Uncorrected proofs -  John Benjamins Publishing Company Irony in the face(s) of politeness Strategic use of verbal irony in Czech political TV debates Jekaterina Mažara his paper examines the possible strategies behind the use of verbal irony in Czech political TV-debates (since 1993) and the various factors that inluence politicians’ behavior in those debates. Since TV debates among politicians usu- ally involve the participants trying to prove their point, they are set up as verbal duels and, therefore, foster either negative use of irony against the opponent or positive use to enhance the speaker’s own positive face. he choice of whether to use irony or not can thus become part of a larger strategy of how the politician and maybe even his whole party want to present themselves in the media. he reaction to ironic remarks, especially those that attack the positive face, can also play an important part, since it can help save the victim’s face or hurt it further. Keywords: pragmatics, verbal irony, politeness theory, political discourse, face threatening acts 1. Introduction Many studies of verbal irony 1 focus on either formal and semantic aspects (e.g. Groeben and Scheele 1984; Halvorsen 1976; Lapp 1992; Weinreich 1966) or con- versational properties of irony and the question of how and why ironic utter- ances are processed and interpreted (e.g. Gibbs and O’Brien 1991; Gibbs, O’Brien and Doolittle 1995; Giora 1995, 1997, 1999; Sperber and Wilson 1981; Wilson and Sperber 1992). he central question of this study is how ironic utterances relate to politeness management (Brown and Levinson 1978, 1987) between poli- ticians participating in televised debate-shows. his approach views irony in a larger context of interpersonal and inter-party relationships between politicians 1. All mentions of “irony” in this paper refer to “verbal irony”.