Metalinguistic utterance as a means of realizing an ironic intention

The paper deals with problems related to contemporary linguistic ideas concerned with nature of irony and argues in favour of necessity and efficiency of so-called ironic metalinguistic utterances analysis. The utterances represent author's ironic response to the language or speech stimulus like speech of character, author's own speech etc. Description of complex interrelation between stimulus, response, speech situation, speaker's intentions and hearer's reaction supposes analysis of semantic and pragmatic features of ironic utterances and their components.