Irony


 * Definition**

“Irony” as a concept in Communication has received a good deal more attention in the last 40 years than it had previously. There were, of course, a great many philosophers, writers and thinkers who spoke of irony, but in relation to the concept as a communicative process there has been comparatively little written. As Wayne Booth (1974) pointed out, “The way irony works in uniting (or dividing) authors and readers has been relatively neglected since the latter part of the eighteenth century, and it has never been fully explored” (p. ix). In light of this fairly new attention to irony, it is useful to understand its simplest, most broadly used definition as “the use of words to express something other than, and even the opposite of, their literal meaning” (Tindale & Gough, 1987, p. 2). As with many concepts, however, the definition of irony is somewhat hard to pin down.


 * "Interpretations" of Irony**

The word ‘irony’ does not now mean only what it meant in earlier centuries, it does not mean in one country at all what it may mean in another, nor in the street what it may mean in the study, not to one scholar what it may mean to another. (Muecke, 1982, p. 7)

While Muecke is correct, that there are different interpretations of what irony “is,” generally, the aforementioned definition is at the root of how people understand irony. “[I]n all forms of irony, namely, the phenomenon is not the essence but the opposite of the essence” (Kierkegaard, 1965, p. 264).


 * Common Understandings of Irony**

Through our definition of Irony, there emerges three common understandings of irony: verbal, situational and dramatic. While these are useful, they don’t address irony as it relates to the field of Communication. Averbeck and Hample (2008) have noted that irony is associated with such communicative processes as “face-saving efforts, argument, the expression of social aggression, and social interaction in general” (p. 396), while Tretheway (1999) reports that irony can be used to “exploit the contradictions of organizational life” (p. 143).


 * Communication Studies and Irony: rhetorical device**

Perhaps the most widely employed use of irony is that of rhetorical device in argumentation. Irony is an indirect argument, one in which the “ironicist attempts to convince the receiver not to perform a particular behavior” (Averbeck and Hample, 2008, p. 398), or through the “avoidance of head-on assertion” seeks to “win over” the receiver (Enright, 1986, p. 1). Tindale and Gough (1987) have insisted that “when irony is used in the text of a piece containing an argument, it must be intended to persuade the audience of something or at least strongly suggest a particular reading of the text under consideration” (p. 6). Moreover, “In an interpersonal context,” Averbeck (2010) has said, “irony serves as a comment on an undesirable or unexpected form of behavior” (p. 357).

It is in this area of socially acceptable behaviors that Linda Hutcheon’s (1995) has found an important aspect of irony. She has stated that “irony happens as part of a communicative process: it is not a static rhetorical tool to be deployed, but itself comes into being in the relations between meanings, but also between people and utterances and, sometimes, between intentions and interpretations” (p. 13). Irony is a social phenomenon partly because it requires social knowledge, because it “always presupposes supplementary information on facts and norms” (Perelman, 1969, p. 208), and because it insists that “participants know their own norms as well as those of the other” (Tindale & Gough 1987, p. 3).

Therefore irony, as a concept in Communication, is multi-faceted. It can be used to understand aspects of organizational life, as a device in argumentation and to chastise someone for violating social norms. It signals understanding of commonalities among people, and it acknowledges differing values. Irony, as Clair Colebrook (2002) has stated, “interrogates the essentially bifurcated possibility of the human point of view, at one within and beyond its own world” (p. ix).

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 * References**

Averbeck, J.M. (2010). Irony and language expectancy theory: Evaluations of expectancy violation outcomes. Communication Studies, 61, 356-372.

Averbeck, J.M. & Hample, D. (2008). Ironic message production: How and why we produce ironic messages. Communication Monographs, 75, 396-410.

Booth, W.C. (1974). The rhetoric of irony. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Colebrook, C. (2002). Irony in the work of philosophy. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Enright, D.J. (1986). The alluring problem: An essay on irony. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Hutcheon, L. (1995). Irony’s edge: The theory and politics of irony. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kierkegaard, S. (1965). The concept of irony. (L.M. Capel, Trans.) New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Muecke, D.C. (1982). Irony and the ironic (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Methuen.

Perelman, C & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press.

Tindale, C.W. Gough, J. (1987). The use of irony in argumentation. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 20(1), 1-17.

Trethewey, A. (1999). Isn’t it ironic: Using irony to explore the contradictions of organizational life. Western Journal of Communication, 63(2), 140-167.