4.4 Macro Ironic Speech Acts Based on Searle's SAT
It is well known that Sense and Sensibility featured its irony，which made it ranked among one of the greatest world classics.With an ironic tone，Austen related how young girls found their ideal husbands，attacking the prevailing ridiculous sense of value.Austen's ironic speech acts could be found in both her ironic narration and the whole structure of the story.In short，her macro ironic speech acts could be divided into two parts：macro literal irony and macro structural irony.
Macro literal irony indicates that what the narrator really means deviates totally from its literal meanings.This kind of irony states clearly an attitude，but implies at the same time a quite different opinion，which is just what the narrator really wishes to express.As for macro structural irony，it means，instead of using specific words or sentences，the narrator adopts an ironic structure with double meanings.In other words，the narrator expresses irony by arranging plots in a dramatic way.For literal irony，the narrator and readers share a common understanding of what is uttered，while the structural irony depends only on the readers to speculate of the narrator's real intention.Therefore，literal irony in Sense and Sensibility existed only between Austen and the readers，only for whom this kind of irony was meaningful，while the structural irony in this book mainly relied on the readers，who made a speculation about what Austen really meant.