4.5 Micro Ironic Speech Acts Based on Searle's SAT
Sense and Sensibility offered a picture of the middle-class gentry in the 18th century.Their daily life involved nothing but numerous visits，dinners，dances and walks.The majority of these social activities were spent in talking.Various dialogues engendered and then achieved friendship，love and marriage.In a sense，dialogues constituted the whole story.Without devious plots and thrilling great scenes，Austen，by her easy and smooth narration，attracted countless readers and critics generation after generation.A proof might be perceived in elegant dialogues in this book，which played a critical role in character painting.
“Let people display themselves through their own language.”This was the Austen's superb technique in producing Sense and Sensibility.Deliberately neglecting to represent beautiful views and portraits in detail，Austen fulfilled her story and character depicting mainly through dialogues.Among dinners，dances beyond court，every dialogue was full of witty irony and dramatic plots.Just like George Henry Lewes，a famous scholar and critic in the 19th century，said，“She obtained a perfect mastery of this difficult art；not telling what the characters look like，she just put them before our eyes，letting them display themselves.”（Yan，1998，p.49）
As we have mentioned，micro ironic speech acts indicate speech acts performed by characters in the story.What's more，Austen adopted many kinds of forms to display dialogues.Besides direct speech and indirect speech，letter，a special kind of dialogue was also introduced.
Now we will，according to theories of Searle and Haverkate，explore in detail four kinds of micro ironic speech acts：assertive irony；directive irony；commissive irony and expressive irony.