Repartees: Silencing Replies from a Holistic Pragmatic Perspective

This study examinesthe holistic (i.e. causal) pragmatic structure of repartees, which are considered as silencing replies. It aims to build their structure by adopting Kopytko’s (2009) approach. It also aims to identify the type of analogy which fuels such witty replies viaadopting Itkonen’s (2005) relation-based taxonomy. The methodology followed is qualitative represented by analyzing examples, from various sources, via an eclectic approach built on the two approaches mentioned above. The study endeavors to answer one question: What is the basic component which makes such replies silence their interlocutors? The answer has been shown to be self-referential analogy whose embodiment is binary-temporal and personal.It is concluded that a repartee’s holistic pragmatic structure embraces static and dynamic components. The former includes two: locution and perlocution. The latter, in turn, pertains to the illocution whose force changes in accordance with the context in its broadest sense. The significance of this study lies in its being the first linguistic one to bridge the gap in the literature on the concept of repartees as tackled here. It can help individuals to issue witty replies to silence their opponents when having unallowed standpoints, especially those concerned withbullying or hate speech in general.