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A Modest Proposal in the Context of Swift’s Irish Tracts: A Relevance-Theoretic Study
Author: Maria-Angeles Ruiz Moneva
Date Of Publication: Jan 2010
Isbn13: 978-1-4438-1662-5
Isbn: 1-4438-1662-0
Swift's A Modest Proposal has always aroused the interest not just of literary critics, but also of linguists and pragmatists. Within the latter approaches, the study of irony, and more concretely, the intentions and attitudes that must have guided the production of such an intricate work, have always been paramount. However, it seems that within pragmatics the analysis has been restricted so far to the 1729 work itself. In the present author's view, it is interesting to contextualise this masterpiece of irony and satire within Swift's wider writing on Ireland, an approach that remains to be carried out. Accordingly, this work sets out to analyse a selection of Swift’s Irish Tracts, with a view to tracing the evolution within Swift's literary production of his views and attitudes towards the situation of his homeland. Although different pragmatic approaches are applied, the emphasis is laid upon the contributions that the relevance-theoretical framework and its studies on irony may bring to the understanding of this particular Tract. The works selected are meant to cover and also be representative of the main phases currently distinguished within Swift's writing on the "Irish Question". It is therefore hoped that a deeper analysis of the former works by Swift on this topic will provide new insights for a better understanding of A Modest Proposal.

Maria Angeles Ruiz Moneva rreceived her PhD in 2003 and has been a lecturer in English linguistics and translation since 1994. She is currently working at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) as a tenured lecturer (Associate Professor). Her teaching interests focus on historical linguistics, translation and English for Specific Purposes (legal discourse), whilst her main research interests concern pragmatic approaches to irony and relevance theory. She has recently co-edited the volume New Trends in Translation and Cultural Identity with Micaela Muñoz-Calvo and Carmen Buesa-Gómez (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008).

"In this thought-provoking book, the author goes beyond established linguistic theories of irony to consider Swift's work in the literary and historical context in which it was created. The result is an unprecedented depth of analysis and a significant step forward for the study of irony."

- Prof. Salvatore Attardo, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Texas A&M and editor-in-chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research

"In this book, Ruiz-Moneva tackles the analysis of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, one of Swift’s most complex and intricate works, from a pragmatics standpoint. Ruiz-Moneva’s analysis focuses on irony. Swift’s use of irony and satire in A Modest Proposal has been regarded as masterful, and has attracted the attention of researchers in pragmatics. Ruiz-Moneva’s fundamental contribution is to refute Clark and Gerrig’s (1984) contention against Sperber and Wilson’s relevance-theoretical account of irony, namely that the source of echo is rather imprecise. In spite of Clark and Gerrig’s harsh criticism, based on an application of Pretense theory to uses of irony in A Modest Proposal, no Relevance scholars had previously undertaken the task to apply Relevance theory to this text, to ascertain whether it could indeed be used to account for the uses of irony therein. Using Hatim’s (1997) synthetic standpoint –that seeks to reconcile Grice’s and Sperber and Wilson’s divergent accounts of irony, and his intertextual echoes, Ruiz-Moneva argues that the source of echo in Swift’s work is not the text itself, but his previous work on the 'Irish question' and links her conclusions to discussion around the relevance theoretical notions of context and the concept of mutual manifestness, contrasting those with Clark and Carlson’s understanding of context and mutual knowledge. Ruiz-Moneva's groundbreaking, intelligent analysis will undoubtedly be of great interest to Relevance Theory scholars, pragmatists interested in irony and related fields, as well as practitioners of stylistics."

- Prof. Pilar Garces-Conejos Blitvich, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Price Uk Gbp: 49.99
Price Us Usd: 74.99

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