2.2.4　Irony and Perlocutionary Effect

Amante argues that irony creates a“quasiperlocutionary”force，called“affective force”，which is a“blend ofillocutionary and perlocutionary forces”（Amante，1981，p.88）.The affective force ofirony，as he puts it，draws“attention to the language（of the irony）itself and focusing on the message”.In other words，it“causes the audience to reprocess the illocutionary act”（Amante，1981，p.92）.

Just as we stated above，Brown first defines“irony as the performance of a speech act in lack of the required sincerity conditions”.Later he revises the definition，broadening it to the utterance of a sentence that is“used in a speech act with a necessary associated psychological state”.The speaker intends the hearer to understand that the“psychological states requirement is intentionally unfulfilled”（Brown，1980，p.120）.The psychological states that he talks about are things like believing，regretting，desiring，and so on and so forth.The approach incorporates irony into the normal processing of speech acts，sparing the effort to create special modes of communication or other apparatus.

In specific communicative situation，the speaker will，consciously or unconsciously，adopt corresponding devices to express what he intends to mean.The hearer often tends to expect the truth of the proposition concerned.But if the proposition doesn't conform to the context，he will manage to understand the meaning of the speaker from the opposite angle.Meanwhile，with the breaking of the expectation，the hearer will eventually find that what the speaker really means.