Irony

Irony, like many terms in everyday language usage, has many different meanings. For instance, irony may refer to either a verbal phenomenon or a state of affairs in the world. The latter is called situational irony. An example of situational irony is a rescuer heroically saving someone from drowning only to find out that the rescued person was his or her worst enemy. Situational irony need not be entirely different from verbal irony, as shown by Cameron Shelley, yet it will not be discussed any further in this entry.

Verbal irony also has various meanings. Socratic irony is a technique used by Greek philosopher Socrates to lead his interlocutors to a better understanding of an argument. Romantic irony is an author's playful attitude toward his or her text, often related to metafiction. It is similar to postmodern irony, which is the destabilizing of the text in the very process of producing it, thus making it clear that one's fictional tale is in fact a fiction. Danish religious philosopher Søren Kierkegaard even uses [Page 398]the term irony to describe an aesthetic experience that can lead to a religious one.

It is just as difficult to distinguish irony from the related phenomenon of sarcasm. Sarcasm is taken to be an aggressive form of irony. Some authors have claimed that a clear-cut distinction is impossible, whereas others point out differences between the two concepts; for example, irony may be involuntary, whereas sarcasm is not. Moreover, irony may be positive (i.e., noncritical), whereas sarcasm is not. An example of positive irony (termed ironic praise) is “a little known writer from Stratford-upon-Avon, by the name of Shakespeare.” To complicate matters, in contemporary American usage, among young speakers, sarcasm has taken over the meaning of irony, which is now used to mean something upsetting (in a sense unrelated to humor). It is also not clear if all irony is humorous (for a comprehensive review, see the 2008 study by Raquel Hidalgo Downing and Silvia Iglesias Recuero).

Etymologically, the term irony comes from the Greek eironeia, meaning “dissimulation” or “concealing.” Melissa Lane ascribes to Greek philosopher Aristotle the first use of the term irony in the modern sense. In this sense, irony is taken to be a rhetorical figure (a trope, a figure of speech) used by speakers to mean the opposite of what is said. This definition is fraught with problems. First and foremost, the speaker may be ironical without necessarily intending the opposite of what he or she says. For example, on saying “he has made such a good job of discrediting himself,” the speaker does not intend to convey the opposite (“he has made such a bad job of discrediting himself”). Besides, understatements, overstatements, and hyperboles may also be used for irony. This entry focuses on the research into the study of irony and sarcasm.