Pragmatic study of Irony in James Thurber’s short story “ the secret life of Walter mitty”

Abstract

This paper is about the irony in James Thurber's short story (the secret life of Walter Mitty) . It is a textual examination of various forms and purposes of irony in  the story. The notion of irony is usually synonymous with a straightforward form like satire with an accompanying contention of narratorial moral presupposition.

The goal of this paper is to approach this idea from a pragmatic standpoint and it attempts to answer the following question: What are the pragmatic functions of the types of Irony used in this story? The paper starts with an introduction, a theoretical study and a practical one. The analysis of the Irony presented in the story is straightforward and there are many references about it.

The model 'Grice's maxims' is considered suitable for analyzing the story and locating the irony that will be used as data. It was found that there is irony in the story with many utterances because the four types of maxims were violated to show the irony of these utterances. The model then can be applied in the analysis of short stories.