Resumen de "¡Qué feíto estás tú también, cariño!": a comparison of the response to the use of ‘positive’ irony for complimenting in peninsular and mexican Spanish
Previous work examining irony has indicated that positive irony can be used to convey praise and build solidarity in both compliments and compliment responses. However, systematic, cross-dialectal work in this area is still relatively scarce. Using an e-DCT (i.e. an electronically delivered discourse completion task that includes a verbal report component), this study compares compliment-response sequences, which include the presence and absence of positive irony, in Mexican and Peninsular Spanish. Results indicate a strong influence on strategy choice by both groups of speakers based on the presence or absence of positive irony in the compliment. While common tendencies were found across dialectal groups, there were differences in terms of the specific strategies used to realize these underlying patterns, especially in the case of [+irony] compliments. Verbal report data were also analyzed to further understand the speakers’ selection of certain strategies.
