A Pragmatic Study of Irony in Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’

The study aims to examine the phenomenon of irony in Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities” pragmatically. It identifies the common strategies used to convey irony and the different types of irony used in the novel. The research design involves an introduction that illustrates a literature review on irony and its various forms, analysing samples from the novel, employing a model to analyse the data, and using statistical methods to calculate the results. The findings show that verbal irony is the most frequently employed form of irony in the novel, followed by dramatic irony and situational irony. The study supports the hypothesis that verbal irony is the most prevalent type of irony used in the novel. The data analysis includes examples of each type of irony to illustrate the findings. This research seeks to address that knowledge gap with analysis of this paper, which seeks to establish the functioning and pragmatics of verbal irony alongside situational and dramatic irony in “A Tale of Two Cities” in order to portray cynicism and the criticism of the prevailing social order. The study reached some conclusions, the most important of which is that verbal irony is the most common type used by language users, and the novelist intends to ridicule a subject and point out its faults through satire.