Irony in Intertexts in Modern English and Russian Press
Nailya Bashirova
Tatar State University of Humanities and
Education
Abstract. The general ironic tone of modern English and Russian press enables producers of media
texts to express their assessment of the subject while seeming impartial. Use of intertexts
contributes to an emerging ironic tone because an intertext is characterised by double reference
resulting in a contrast between its semantic features in source and target texts.
Ironic sense appears as a result of contextual inappropriateness of an utterance created in the same
ways in English and Russian press:
1) Opposition of referents of two texts leads to incongriuty of presuppositions of the intertext and
target text. As a result, the intertext acquires a false presupposition in a new context leading to
absurdity of the described situation.
2) Script opposition may take the form of subject-matter mismatch when a fragment from a serious
or even tragic source text is introduced into an article about a trivial situation, or the contrary.
3) Inappropriateness may be based on register oppositions when classical texts are narrated in a
newspaper article in an informal familiar style.
These incongruities sometimes create absurdity of newspaper headlines and articles representing
serious subject matter, hence the supposition that not always irony has an intended meaning.
Key words: irony, inappropriateness, intertext, presupposition, context.
The report presents the results of cross-linguistic study of the ways ironic sense emerges in modern
English and Russian newspaper articles containing intertexts.
Irony is generally considered within the theory of the comical and is viewed as one of its form
though not every ironic unit may be comical and excite laughter (Attardo 2001: 122; Pokhodnya
1989: 6).
The present study is based on two basic features of irony:
1) Irony (as well as humour) results from certain discrepancy, contrast, or inappropriateness
between some semantic and/or pragmatic features of an utterance (Propp 1976: 99-100; Attardo
2001: 114-117).
2) An ironic utterance implicitly conveys the speaker’s subjective (mostly negative) attitude
towards something (Attardo 2001: 120-122).
The second characteristic of irony turns it into one of the most effective ways of expressing a
subjective attitude in modern media. The general ironic tone of modern press enables producers of
media texts to express their implied critical attitude towards the subject while seeming impartial.
Even in a purely informative article which is supposed to be devoid of any bias the reader can feel
the journalist’s negative assessment of the facts and events that the article recounts.
The general ironic tone of modern Russian media texts is always mentioned in Russian media
studies (Zemskaya 1996; Damm 2002). However serious, authoritative, or even tragic a fact or
event might be, it can easily become a target of journalistic irony and mockery. The reasons for this
overwhelming ironic tone of the Russian press lie, first of all, in a sharp change of moral values of
the modern Russian society which has lost its former ideals. Journalists are striving to avoid the
false pompousness and enthusiasm of the Soviet mass media (Zemskaya 1996; Basovskaya 2003).
Secondly, (and this feature is typical of European and American press as well) the ironic
connotation of media texts contributes to their expressiveness since the newspaper functions not
only to inform the reader but also to evaluate, persuade and entertain. The newspaper is read not so
much to update our world knowledge as to satisfy our curiosity about current events (van Dijk
1988: 173). This function is even more marked with newspaper headlines which serve mainly to
catch the readers’ attention and appeal to their emotions (Straumann 1935: 24, Lennon 2004: 81).
This tendency to combine information with entertainment in newspaper headlines is referred to as
‘infotainment’ which comes out in their personilised humorous and ironic connotations (Lennon
2004: 83-85).
The other peculiarity of modern Russian and English press is the wide use of intertexts from quite a
range of different verbal and non-verbal texts of various discourses. The intertext is treated as any
textual fragment characterised by double reference as it refers the reader simultaneously to the
situation of the source text to which it supposedly belongs, and to the situation represented in the
target text into which it is inserted. The terms ‘source text’ and ‘target text’ are accepted in this
research for the convenience of the analysis though they may contain some element of
simplification because in some cases it is difficult to state definitely whether this or that text is the
only source of a certain intertextual element.
The intertextual elements typical of newspaper texts are quotations and allusions. The quotation is
understood as a source text fragment which consists of two or more words connected predicatively
in the source text and belonging to its definite co-text. The allusion can be represented by one or
several words which come into a predicate relation in the target text and remind the reader of a
macro-context of the source (Fateyeva 2000: 129). Both the quotation and the allusion have the
features of double situationality as they belong to two contexts simultaneously.
The intertext is based on the overlap of two contexts (two scripts), those of a source and target texts,
and it possesses semantic features characterising both the contexts. The same can be said about an
ironic utterance, as it is also characterised by scripts overlap. At this point the features of
intertextuality and irony intersect. An intertext acquires an ironic sense when the scripts
overlapping in it come to be opposed in some features and it leads to some kind of contextual
inappropriateness. (Attardo 2001: 115). S. Attardo defines appropriateness as congruity between the
presuppositions of the utterance and the presuppositions of the context in which the utterance is
produced (Attardo 2001: 116). But intertextual irony works only when the reader, possessing
sufficient textual encyclopedia, is fully aware of intertextual connections of two texts.
The present research considers Russian and English newspaper texts containing quotations and
allusions to nuclear texts, i.e. those texts which are easily recognised by the majority of native
speakers. Most of these texts belong to the core of the cultural treasure of the nations and are
characterised by ‘canonicity’ and ‘monumentality’ (Bloomfield 1976: 4), i.e. they possess authority
for the nation and have become detached from their producers and turned into signs of culture
(Bloomfield 1976: 5-6). On the other hand, such texts excite a desire to bring them down in order to
“suggest one’s own superiority” to them (Bloomfield 1976: 7).
Classical texts are widely employed both in English and Russian newspaper texts with an emergent
ironic sense which results from the clash of semantic features that the same textual fragment
expresses in the source and target texts. The semantic analysis of classical intertexts in English and
Russian newspapers leads to the supposition that ironic colouring is based on the same types of
contextual inappropriateness in both the languages.
1. Being placed in a new co-text of a newspaper article, the intertext becomes adapted to a new
context and acquires a new referent which has far more different than similar features with the
referent of the source text resulting in redistribution of essential and accidental features of the
intertext in the new context. Some essential (relevant) features of the pretext are ‘narcotized’ in it
and accidental (irrelevant) ones are highlighted (Eco 2007: 392). This inevitably entails the
incongruity of presuppositions of the same textual fragment in source and target texts as is the case
with the Shakespearean quotation “…all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
(Lady Macbeth: Macbeth Act 5 Scene 1). It is used in the Sunday Herald to express a negative
attitude towards the actions of T. Blair who waged war on Iraq and Afghanistan by analogy with the
crimes of the Macbeths:
… our Prime Minister has blood on his hands. And all the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten his little hand. It is the blood of British soldiers sent needlessly to die in
southern Iraq. (A Bulli beef piece, anyone?; Omelette and chips, cheese and tomato
(Sunday Herald 3.10.04)).
In the newspaper context the quotation preserves the essential features of the source (‘murder’,
‘guilt’, ‘blood’) and the underlying presupposition that the referent has committed a crime. But the
change of the referent from woman to man leads to highlighting those features that are irrelevant for
the source and contributes to an emerging ironic sense of the target text. Blair’s hands can hardly be
described as Lady Macbeth’s hands by the adjective ‘little’. Besides, the quotation suggests the
presupposition that Blair might use perfume to take away bad scent from his hands. The idea is
taken for granted as far as Lady Macbeth is concerned but does sound insulting for a man
suggesting his effeminacy. On the whole, the quotation does not match the new referent and serves
to degrade his image.
The headline of the article My kingdom for a horse (Observer 7.03. 2004), containing a quotation
from “Richard III” by W. Shakespeare (Richard: Richard III Act 5 Scene 4), is ironic for the same
reason. The newspaper article is concerned with the chances of British eventers to win Olympic
gold in Athens. One of the contenders is Zara Phillips, Princess Anne’s daughter, who is tenth in
line to the throne. The underlying presupposition of this utterance is that the speaker is a king and is
able to exchange his kingdom for a horse which is quite true for King Richard III whose horse was
killed in the battle of Bosworth. In the target text this presupposition becomes false because none of
the sportsmen has royal power, not even Zara Phillips because her chances to get the crown are
minimal. Although both the semantic features ‘king’ and ‘horse’ are actualized in the newspaper
article, the essential features ‘exchange’ and ‘sacrifice’ of the source are lost. If the quotation refers
to Zara Phillips as one of the possible referents, it acquires an ironic colouring and sounds as a
mockery on the grounds of contextual inappropriateness: the presupposition of the utterance is not
congruous with the presupposition of the new context into which it is placed.
The headline of the Russian newspaper article “Ne poi, krasavitsa, pri mne” (“Sing, lovely one, I
beg no more”) (Vedomosti, 21.12.2007) is ironic because it is contextually inappropriate to the
article text as it is, even without any intertextual associations with A. Pushkin’s poem at work. The
headline presupposes a lovely female singer as a referent but the article appears to be a critical
review of a new novel written in the style of a feature film by the popular Russian writer Boris
Akunin. The journalist quite obviously conveys her negative assessment of the literary quality of
the book, the stylistic medley that he creates in it, his false and unnatural tone and disrespectful
manipulations with Russian classical texts. The referents of the two texts are opposed as
female/male, lovely/non-lovely (lexically the noun ‘krasavitsa’ (a lovely woman) presupposes only
a female referent), singer/non-singer. The negative assessment and ironic sense increase for those
readers who recognise the source of the quotation and its author. The presuppositions of the request
are absolutely different in Pushkin’s verse and the newspaper article. The verse says:
Sing, lovely one, I beg, no more
The songs of Georgia in my presence,
For of a distant life and shore
Their mournful sound call up remembrance. (A. Pushkin “Sing, lovely one, I beg no
more”)
The protagonist of the poem is homesick and feels longing for the woman he used to love in Russia.
The journalist of the article begs B. Akunin to stop his performance because of the low quality and
insincerity of his work. Thus, the quotation turns into a symbol of sincere and beautiful art, it
metonymically stands for Alexander Pushkin as the greatest Russian poet whose contribution to the
Russian literature was invaluable. Intertextually, the journalist contrasts classical literature of
Pushkin to modern pulp poor quality writings. The ironic sense of the quotation is based on the
contrast of its extensions in the source and target texts with all their logical and literary
presuppositions (Culler 1981).
2. Script opposition in the intertext may take the form of subject-matter mismatch when a fragment
from a serious, dramatic, or even tragic source text is introduced into a newspaper text which
represents a trivial situation, or the contrary, a quotation from a humorous text is inserted into a
serious context. The headline of the article «Skoreye myortv, chem zhiv» (“Dead rather than alive”)
(Trud, 01.04.2009) contains the allusion to C. Collodi’s book “The Adventures of Pinocchio”, it
reminds the reader of the funny episode when the fairy has invited three doctors to diagnose
Pinocchio’s state and tell her whether he is dead or alive while Pinocchio himself lies in bed
pretending to be unconscious. The doctors are engaged in a scholastic discussion whether the
patient is dead or alive. The newspaper article is far from comical as it recounts discrepant rumours
about the death of the ex-commander of the “East” battalion, Hero of Russia, Sulim Yamadayev.
The headline with the allusion presents the oppositions of the source and target texts scripts:
life/death, pretence/truth, non-actual/actual. Besides, the two contexts are opposed as nonserious/serious, humorous/tragic with the emergent disparaging tone of the headline which is
incongruous with the seriousness of the following text.
Contextual mismatch creates irony in the headlines of the three articles which contain the quotation
from “Romeo and Juliet” by W. Shakespeare:
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow (Juliet: Romeo and Juliet Act II Scene
II).
The article headlined Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow? Not at These 2 Law Firms (New York Times
25.05.2005) deals with the conflict between two law firms in which one firm accused another of
hiring away its partners and threatened to sue both the hiring firm and the departing partners. The
other headline Parting is such sweet sorrow (Guardian, 11.12. 2003) belongs to the article devoted
to the end of the filming of the trilogy “Lord of the Rings” which took seven years, and the author
of the article is frankly happy about it. The third one, Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow (Washington
Post 9.11.2006), considers taste qualities of tomatoes in November, emphasising gardeners’
reluctance to pull them down. In fact, the headlines express only the surface semantic features of
components of the quotation which is treated as a free word combination disconnected from the
source. All the articles are concerned with some kind of parting, and the reference of the quotation
is widened: it may refer to any parting coloured with any feelings different from those that Juliet
experienced while parting with Romeo: in the first article ‘parting’ with the partners is coloured
with the feeling of indignation, in the second one it is relief, in the third article the journalist is filled
with real sorrow for non-human referents (tomatoes which are no longer ‘sweet’). As a result, the
contexts of the source and target texts are opposed as lovers/non-lovers, love/non-love (indignation,
relief), human/non-human. The emerging ironic sense of the newspaper headlines results from the
opposition of the lyrical context of the pretext to the matter-of-fact pedestrian context of the
articles, though the irony is lost upon readers who are unaware of the intertextual connections of the
texts.
3. Inappropriateness may be based on register oppositions when classical texts are narrated in a
newspaper article in an informal familiar style. “Copresence of incongruous registers”(Attardo
2001: 110) (lexical units belonging to different styles or historical periods) brings about an ironic
sense. In the article Atticus (Sunday Times, 02.07.2006) the journalist characterises the behaviour of
the British ex-minister of culture alluding to Macbeth who was torn by doubts before making up his
mind to murder King Duncan:
When former culture secretary Chris Smith speaks at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre
in Stratford this afternoon on the subject of Shakespeare and leadership, he’ll no
doubt have much to say about a brooding and ambitious Scot who hesitated before
making his leadership bid and then botched it.
The modern informal journalistic cliché ‘make a bid’ and the informal verb ‘botch’ do not match
the source context stylistically and temporarily. The created register incongruity brings out the
journalistic irony.
This method of recasting classical texts in a modern informal wording is popular with the Russian
journalism, too. In the article “Which of you have done this, lords?” (Izvestiya 08.08.2008) the
journalist recounts the banquet in the Macbeth palace in an informal register using modern low
familiar vocabulary such as ‘nayezd’ (bullying), ‘koshmarit’ (harass, make someone’s life a
nightmare). The register opposition brings out the contrast between the ludicrous suspicions of the
ex-prime minister G. Brown concerning the House of Lords’ plot against him and the wellgrounded fears of Macbeth who sees the ghost of Banquo murdered by his order.
In these texts the scripts opposition is expressed as formal/familiar, past/present and grave/nongrave.
The headline It ws bst f tms, it ws wrst f tms: Japan's mobile phone literature (Times, 6.12. 2007) is
humorously ironic for the same reason of style and genre contrast. The transformed quotation (“It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times” (Ch. Dickens “A Tale of Two Cities”)) imitates the
sms-style and stands for modern Japanese literature which is in this way opposed to classical
novels. The article considers mobile phone novels which are popular with Japanese teenagers and
characterised by poor syntax, stunted vocabulary and melodramatic plots. The stylistic opposition
brings out the essential oppositions of two literature genres: classical literature/modern literature,
high-quality literature/low-quality literature. Although the article itself presents a balanced review
of both positive and negative opinions of mobile phone novels, the headline implicitly conveys the
journalist’s negative subjective evaluation which, however, may be perceived only by readers with
the adequate textual encyclopedia who are able to recognise the source and realise the clash of
contexts.
To sum up, in all the considered texts the ironic sense appears due to the contrast of the two
contexts with which the intertext is associated. The intertext triggers the activation of the source
script which is in some ways incongruous with the context of the article. As to some headlines, the
script of the source is in no way confirmed by the text of the article resulting in the defeated
expectancy of readers. The evident absurdity of some article headlines leads to the supposition that
not always irony has an intended meaning. In some of the analysed examples the ironic sense has
obviously not been planned by producers of articles who (oblivious to possible intertextual
associations) made use of stereotyped intertexts as clichés applicable to a great variety of diverse
contexts. In such texts irony is most likely to be read into newspaper texts by readers with adequate
textual encyclopedia.
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Alessandro Bedini