Foregrounding norms and ironic communication

Researchers in literary theory, linguistic pragmatics, and rhetoric have identified three principal communicative functions of irony: (1) to give emphasis or reinforcement to the values of a friendly listener, (2) to attack or ridicule the values of an hostile or unsuspecting listener, and (3) to undermine an opponent's intellectual position. This essay goes further by (7) arguing that a process called the “foregrounding of norms” is crucial to ironic comprehension and (2) arguing that differences among these three ironic outcomes owe to differences in the target audience's personal relation to these norms as well as to the type of norms foregrounded.