irony

Irony

• Awareness of a discrepancy between appearance and reality that takes three common forms• Verbal irony

• Situational irony

• Dramatic irony

Verbal irony

• What a person says is contrary to what they mean.• This is different from a lie, where what a

person says is contrary to what they know to be true, but they do not want the contradiction to be perceived.

• Jake “I’m a musician” = lie• Narrator says “Jake exaggerated greatly” =

verbal irony

Types of verbal irony

• A tone that conflicts with the content of what is said (such as describing serious events lightly, or pretending to be angry when someone has done something nice for you)

• Understatement -- “I find that a little hard to believe” “Jake exaggerated greatly” “This is a sad story . . . It rained in Sarajevo and we had expected fine weather.”

• Humorous exaggeration-- “I’m addicted to Dr Pepper”

• Gently mocking or skeptical tone “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty” to someone who gets up late. “My hero” to someone who does a minor service.


• Sarcasm—saying the opposite of what you intend with the intent to wound or shame someone. • “Thanks a lot” to imply that someone has not

done what they should to help you. • Calling a man a “titan of industry” after he

loses all his money in a shaky business deal


• Satire-using humor, exaggeration and distortion to expose the ridiculous of an argument or practice often while pretending to advocate it.• The benefits [of giving all students A’s] are obvious.

Students will be assured of high grade point averages and an absence of obstacles on their march toward graduation. Professors will be relieved of useless burdens and have more time to pursue their real interests. Education will no longer consume vast quantities of paper for books, compositions and examinations. Roberta Borkat “A Liberating Curriculum”


• Parody: “Taking a cue from the Oakland school district, Fortune 500 companies should request federal funds to teach workers Standard English. How will our employees compete in the global village if they can’t speak the same proper English used in Japan and Taiwan? While many office workers describe their dialect as lingo they use only among their upper-middle class peers and in office parks, while reverting back to normal English in public, some linguists consider office jargon to be a language separate from English.” Ted Rall “Office Jargon: Language or Dialect?”

Situational Irony

• When something happens that is contrary to what is expected or intended.• A child gets sick and misses school on the day she is

supposed to receive a perfect attendance award.

• A policeman is robbed.

• Oedipus fulfills the curse predicted by the oracle by trying to avoid it.

• The trip that was supposed to help Piper make up his mind to divorce his wife for his girlfriend, actually led to his girlfriend dumping him

Dramatic Irony

• The reader/audience is aware of something that characters in the literary work don’t recognize.• Miss Brill’s reflections on the old people on the

benches also describe the way the young people see her.

• Jake thinks he is cool and free but the reader can see that he is on a dead end life path.