Abstract:Irony is a common linguistic phenomenon in verbal communication. As a widely used figure of speech,verbal irony has received considerable attention from linguists.The traditional study of verbal irony from rhetorical and aesthetical approaches has been shifted to pragmatic investigation.
     In this paper,focus will be laid upon what is irony.And then,it uses Grice’s cooperative principle, Leech’s politeness principle, Sperber and Wilson’s echoic interpretation theory and Clark and Gerrig’s camouflage theory to discuss the pragmatic functions of verbal irony.Moreover,it will discuss what are the pragmatic functions of verbal irony in English culture and in Chinese culture and what is the relationship between English irony and Chinese irony.Based on previous studies, this paper makes further efforts to classify and summarize the pragmatic functions of irony, in order to understand and use it in daily lives.Therefore, studying irony from the perspective of pragmatics will better help people to know the identification and application of irony in communication.
Key Words:linguistic phenomenon;pragmatic functions;verbal irony;figure of speech;rhetoric

摘要：在言语交际中，反语是一种常用的语言现象。它作为一种普遍使用的修辞格，引起了语言学家的专注。反语研究的角度从传统的修辞学和美学转向语用学的探究。
    本文将重点研究什么是反语，然后引用格莱斯的合作原则、李斯的礼貌原则、斯珀伯和威尔逊的回应理论以及克拉克的格利奇的伪装理论来讨论反语的语用功能。本文还讨论了英文反语和中文反语的语用功能以及它们的关系。基于前人的研究，本文对反语的语用功能做了进一步的分类和概括，其目的是在日常生活中理解和运用反语。因此，从语用功能的角度研究反语将更好的帮助人们了解反语在交际中的识别和应用。
关键词：语言现象；语用功能；反语；修辞格；修辞学

Irony refers to what the speaker said in the literal and he wanted to express the  opposite meaning.It is difficult to define the word of “irony” which could be understood in various ways. The expansion of its research area may be the direct cause of the diversity of definition of irony.
Irony is a figure of speech in which the intended meaning of the words used is the direct opposite of their usual sense. For example, when someone hates the weather which spoils his trip and says, “What a fine day!” he is ironical. The word “fine” is actually intended to mean “bad”, “awful” and “abominable”. Leech asserts that irony “enables a speaker to be impolite which seeming to be polite” and that “We are ironic at someone’s expense , scoring off others by politeness that is obviously insincere, as a substitute for impoliteness” (Zhang Xiuguo，2005，216).