Linguistic means of expressing irony as an aesthetic category of the comic in the idiostyle of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin

Abstract

Irony, acting as a heterogeneous phenomenon in language, has attracted the attention of many researchers and philosophers since Antiquity. In the course of this study we identified its main features and established that irony is an artistic form of evaluative depiction of reality, the distinctive feature of which is a hidden ridicule opposed to the literal meaning of what is said. This feature of irony is an important tool for revealing many social and philosophical problems in the works of writers and poets of all times, which explains its integral role in the development of fiction literature. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin is one of the most prominent representatives of the satirical-ironic direction in Russian literature of the XIX century. This article is devoted to the analysis and systematisation of lexical and syntactic means of creating irony in the works of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin through the study of the writer’s early and late works and the identification of his ideological position towards the social situation of Russia at that time. On the basis of the method of philological analysis of the text and the method of comparison there is a detailed description of each identified means of expression of ironic modality in the writer’s satirical tales, as well as in his novel “The History of One City”. The example of his works shows irony in the form of sarcastic and sharp mockery, which indicates the democratic nature of the writer’s ideas and his hatred of autocracy. This work has an important linguistic and general cultural nature. The results and materials of the research can be used in linguographic practice, in the process of teaching courses on linguistic and cultural studies, Russian as a foreign (non-native) language in Russian and foreign universities.