{"id":19705,"date":"2020-02-20T00:45:56","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T00:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=19705"},"modified":"2020-02-22T00:10:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T00:10:30","slug":"what-makes-something-ironic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-makes-something-ironic\/","title":{"rendered":"What makes something ironic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger J. Kreuz<\/a>, University of Memphis<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Have you ever found yourself about to say, \u201cthat\u2019s ironic,\u201d only to stop yourself \u2013 unsure whether you were using the word correctly?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re like most people, you probably know irony when you see it, but can\u2019t really explain it. Part of the confusion might have to do with the myriad ways the word is deployed.<\/p>\n

It can be used in speech. Sometimes it\u2019s used to describe an attitude. Other times it\u2019s used to describe a situation. In many cases, it\u2019s simply used incorrectly.<\/p>\n

In short, irony is complicated.<\/p>\n

In my recently published book, \u201cIrony and Sarcasm<\/a>,\u201d I attempt to disentangle knotty issues like these.<\/p>\n

In general, irony refers to a clash between expectations and outcomes. Typically, the outcome is the opposite of what someone wanted or hoped for. It\u2019s ironic, for example, when your boss calls you into her office, and you\u2019re expecting a promotion, but you instead find out you\u2019ve been fired.<\/p>\n

This clash carries over to verbal irony, in which people say the opposite of what they literally mean. But such expectations are subjective, and verbal ironists<\/a> don\u2019t always mean the exact opposite of what they say. Insulting someone by saying they\u2019re the most intelligent person on Earth, for example, doesn\u2019t mean they are the least intelligent; it just means they\u2019re not all that bright.<\/p>\n

Some cases, however, are relatively straightforward. Consider situational irony, in which two things become odd or humorous when juxtaposed. A photo of a sign in front of a school with a misspelled word \u2013 \u201cWe are committed to excellense<\/a>\u201d \u2013 went viral. And the January 2020 rescheduling of an annual snowball fight<\/a> at the University of British Columbia was correctly described as ironic because of the reason for the cancelation: too much snow.<\/p>\n

In other cases, however, a situation may lack an essential element that irony seems to require. It\u2019s not ironic when someone\u2019s home is burglarized, but it is if the owner had just installed an elaborate security system and had failed to activate it. It\u2019s not ironic when a magician cancels a show due to \u201cunforeseen circumstances,\u201d but it is when a psychic\u2019s performance is canceled for the same reason.<\/p>\n

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Not his lucky day.<\/span>
\nAndy Rennie\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1996, Alanis Morissette was roundly criticized<\/a> by pedants who argued that the examples of situational irony in her song \u201cIronic\u201d \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s like rain on your wedding day\u201d \u2013 were not, in fact, ironic.<\/p>\n

Warnings abound in dictionaries and style guides. \u201cThe New York Times Manual of Style and Usage,\u201d for example, warns<\/a> that \u201cnot every coincidence, curiosity, oddity and paradox is an irony even loosely.\u201d<\/p>\n

One reason that irony is so confusing is that the word also refers to a certain perspective or style: one that is detached, aloof and seemingly world-weary. This affectation is often referred to as the \u201cironic attitude<\/a>\u201d and has come to be associated with adolescents or young adults.<\/p>\n

Following 9\/11, many pundits announced the \u201cdeath of irony,<\/a>\u201d arguing that a frivolous and flippant attitude, often described as ironic, was out of step with the times.<\/p>\n

If this were true, irony didn\u2019t stay dead for long. In fact, the ironic attitude has been declared dead with almost every change in recent American politics. In 2008, Joan Didion<\/a> worried that Barack Obama\u2019s election was fueled by a na\u00efve belief in \u201chope\u201d that would transform the country into an \u201cirony-free zone.\u201d Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote in 2019<\/a> that Donald Trump\u2019s hypocrisy has \u2013 once again \u2013 killed irony.<\/p>\n

Of course, irony is not the only problematic word in English. Some terms are used so inconsistently, and arouse such strong feelings about proper usage, that people begin to avoid using them out of fear of appearing uneducated. The lexicographer Bryan Garner has referred to such words as \u201cskunked<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example, Garner cites \u201ctranspire.\u201d Purists maintain that it refers to things that become known only gradually over time. However, \u201ctranspire\u201d is now frequently used to simply indicate that something has happened \u2013 the nuance of \u201cover time\u201d has become lost. \u201cHopefully\u201d is another example. Purists maintain that it should only be used to mean \u201cin a hopeful way\u201d \u2013 \u201cHe looked hopefully in her direction.\u201d However, it is frequently employed to mean \u201cit is hoped that\u201d \u2013 \u201cHopefully, she\u2019ll look in his direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many dictionaries contain explicit warnings about using such words in these more common yet less accepted ways. Careful users of language are hesitant to use the newer \u2013 and typically broader \u2013 uses of terms before they\u2019ve become firmly established. Until then, they\u2019re skunked.<\/p>\n

Is irony in danger of becoming skunked? Perhaps.<\/p>\n

The life histories of words are difficult to forecast, and terms go in and out of fashion in unexpected ways. Irony is an incredibly useful term that is applied to a very nebulous set of concepts.<\/p>\n

Its unique versatility, however, may prove to be its undoing.<\/p>\n

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Roger J. Kreuz is the author of:<\/header>\n

Irony and Sarcasm <\/a><\/p>\n