Analysing sarcasm through the lens of (Im)Politeness

This thesis examines whether the perception of sarcasm changes in the absence of intonation. It is based on the examples from Woodland and Voyer’s Context and Intonation in the Perception of Sarcasm (2011). We try to answer this question by presenting only written examples and comparing the results to the original study. This study also offers an insight into how sarcasm is defined by non-linguists. Furthermore, this thesis presents the most important concepts (CP, PP, IP) and representatives in both politeness and impoliteness theory (Brown and Levinson, Leech and Culpepper) and focuses on the role of sarcasm within these theories. Finally, it explores which (im)politeness strategies and conventionalized impoliteness formulae were used in the aforementioned examples both on a semantic and a pragmatic level