hibit strong complementarity. Traditionally, irony is treated as a figure of speech whose intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words uttered. The study of irony in this way belongs to that of rhetoric. American linguist Grice takes irony as one of those figures of speech that flouts the Cooperative Principle (CP for short), especially the Maxim of Quality. Irony interpreted under this pragmatic model conveys the contradiction of what is literally said. Linguists Sperber and Wilson treat irony as an echoic mention while linguist Cuddon states that “At its simplest, verbal irony involves saying what one doesn’t mean.” [1]
In this paper, focus will be laid upon the humor feature of verbal irony from the perspective of pragmatics. First, through the comparison of different kinds of definitions of irony, a general idea about what is irony is established. Secondly, this paper examines Gricean Cooperative Principle which put forwards that irony acts as a violation of CP. Thirdly, with the help of Leech’s idea of irony, the pragmatic function of irony could be better displayed. Finally, the last point is about the pragmatic functions of both English irony and Chinese irony. In a word, irony is one way to produce humor in verbal communication.

2. What is irony
It is difficult to define the word of “irony” which could be understood in various ways. The expansion of its research area may be the direct cause of the diversity of the definition of irony. The following are some definitions of irony from dictionaries.

2.1 Dictionary definitions of irony
1) Expression of one’s meaning by saying the direct opposite of one’s thoughts in order to be emphatic, amusing, sarcastic, etc. [2]
                      Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary
2) Use of words w[转贴于:论文大全网 https://www.11665.com/Foreignlanguage/langageculture/201103/53598.html]

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