[Lingtyp] Ironic negative constructions

[David Gil]

Dear all,

Mark Post mentions the English /bad/ used to mean 'good'. This brings to 
mind a pet project that I've been collecting data on for several years, 
which I refer to as "antonymic nicknames". This is when you call 
somebody very thin /fatso/, somebody very stupid /professor/, etc. — a 
usage clearly rooted in irony.  Australian English seems to be the 
epicenter of the phenomenon; for example, /bluey/ has been 
conventionalized as a way of calling people with red hair.  But 
antonymic nicknames are common throughout the world, albeit not universal.

In the attached map (work in progress!), red dots represent languages in 
which antonymic nicknames are solidly attested, while grey dots are for 
languages in which (a) I lack attestations for antonymic nicknames, and, 
crucially also (b) sources insist that they would never occur in their 
language — in the most extreme case, such speakers simply "don't get the 
joke".

David


On 25/01/2020 06:45, Mark W. Post wrote:
> This seems to be part of the same family of phenomena as when e.g. 
> English speakers say (or used to say) “bad” to mean “good”, so I’m 
> also curious a) whether there’s a superordinate label to describe the 
> semantic move, and b) whether “ironic negative” is the most widespread 
> term for this use of verbal/clausal negation.
>
> Thanks
> Mark
>
-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

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