Ironía verbal y actividad de imagen en el discurso de políticos y ciudadanos españoles en Twitter

Based on a sociocultural pragmatic approach, the aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between verbal irony and face-work in Twitter interactions between Spanish politicians and citizens. Throughout the analysis of two different corpora of messages published in the microblog, I consider the modality and the direction of the effects conveyed by verbal irony affecting the face and the social role of speakers. Furthermore, I carry out an analysis of the ironic behavior of interactants within this political-ideological context, according to the categories of affiliation and autonomy, as well as exacerbated affiliation and refractoriness. The results show that, in Twitter, verbal irony is multidirectional and it has two types of social effects: positive or negative, depending on the affiliation of the speaker to an ideological group, as well as on her social role in the microblog.