lively but also real As a result, the readers may feel that they

have met that character in everyday life For example, in „The Escape”, Roger

appears as a middle – aged wealthy man who is cautious, gallant and experienced However, he still goes down “like a row of ninepins” because of a woman

It is believed that Maugham is the master of riveting plots In his writings, the main characters appear in conflicts with themselves or with other characters Hence, it makes the readers want to see how the main characters solve the problem

For instance, in “The Luncheon”, the narrator struggles with financial problem

when he has a luncheon with the woman It is not certain that he has enough money for the bill or not, and each time that the woman orders an expensive dish, the readers become more curious about the end of the story

Maugham is also famous for his ironic tone In his writings, the irony can be

easily found in the way he describes the characters For example, in “The

Luncheon”, the woman is described with these sentences: “She was not so young as

I expected and in appearance imposing rather than attractive She was, in fact, a woman of forty ( a charming age, but not one that excites a sudden and devastating passion at first sight), and she gave me the impression of having more teeth, white and large and even, than were necessary for any practical purpose.”

b Previous studies of irony

Regarding irony, a number of studies have been conducted from the perspective of literature, sociology as well as linguistics in general and pragmatics

in particular

Cook (2005) conducted a research named “A Pragmatic Analysis of Irony”

to examine a process of understanding irony in relevance theory The results of the study have shown that the notion of echoic interpretive representation suggested in the relevance-theoretic framework provides an explanatory account of various ironic utterances which involve disapproval, reject, ridicule, or discontent besides opposite meaning In addition, the interpretation of ironic utterances, like other utterances, is achieved by searching for the relevant assumptions consistent with the principle of relevance

Palinkas (2013), on the other hand, implemented a study on the topic of irony

and the Standard Pragmatic Model (Grice, 1975, 1978) While the Standard Pragmatic Model assumes that an ironist means the opposite of what he says, Palinkas claimed that the opposite meaning of an ironic utterance can occasionally

be interpreted in relation to both the predicate and the propositional negations of what an ironic speaker actually says Hence, he insisted that earlier attempts at examining irony from the standpoint of predicate and propositional negation should

be revised

Interestingly, Hirsch (2011) carried out a research to distinguish between irony and humor in the context of literary texts She proposed a comparative pragmatic model based on existing models of Clark and Gerrig (1984), Grice (1975, 1978), Haverkate (1990), Sperber and Wilson (1981), Wilson and Sperber (1992), Alexander (1997), Jeffers (1995), Oring (1989), Raskin and Attardo (1994) The research was based on four conceptual paradigms: pragmatic studies of irony, pragmatic studies of humor, a pragmatic approach to the study of literary texts, and theories of text interpretation

Concerning irony in fiction works, Huang (2011) conducted a pragmatic study on irony in Samuel Beckett’s plays The author applied post-Gricean theories

of pragmatics to analyze both “echoic mention” and “allusional pretense” ironies in order to reveal the different subjects implied in Beckett’s plays The results of the study have shown that Beckett always used the ironic techniques to build his own unique narrative mode: making oneself alienate himself/herself from the past memories which are painful and fragmented

Also being interested in irony in literature, Zhang (2013) implemented a research called “Irony in The Mayor of Casterbridge: a Literary Pragmatic Study”

In this paper, the author approached irony from the standpoint of speech act theory, holding that irony is a special type of speech act with indirectness and intention as its characteristics and insincerity as its felicity condition In order to offer a pragmatic tool for analysis fiction works, verbal irony and structural irony in “The Mayor of Casterbridge” were examined

Although irony has been the subject in a number of researches, it seems that not many works has been conducted on irony in W.S Maugham’s writings, especially in the way he characterized female characters Hence, the writer of this thesis would like to investigate ironic expressions used the development of female characters in some of Maugham’s short stories