Chapter 10. The Rolling Stones promoting Monty Python: The power of irony and banter

Sandrine Sorlin (1)

1 LERMA - Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherche sur le Monde Anglophone

Based on Text World Theory, this chapter offers a fine-grained analysis of how irony and banter are likely to be processed by viewers watching a promotional video but also highlights the pragmatic functions of such an indirect strategy. It dissects a 1:40 tongue-in-cheek video which served as an introduction to the 2014 Monty Python Live (Mostly) press conference. It features Mick Jagger accusing the coming troupe of being “wrinkly old men trying to relive their youth”, using irony and banter as powerful means of promotion. Bringing together different theoretical frameworks of irony that are usually described as competing, this chapter highlights how expectations are twisted in the “text-world” of the video through the use of (mock) dramatic irony, generating pragmatic paradoxes.

Domaines: Linguistique

Sandrine Sorlin. Chapter 10. The Rolling Stones promoting Monty Python: The power of irony and banter. John Benjamins. The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter, 30, pp.195-20, 2018, Linguistic Approaches to Literature, ⟨10.1075/lal.30.10sor⟩. ⟨halshs-02486288⟩