Types of satire interpretation in British media discourse

The Subject of the Study is types of satire interpretation in British media discourse. The material for the research includes texts from British satirical magazine Private Eye (2020) covering articles on social and political topics. The aim of the survey is to identity types of satire interpretation based on the order of activation of contextual sources in British media discourse. To achieve the aim, the method of discourse analysis and functional pragmatic analysis were applied. As a result of the study based on relevance theory the role of context in satire interpretation was determined and the characteristics of six contextual sources the reader resorts to while interpreting satire in British printed media were established. The study claims that in some cases several contextual sources are activated simultaneously on different stages of satire interpretation, i.e. in disambiguation and in derivation of implicated premises and conclusions to yield both explicatures and implicatures. The research establishes that contextual information helps to simplify the process of satirical intentions identification, thus saving cognitive effort and increasing contextual effect in the process of satire interpretation. Taking into account the order of activation of contextual sources and the nature of interaction of context and explicitly expressed information, the study singles out four types of satire interpretation in British media discourse: a) fast satirical interpretation when satirical intentions are made vivid at the beginning of satire interpretation; b) satirical interpretation in which satirical intentions become manifest in the middle of interpretation process; c) satirical interpretation and explicit interpretation occur simultaneously; d) satirical interpretation becomes obvious only at the end of interpretation. Further research in this direction could be done in identification of prototypical types of satire interpretation in media discourse and impact of these types of interpretation on cognitive effect of satirical utterances.