Abstract
One of the definitions of irony attributed to Aristotle is "saying something but meaning the opposite". This means that irony is displayed, when, in making a statement, the speaker wants to communicate something else. Kierkegaard, (1996) in Concept of Irony, resumes this idea, saying that with irony, the words spoken do not correspond to the meaning. At a pragmatic level, irony is used to give intensity to what one conveys by accommodating the language to the ideal of truth. We can put forward the following example to illustrate this idea: when someone says "what lovely weather" (constructed example) when it is raining, irony emphasizes his criticism. There are different sorts of irony found mainly in literature, such as tragic irony, Socratic irony, cosmic irony or irony of fate. This work will focus on verbal irony which is produced intentionally by the speaker in a context of communication. Verbal irony is a figure of speech. The different sorts of discrepancies between the meaning of what is said, and what is really meant, bring to light different kinds of verbal irony.
