| dc.description.abstract | The study looked at the interpretation of irony in selected Kenyan political utterances of
2012/2013 during the campaign period for the General Elections. The interpretation of
irony was tested using the echoic interpretive approach as grounded in Relevance Theory
by Wilson & Sperber (1986/95). The ironical utterances were sampled from a total of
fifty utterances as the sample size out of which a total of twenty six ironical utterances
were selected and analysed for the echo. These utterances were taken from print media
and others were downloaded. The politicians being strategists in the way they use
language contributed greatly to this study. The aim of the study was to also find out some
of the echoes that politicians in verbal irony. As noted earlier echoic interpretation
involves metarepresentation of an utterance or thought of another speaker. The
interpretive aspect involves a speaker expressing an attributed thought or utterance to
another speaker but most importantly expressing a range of dissociative attitudes towards
those utterances or thoughts. The study also set out to analyse interpretation verbal irony
using the basic tenets of Relevance theory which involve cognition, communication,
comprehension cognitive effects and processing efforts in the interpretation of utterances
inclusive of ironical utterances. The study showed that all these aspects had one main aim
of maximizing relevance using cost-benefit formula which aims at creating as many
assumptions using less effort to attain optimal relevance and also shows when to stop
when the most accessible interpretation has been arrived at. From the findings in Kenyan
political utterances, the attitude expressed involve a range of dissociative attitude ranging
from mocking, ridiculing, scornful and disapproval all basing on the attributed utterance
thought or even assumptions. The echoes identified from ironical utterances varied from
those manifested in long time memory such as echoes of stereotype, societal norms and
expectations while those manifested in short time memory include echoes of previous
contexts and assumptions. The study found out that politicians have various intentions
when using verbal irony such as a strategy to manipulate, influencing and coercing the
voters to vote for them at the expense of their opponents. From the study verbal irony
goes beyond stating the opposite of what is said but it is majorly based on the attitudes
expressed in the utterance that are mainly dissociative in political utterances. Lastly the
five chapters gave detailed accounts into solving the statement of the problem of
interpretation of political ironical utterances within the Relevance theory and most
importantly for ironical utterances to be understood as ironical a certain context had to be
created that is identifiable with both the hearer and the speaker in order for the hearer to
make inferences about the speakers intended meaning until optimal relevance is achieved. | en_US |
