La ironía y el humor al servicio de la norma ejemplar en los ‘dardos’ de Fernando Lázaro Carreter

According to the concept of linguistic ideology and in the framework of the METAPRES project on the metalinguistic discourse in the Spanish press, this study explores the notion of ‘exemplary norm’ in the columns about language written by the linguist and the academician Fernando Lázaro Carreter, better known as ‘darts in the word’. A qualitative pragmatic analysis of a corpus of columns has been carried out in order to examine the role played by irony and verbal humor in the argumentative strategies adopted by the author against certain linguistic uses and in favor of his own idea of a linguistic exemplary norm. The results show that both phenomena contribute to promote the readers’ metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness about the language we use daily as well as to elaborate a persuasive and an amusing ethos of the author