Postmodern ironic discourse: linguopragmatics of the cultural code (based on the short stories of S. Dovlatov)

This article examines the pragmatic features of ironic discourse, aimed in the postmodern context at interpreting implicit meaning expressed explicitly through linguistic and textual means, while the production of irony contributes to justifying the idea of the non-referentiality of the world as a sign system and deconstructing stable cultural codes. The aim of the research is to substantiate the linguopragmatic status of irony in the production of postmodernist artistic discourse. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that, for the first time, the correlations of irony as a fundamental principle of organizing the textual and discursive space of postmodernism and the deconstruction of cultural codes within it are determined on the basis of projecting the concept of precedence as a set of propositions onto the pragmatic structure of the ironic statement. The results of the study consist in identifying the linguistic mechanisms for the implementation of irony in the stories of S. Dovlatov: the main pragmatic load is borne by ironically marked lexical units and lexical combinations, syntactic structures objectifying contrast, as well as means of authorial and character evaluation and modality (mainly particles, adverbs). Postmodern irony is aimed at deconstructing the systemic nature of culture, which receives objectification in cultural codes.