Irony

For other uses, see Irony (disambiguation).

A caustic protest sign.

Irony (from the Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning dissimulation or feigned ignorance) is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is an incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident meaning of words or actions.

Verbal and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, irony used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth — or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection.

In fictional dramatic irony, the author causes a character (acting as the author's mouthpiece) to speak or act in a way contrary to the truth. This technique highlights the literal facts by portraying a fictional person who is strikingly ignorant of them.

In certain kinds of situational or historical irony, a factual truth is highlighted by some person's complete ignorance of it or his belief in the opposite of it. However, this state of affairs does not occur by human design. In some religious contexts, such situations have been seen as the deliberate work of Divine Providence to emphasize facts and to taunt humans for not being aware of them — when they could easily have been enlightened (this is similar to human use of irony). Such ironies are often more evident, or more striking, when viewed retrospectively in the light of later developments which make the truth of past situations obvious to all.

Much irony involves commentary that heightens tension in the life situation of someone who needs to learn an easily known fact but somehow fails to learn it.

Definitions

Henry Watson Fowler, in The King's English, says “any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same."

Also, Eric Partridge, in Usage and Abusage, writes that "Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant."

The word "ironic" is sometimes used as a synonym for "incongruous" in situations where there is no “double audience” and no contradiction between the ostensible and true meaning of the words. An example of such usage:

“Ironically, Sir Arthur Sullivan is remembered for the comic operas he found embarrassing, rather than the serious works he hoped would be his legacy.”

The American Heritage Dictionary's secondary meaning for irony: “incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.” This sense, however, is not synonymous with "incongruous" but merely a definition of dramatic or situational irony. The majority of American Heritage Dictionary’s usage panel found it unacceptable to use the word ironic to describe mere unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that “suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.”

Types of irony

Modern theories of rhetoric distinguish among verbal, dramatic and situational irony.

• Verbal irony is a disparity of expression and intention: when a speaker says one thing but means another, or when a literal meaning is contrary to its intended effect. An example of this is when someone says "Oh, that's beautiful", when what they mean (probably conveyed by their tone) is they find "that" quite ugly

• Dramatic irony is a disparity of expression and awareness: when words and actions possess a significance that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not. For example when a character says to another "I'll love you until I die!" not realizing a piano is about to crush them.
• Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Likewise, cosmic irony is disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world . By some definitions, situational irony and cosmic irony are not irony at all, which is quite ironic.

Verbal irony

According to A glossary of literary terms by Abrams and Hartman,

Verbal irony is a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed. The ironic statement usually involves the explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation, but with indications in the overall speech-situation that the speaker intends a very different, and often opposite, attitude or evaluation.

Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers. For instance, if a man exclaims, “I’m not upset!” but reveals an upset emotional state through his voice while truly trying to claim he's not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony). But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that he was upset by claiming he was not, the utterance would be verbal irony. This distinction illustrates an important aspect of verbal irony - speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. There are, however, examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.

Ironic similes are a form of verbal irony where a speaker intends to communicate the opposite of what they mean. For instance, the following explicit similes begin with the deceptive formation of a statement that means A but that eventually conveys the meaning not A:

• as soft as concrete
• as clear as mud
• as fun as cancer
• as pleasant as a root canal
• "as pleasant and relaxed as a coiled rattlesnake" (Kurt Vonnegut from Breakfast of Champions)

The irony is recognizable in each case only by using stereotypical knowledge of the source concepts (e.g., that mud is opaque, that root canal surgery is painful) to detect an incongruity.

Verbal irony and sarcasm

A fair amount of confusion has surrounded the issue regarding the relationship between verbal irony and sarcasm.

Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage states:

Sarcasm does not necessarily involve irony & irony has often no touch of sarcasm.

This suggests that the two concepts are linked but may be considered separately. The OED entry for sarcasm does not mention irony, but the irony entry reads:

A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has "Non-literary irony is often called sarcasm”; while the Webster's Dictionary entry is:

Sarcasm: 1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain. 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual.

Partridge in Usage and Abusage would separate the two forms of speech completely:

Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, caustic, ... manner.

The psychologist Martin, in The psychology of humour, is quite clear that irony is where “the literal meaning is opposite to the intended”; and sarcasm is “aggressive humor that pokes fun ...”. He has the following examples: For irony he uses the statement "What a nice day" when it is raining. For sarcasm, he cites Winston Churchill who, when told by a lady that he was drunk, said "my dear, you are ugly … but tomorrow I shall be sober" , as being sarcastic, while not saying the opposite of what is intended.

Psychology researchers Lee and Katz (1998) have addressed the issue directly. They found that ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not of verbal irony in general. By this account, sarcasm is a particular kind of personal criticism leveled against a person or group of persons that incorporates verbal irony. For example, a woman reports to her friend that rather than going to a medical doctor to treat her cancer, she has decided to see a spiritual healer instead. In response her friend says sarcastically, "Oh, brilliant, what a genius idea, that's really going to cure you." The friend could have also replied with any number of ironic expressions that should not be labeled as sarcasm exactly, but still have many shared elements with sarcasm.

Most instances of verbal irony are labeled by research subjects as sarcastic, suggesting that the term sarcasm is more widely used than its technical definition suggests it should be (Bryant & Fox Tree, 2002; Gibbs, 2000). Some psycholinguistic theorists (e.g., Gibbs, 2000) suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony. The differences between these tropes can be quite subtle, and relate to typical emotional reactions of listeners, and the rhetorical goals of the speakers. Regardless of the various ways theorists categorize figurative language types, people in conversation are attempting to decode speaker intentions and discourse goals, and are not generally identifying, by name, the kinds of tropes used

For example:

• "Stay Awake" sung by Mary Poppins to magically put children to sleep.

Dramatic irony

Dramatic irony is the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Dramatic irony has three stages - installation, exploitation and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension and resolution) - producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.

For example:

• In City Lights the audience knows that Charlie Chaplin's character is not a millionaire, but the blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) believes he's rich.
• In North by Northwest, the audience knows that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not Kaplan; Vandamm (James Mason) and his accomplices do not. The audience also knows that Kaplan is a fictitious agent invented by the CIA; Roger (initially) and Vandamm (throughout) do not.
• In Oedipus the King, the reader knows that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon and Jocasta do not.
• In Othello, the audience knows that Desdemona has been faithful to Othello, but Othello does not. The audience also knows that Iago is scheming to bring about Othello's downfall, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Roderigo.
• In The Cask of Amontillado, the reader knows that Montresor is planning on murdering Fortunato, while Fortunato believes they are friends.
• In The Truman Show, the viewer is aware that Truman is on a television show, but Truman himself only gradually learns this.
• In Romeo and Juliet, the other characters in the cast think Juliet is dead, but the audience knows she only took a sleeping potion.

Tragic irony

Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters contradict the real situation, which the spectators fully realize.

Ancient Greek drama was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar with the legends that most of the plays dramatized. Sophocles' Oedipus the King provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest.

Linda Hutcheon suggests that irony threatens authoritative models of discourse, by removing the semantic security of the one signifier - one signified equivalency.

Irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker’s perception of paradox that arises from insoluble problems. For example, in the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged death-like sleep, he assumes her to be dead and kills himself. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet stabs herself with a dagger.

Situational irony

This is a relatively modern use of the term, and describes a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by perverse appropriateness.

For example:

• When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however, a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, a vehicle made to protect the President from gunfire was partially responsible for his being shot.
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a story whose plot revolves around irony. Dorothy travels to a wizard and fulfills his challenging demands to go home, before discovering she had the ability to go back home all the time. The Scarecrow longs for intelligence, only to discover he is already a genius, and the Tin Woodsman longs to be capable of love, only to discover he already has a heart. The Lion, who at first appears to be a whimpering coward, turns out to be bold and fearless. The people in Emerald City believed the Wizard to be a powerful deity, only to discover that he is a bumbling, eccentric old man.

Irony of fate (cosmic irony)

The expression “irony of fate” stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals with deliberate ironic intent. Closely connected with situational irony, it arises from sharp contrasts between reality and human ideals, or between human intentions and actual results. The resulting situation is poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended. More recently in English, the mere "coincidental or unexpected" has been called ironic, and this usage appears to be gaining ground. It is still considered a minor usage.

Some examples of situations poignantly contrary to expectation:

In art:

• In O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, a young couple are too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The wife cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a chain for his heirloom pocket watch. She's shocked when she learns he had pawned his watch to buy her a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair.
• In the ancient Indian story of Krishna, King Kamsa is told in a prophecy that a child of his sister Devaki would kill him. To prevent this, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of them, one by one, but the seventh and eighth children, Balarama and Krishna, are saved and raised by a cowherd couple, Nanda and Yashoda. After the boys grow up, Krishna eventually kills Kamsa as the prophecy foretold. Kamsa's attempt to prevent the prophecy led to it becoming a reality. Self-fulfilling prophecies are common motifs in Greek mythology as well. This story is similar to the story of Cronus preventing his wife from raising any children, the one who ends up defeating him being Zeus, the later King of the Gods. Other similar tales in Greek Mythology include Perseus (who killed his grandfather, Acrisius by accident with a discus despite Acrisius' attempt to avert his fate) and more famously Oedipus who killed his father and married his mother not knowing their relationship due to being left to die by his father to prevent that very prophecy from occurring.

In history:

• In 1974 the US Consumer Product Safety Commission had to recall 80,000 of its own lapel buttons promoting "toy safety", because the buttons had sharp edges, used lead paint, and had small clips that could be broken off and subsequently swallowed.
• Exporting cane toads to Australia to protect the environment created worse environmental problems for Australia (and didn't help with the original problem).

Historical irony (cosmic irony through time)

When history is seen through modern eyes, there often appear sharp contrasts between the way historical figures see their world's future and what actually transpires. For example, during the 1920s The New York Times repeatedly scorned crossword puzzles. In 1924, it lamented "the sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern." In 1925 it said "the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast." Today, no U.S. newspaper is more closely identified with the crossword than The New York Times.

In a more tragic example of historical irony, what people now refer to as "World War I" was originally called "The War to End All Wars" or "The Great War." Historical irony is therefore a subset of cosmic irony, but one in which the element of time is bound to play a role. Another example could be that of the Vietnam war, where in the 1960s the U.S.A attempted to defeat the Viet Cong (Viet Minh) from taking over South Vietnam. However it is an often ignored fact that the U.S. originally supported the Viet Minh to prevent imperialist ambitions.

Historical irony also includes inventors killed by their own creations, such as William Bullock - unless, due to the nature of the invention, the risk of death was always known and accepted, as in the case of Otto Lilienthal.

Irony in use

Ironic art

One point of view has it that all modern art is ironic because the viewer cannot help but compare it to previous works. For example, any portrait of a standing, non-smiling woman will naturally be compared with the Mona Lisa; the tension of meaning exists, whether the artist meant it or not.

While this does not appear to exactly conform to any of the three types of irony above, there is some evidence that the term "ironic art" is being used in this context. This definition could extend to any sort of modern artistic endeavour: graphic design or music (sampling, for example).

For example: A South African weekly published a cartoon by Zapiro of the Prophet Mohammad complaining that his followers lack a sense of humor, angering Muslims and raising fear of reprisal attacks during the 2010 World Cup.

Comic irony

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice begins with the proposition “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” In fact, it soon becomes clear that Austen means the opposite: women (or their mothers) are always in search of, and desperately on the lookout for, a rich single man to make a husband. The irony deepens as the story promotes his romance and ends in a double wedding.

Metafiction

Main article: Metafiction

Metafictions are kinds of fiction that self-consciously address the devices of fiction. It usually involves irony and is self-reflective. Metafiction (or “romantic irony” in the sense of roman the prose fiction) refers to the effect when a story is interrupted to remind the audience or reader that it is really only a story. Examples include Henry Fielding’s interruptions of the storyline to comment on what has happened, or J.M. Barrie’s similar interjections in his book, Peter Pan. The concept is also explored in a philosophical context in Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder.

Notable attempts to sustain metafiction throughout a whole novel are Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson, in which none of the characters are real and exist only within the author's imagination, and In The Night Room by Peter Straub, in which the narrator is an author, whose fictional character comes to life and accompanies him through the book.

Irony as infinite, absolute negativity

There is a tradition that sees irony not as a limited tool in the sense of the three types of irony above, but as a disruptive force with the power to undo texts and readers alike. This tradition includes Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, 19th century German critic and novelist Friedrich Schlegel ("On Incomprehensibility"), Charles Baudelaire, Stendhal, and the 20th century deconstructionist Paul de Man ("The Concept of Irony"). Briefly, it insists that irony is, in Kierkegaard's words, "infinite, absolute negativity". Where much of philosophy attempts to reconcile opposites into a larger positive project, Kierkegaard and others insist that irony—whether expressed in complex games of authorship or simple litotes—must, in Kierkegaard's words, "swallow its own stomach". Irony entails endless reflection and violent reversals, and ensures incomprehensibility at the moment it compels speech.

Socratic irony

"The dissimulation of ignorance practised by Socrates as a means of confuting an adversary" (OED, under irony). Socrates would pretend to be ignorant of the topic under discussion, in order to draw out the inherent nonsense in the arguments of his interlocutors. Chambers dictionary has: "a means by which a questioner pretends to know less than a respondent, when actually he knows more."

Zoe Williams of The Guardian wrote: "The technique [of Socratic irony], demonstrated in the Platonic dialogues, was to pretend ignorance and, more sneakily, to feign credence in your opponent's power of thought, in order to tie him in knots."

See also

• Irony mark (؟)

Bibliography

• Bogel, Fredric V. "Irony, Inference, and Critical Understanding." Yale Review ): 503-19.
• Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
• Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Recognizing verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Metaphor and Symbol, 17, 99-115.
• Colebrook, Claire. Irony. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Gibbs, R. W. (2000). Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor and Symbol, 15, 5–27.
• Hutcheon, Linda. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge, 1994.
• Kierkegaard, Søren. On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. 1841; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
• Lavandier, Yves. Writing Drama, pages 263-315.
• Lee, C. J., & Katz, A. N. (1998). The differential role of ridicule in sarcasm and irony. Metaphor and Symbol, 13, 1–15.
• Muecke, D. C. The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen, 1969.
• Star, William T. "Irony and Satire: A Bibliography." Irony and Satire in French Literature. Ed. University of South Carolina Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina College of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1987. 183-209.

External links

• "The final irony"—a Guardian article about irony, use and misuse of the term
• Article on the etymology of Irony
• "Irony", by Norman D. Knox, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas (1973)
• "Sardonicus"—a web-resource that provides access to similes, ironic and otherwise, harvested from the web.
• Excerpt on dramatic irony from Yves Lavandier's Writing Drama
• "American Irony" compared with British irony, quoting Stephen Fry
• American and British irony compared by Simon Pegg
• Modern example of ironic writing