Selected methods of expressing ironic meaning in discourse

Abstract

The article examines various means of expressing negative subjective attitude in the Uzbek language, including irony, sarcasm, mockery, ridicule, insinuation, and other expressive devices. Particular attention is given to such phenomena as piching, qochirim, sarcastic laughter, derision, teasing, hinting, and indirect remarks, with emphasis on their semantic and pragmatic characteristics and their functions in discourse. The study highlights the different degrees of manifestation of negative subjective attitude in irony, ranging from mild and implicit to intense and explicit forms. It is argued that irony arises from the contradiction between form and content and serves to produce a comic or evaluative effect. The paper also discusses how attitudes toward sarcasm may be conveyed through irony and analyzes their interrelation as pragmatic mechanisms of constructing ironic meaning.