Irony





Irony (from the Ancient Greek eirōneía, meaning dissimulation or feigned ignorance)  is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions. Ironic statements (verbal irony) typically imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning. A situation is often said to be ironic (situational irony) if the actions taken have an effect exactly opposite from what was intended. The discordance of verbal irony is created as a means of communication (as in art or rhetoric). Descriptions or depictions of situational ironies, whether in fiction or in non-fiction, serve a communicative function of sharpening or highlighting certain discordant features of reality.

Other types of irony:
 * Comic irony: Irony that is humorous (whereas much irony is not)
 * Dramatic irony: When the audience (or reader) knows a fictional character is making a mistake, because the audience has more information than the character.
 * Tragic irony: A type of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, a character's actions lead to consequences that are both tragic, and contrary to the character's desire and intentions.
 * Historical irony: A kind of situational irony that takes a long period of years for the irony to become evident.
 * Socratic irony: When a person asks questions, pretending not to understand, to lure the interlocutor into a logical trap. (Socrates, in Plato's dialogues, was a master of this technique.)

Verbal and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, 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 dramatic irony, the author causes a character to speak or act erroneously, out of ignorance of some portion of the truth of which the audience is aware. In other words, the audience knows the character is making a mistake, even as the character is making it. This technique highlights the importance of truth by portraying a person who is strikingly unaware of it.

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 truths 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.

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 use of irony may require the concept of a double audience. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage says: "Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension."

The term is sometimes used as a synonym for incongruous and applied to "every trivial oddity" in situations where there is no double audience. An example of such usage is: "Sullivan, whose real interest was, ironically, serious music, which he composed with varying degrees of success, achieved fame for his comic opera scores rather than for his more earnest efforts."

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.”

Origin of the term
According to the Encyclopedia Brittannica: "The term irony has its roots in the Greek comic character Eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character Alazon. The Socratic irony of the Platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin."

According to Richard Whately: "Aristotle mentions..Eironeia, which in his time was commonly employed to signify, not according to the modern use of ‘Irony, saying the contrary to what is meant’, but, what later writers usually express by Litotes, i.e. ‘saying less than is meant’."

The word came into English as a figure of speech in the 16th century as similar to the French ironie. It derives from the Latin ironia and ultimately from the Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning dissimulation, ignorance purposely affected.

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 awareness between actor and observer: 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 see you tomorrow!" when the audience (but not the character) knows that the character will die before morning.


 * Situational irony is the disparity of intention and result: when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect. Being "shot with one's own gun", or "hoisted with one's own petard" are popular formulations of the basic idea of situational irony. 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.

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 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.

In The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket, this formulation is broken down by the construction of an ironic simile followed by a reversion of the meaning so the statement once again means A.
 * "Today was a very cold and bitter day, as cold and bitter as a cup of hot chocolate, if the cup of hot chocolate had vinegar added to it and were placed in a refrigerator for several hours."
 * "The day was as normal as a group of seals with wings riding around on unicycles, assuming that you lived someplace where that was very normal."

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 and 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 Encyclopædia 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 an ingenious 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 (Leggitt & Gibbs, 2000).

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 him to be 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.
 * In Forrest Gump, the audience knows the historical significance of the characters and scenarios Forrest Gump finds himself in, but he often does not.

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. The Oxford English Dictionary has:"the incongruity created when the (tragic) significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience but unknown to the character concerned; the literary device so used, orig. in Greek tragedy." 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. Colebrook writes:"Tragic irony is exemplified in ancient drama ... The audience watched a drama unfold, already knowing its destined outcome. ... In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, for example, 'we' (the audience) can see what Oedipus is blind to. The man he murders is his father, but he does not know it." 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 thus killing herself.

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 with no special powers at all.

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. "The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply 'coincidental' or 'improbable'."

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 royal 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 the novel series Harry Potter, the evil Lord Voldemort hears a prophecy about him (prior to the first book) which states his greatest enemy will be 'born as the seventh month dies' and be the son of parents who have both 'thrice defied him'. He believes this to mean the young Harry Potter. The prophecy also said 'he would have power the Dark Lord (meaning Voldemort) knows not' and 'neither could live while the other survives'. Seeing this as a threat to his power and life he sets out to kill this baby, however, he fails due to Harry's mother's sacrifice forming protection. This in turn causes the connection between Harry and the Dark Lord to form. As Albus Dumbledore realises, setting store by the prophecy was a choice, but in choosing to believe it, Voldemort then made it a reality.

In history:
 * In 1974 the U.S. 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.
 * Introducing cane toads to Australia to control the cane beetle not only failed to control the pest, but introduced, in the toads themselves, a very much worse pest.
 * Kudzu - a vine imported to the United States in the 1930s and planted all over the South at the direction of the US Government in order to prevent soil erosion. Instead of preventing erosion, it climbs and chokes native trees and plants, thus causing even more erosion.

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 "The First World War" was called by H.G. Wells "The war that will end war", which soon became "The war to end war" and "The War to End All Wars", and this became a widespread truism, almost a cliche. 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 stop the Viet Cong (Viet Minh) taking over South Vietnam. However it is an often ignored fact that the U.S. originally supported the Viet Minh to prevent imperialist ambitions.

Gunpowder was, according to prevailing academic consensus, discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality.

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.

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 marriage proposal.

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.

Socratic irony
This is "The dissimulation of ignorance practised by Socrates as a means of confuting an adversary". 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."

A more modern example of Socratic irony can be seen on the 1970s American television show, Columbo. The fictional character, Lt. Columbo, is seemingly naive and incompetent. His untidy appearance adds to this fumbling illusion. As a result, he is underestimated by the suspects in murder cases he is investigating. With their guard down and their false sense of confidence, Lt. Columbo is able to solve the cases leaving the murderers feeling duped and outwitted.

Irony as infinite, absolute negativity
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and others, see irony, such as that used by Socrates, as a disruptive force with the power to undo texts and readers alike. The phrase itself is taken from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, and is applied by Kierkegaard to the irony of Socrates. This tradition includes 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"). In Kierkegaard's words, from On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates: "[Socratic] irony [is] the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not. The irony established nothing, because that which is to be established lies behind it..."

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. Similarly, among other literary critics, writer David Foster Wallace viewed the pervasiveness of ironic and other postmodern tropes as the cause of "great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists [ironies] pose terrifically vexing problems."