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e. Persuasive Aspect
Sarcasm can be a powerful rhetorical tool to be used persuasively. This is achieved in three ways. First, sarcasm provides itself the evident for the
utterance to be accepted as a truth. Second, sarcasm is easier to memorize than literal utterance. Thirdly, sarcasm is very informative 2001: 184.
As the example, from the situation among friends when one of them tries to persuade the other friend by saying “Come on, tell her know or else any
other men will catch her as fast as you will lose her ”. From the utterance, the
one friend sarcastically persuades hisher friend to make a move in order to get closer with his crush. Instead of saying the literal meaning, the speaker
uses sarcasm to show that hisher utterance can be accepted as a truth and also it is easier for the hearer to memorize.
f. Retractability
Sarcasm lets someone “take a noncommittal attitude towards what heshe is saying” 2001: 184. In other words, by stating something and expressing
its opposite at the same time, the speaker can avoid any responsibility for the falseness that she says.
2. Pragmatics
Referring to the second problem formulation, the theory of pragmatics is used to analyze the problem since it deals with conversational analysis among the
speaker and the hearer. According to George Yule, pragmatics’ main focus is
anything related with the study of speaker meaning as communication and interpretation from the listener. 1996: 3 As one of figurative language, sarcasm
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cannot be understood as easy as literal language. Thus, the use of pragmatics is needed in this study.
In his paper Logic and Conversation, Grice discusses about how to analyze ironic language by creating a new model in which the literal interpretation
of an utterance is inverted to find its intended meaning. Two major theories which appears are
“mention and pretense theory”. Mention theory, also called echoic
theory, states that a sarcastic utterance does not use language but rather echoes a belief that is not hold by the speaker at the time of the utterance Kreuz
Glucksberg, 1989; Sperber Wilson, 1981; Wilson Sperber, 2002.
Meanwhile, pretense theory, which attempts to
modify Grice’s account, argues that the speaker pretends to be an unwise person by speaking sarcastically and
addressing a naive audience but intends that the hearer will see through the pretense to understand the speaker’s true attitude toward the fictional speaker and
the belief expressed H. H. Clark Gerrig, 1984.
According to Grice 1975, the cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims. The maxims are maxim quality do not say things that are false or
for which you lack evidence, maxim quantity do not give too much or too little information, maxim relation say things that are relevant to the conversation at
hand, and maxim of manner avoid obscurity and ambiguity; be brief and orderly. Speakers are said to be flouting a maxim when they choose not to
follow the rules in order to cue the listener in to a hidden meaning, called an
implicature. This theory proves that sarcasm commonly used by violating maxim
quality since sarcasm often express the opposite of what has been said or happens. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
