Abstract: The article is a review of existing scientific views on irony as a phenomenon at the junction of several disciplines. Definitions of this phenomenon are presented from the point of view of philosophical, aesthetic, anthropological, literary, linguistic approach. The views on irony as a category of the comic, a worldview category, as a way of perceiving and comprehending reality are listed. The author points out that in the process of communication, irony is a kind of barrier to dividing participants into "ironic" and their "victims", that is, those who are able to interpret irony and the "uninitiated". Discursive irony is considered as a product of interaction, cooperation between the author and the addressee, as a result of which an ironic effect may arise (if the ironic utterance is correctly interpreted) or not (in the case of a communicative failure).  Various interpretations of the concept of "irony" are considered in comparison, arguments are given justifying the author's agreement / disagreement with existing formulations. The focus of the article is on irony, an effect that arises as a result of interaction between interlocutors: the ironic speaker and the recipient who perceives and interprets irony. The author's contribution to the development of the theory of discourse is expressed in the analysis of irony in English and Russian linguistic cultures. The article highlights the main socio-cultural and linguodiscursive characteristics of irony. The conclusion is made about the importance of irony in communication, about its role in the verbal and emotional intelligence of the participants of the discourse. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that in the proposed work irony is considered as an integral characteristic of modern English and Russian discourse, which ensures that the speaker achieves the fulfillment of a communicative intention. The main result of the work is the postulate about the ethnostilistic labeling of irony, which opens up wide prospects for studying the features of irony in national discourses. The data presented in the article can be used for the further development of ethnostilistics, linguistic pragmatics, and the theory of intercultural communication.

Keywords: emotions, culture, language, linguistics, stylistics, ironic, discourse, communication, irony, sense