A Study on the Interaction between Irony Rhetoric and Pragmatic Strategies in Social Media——Based on the Ciron Chinese Weibo Irony Dataset

Abstract

In the digital era, social media has become one of the most important channels for public expression and interpersonal interaction. Weibo, as a representative social platform in China, carries a huge number of short-text comments, hot topic discussions, and daily emotional expressions every day. The language used in such online environments is often implicit, context-dependent, and rhetorically rich. Among various linguistic devices, irony stands out as a typical phenomenon that combines both rhetorical charm and pragmatic functions. Irony usually conveys implied attitudes through inconsistency between literal meaning and real intention, helping speakers express criticism, humor, or satire in a mild and indirect way. This study is based on the Ciron dataset, a publicly available and authoritative Chinese Weibo irony corpus, to explore the distribution of ironic expressions, the pragmatic strategies frequently used with irony, and the relationship between topic types and irony use. Through descriptive statistics and qualitative content analysis, this study examines how irony operates as both a rhetorical form and a pragmatic tool. The results show that irony is more frequently distributed in hot social topics than in entertainment and daily topics, and irony is often combined with pragmatic strategies such as rhetorical questions, negation, exaggeration, and implicit evaluation. In addition, the use of irony follows basic pragmatic principles including politeness and relevance. This study enriches empirical research on Chinese irony, provides reliable data support for the integration of pragmatics and rhetoric, and offers a clear and practical framework for similar studies. The findings also help readers better understand implicit online expression, improve media literacy, and provide references for platform content governance and language teaching.