As if irony was in stock

Lehmann, Claudia; Bergs, Alexander

doi:10.1075/cf.00053.leh

Cited by 3 publications

References 40 publications

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As if that wasn't enough: Englishas ifclauses as multimodal utterance constructions

Lehmann¹

2022

English Language and Linguistics

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The following article reports on a multimodal corpus study of English as if constructions. The results of this study suggest that formulaic and insubordinate as if constructions are prosodically chunked as clauses, with formulaic as if constructions uttered with significantly higher pitch and insubordinate as if constructions with lower pitch when being compared with subordinate uses. In addition, insubordinate as if clauses are occasionally accompanied by frowns. It is argued that, although both constructions convey an ironic interpretation, multimodal markers of irony play only a minor role in explaining the findings. Instead, it is argued that the non-verbal features are construction-specific and can reasonably be explained as cross-modal collostructions. As such, the present article provides a description of the non-verbal features accompanying English as if clauses and provides a theoretical explanation. In doing so, some modest evidence for a multimodal Utterance Construction Grammar is also presented.

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As if that wasn't enough: Englishas ifclauses as multimodal utterance constructions

Lehmann¹

2022

English Language and Linguistics

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Multimodal markers of irony in televised discourse

Lehmann

2023

Pragmatics &Amp; Beyond New Series

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This paper analyses multimodal features of two ironic constructions (Tell me about it and syntactically independent as if clauses) in television discourse. The results of the quantitative analysis show that a slower tempo, gaze aversion, raised eyebrows, smiles and head movements are features of ironic Tell me about it, while a lowered mean pitch, a pause after the clause and head tilts are more frequent with syntactically independent as if clauses. Furthermore, a subtype of independent as if clauses is distinguished, which is marked by a faster tempo, a pause before the clause, but no pauses within, and raised eyebrows. These results suggest that verbal irony is marked differently depending on the function the ironic construction fulfils.

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Multimodal constructions revisited. Testing the strength of association between spoken and non-spoken features of Tell me about it

Lehmann

2024

Cognitive Linguistics

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The present paper addresses the notion of multimodal constructions. It argues that Tell me about it is a multimodal construction that consists of a fixed spoken and a variable, but largely obligatory multimodality slot on the formal side of the construction. To substantiate this claim, the paper reports on an experiment that shows that, first, hearers experience difficulties in interpreting Tell me about it when it is neither sequentially nor multimodally marked as either requesting or stance-related and, second, hearers considerably rely on multimodal features when a sequential context is missing. In addition, the experiment also shows that the more features are used, the better hearers get at guessing the meaning of Tell me about it. These results suggest that, independent of the question of whether the multimodal features associated with requesting or stance-related Tell me about it are non-spoken, unimodal constructions themselves (like a raised eyebrows construction), a schematic multimodality slot might be part of the constructions.

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As if irony was in stock

Cited by 3 publications

References 40 publications

As if that wasn't enough: Englishas ifclauses as multimodal utterance constructions

As if that wasn't enough: Englishas ifclauses as multimodal utterance constructions

Multimodal markers of irony in televised discourse

Multimodal constructions revisited. Testing the strength of association between spoken and non-spoken features of Tell me about it

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