We propose a pretense theory of irony based on suggestions by Grice and Fowler. In being ironic, the theory goes, a speaker is pretending to be an injudicious person speaking to an uninitiated audience; the speaker intends the addressees of the irony to discover the pretense and thereby see his or her attitude toward the speaker, the audience, and the utterance. The pretense theory, we argue, is superior to the mention theory of irony proposed by Sperber and Wilson. What is irony? Traditional theories, according to Jorgensen, Miller, and Sperber (1984), assume "that an ironist uses a figurative meaning opposite to the literal meaning of the utterance" (p. 112). A person saying "What lovely weather" on a rainy day is using the figurative meaning, "What terrible weather." As an alternative, Sperber and Wilson (1981) offered a mention theory of irony in which a speaker is being ironic when he or she is mentioning, or echoing, an earlier utterance, such as a weather forecaster's saying "The weather will be lovely today," in order to express an attitude such as contempt or ridicule toward it. Of the traditional theories, the main one with which Sperber and Wilson contrast their theory is that of Grice (1975, 1978). Sperber and Wilson marshaled a range of arguments, and Jorgensen et al. add experimental evidence, in support of the mention theory and against Grice's and the other traditional theories. Grice's theory of irony, however, isn't what it is made out to be. It does not assume that the ironist is, technically, "using one proposition in order to get across its contradictory" (Jorgensen et al., 1984, p. 114; italics added), which is the main criticism leveled against it. It assumes, rather, that the ironist is pretending