The marketing of humility and use of non-sarcastic irony: A relevance-theoretic perspective

In general, when a speaker uses sarcastic irony, he/she aims to indirectly blame or ridicule others’ mistakes, faults and wrong attitudes; or deplore his/her unfortunate situation. However, Leech (1983), Lee (2002), Culpeper (1996, 2011), and Kim (2019) hold that communicators often use irony in order to pursue non-sarcastic purposes, for instance, when humorously praising or encouraging other person’s merits or achievements. Beyond this type of non-sarcastic use of irony, within a Relevance- Theoretic perspective (i.e., Clark 2013; Sperber & Wilson, 1995), this paper makes a pragmatic account of using non-sarcastic irony in commercial advertisements in which the advertiser’s discourse strategy for marketing of humility is realised. This strategy makes a contribution to achieving optimal relevance which the advertiser seeks in that using humility irony may bring about passive consumers’ sympathy and public trust in the company and its products/services.