The role of verbal irony in conflict talk among relatives and friends in an Argentinian community

What is it about?

This article describes specific roles of verbal irony in conflict talk among close rel- atives and intimate friends. The qualitative analysis of the five excerpts demon- strates that verbal irony might be used to end, extend, defuse, or initiate a dispute among relatives and friends, or that it may fail to alter the trajectory of the conflict sequence. Verbal irony can also be used by the speaker as a counterclaim oriented to the previous turn.

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Why is it important?

This work is the first analysis of the role of verbal irony in conflict talk. Also, it employs an approach that differs from previous research. Unlike some studies on irony, which utilized introspection and isolated utterances to characterize this phenomenon in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, entire ironical exchanges were taken into account and analyzed to discover how members of a particular socioeconomic group, and speakers of a particular dialect of Spanish, use verbal irony in conflict talk.