Gooder Writing Tip #6

Irony

Doing what I do on a daily basis, one of the most commonly misused words I come across is irony (ironic, ironically, etc.). It's admittedly a subjective interpretation sometimes, and it's easier to figure out what's not ironic than it is to decide what is. For example, rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you've already paid is NOT ironic. Three definitions of irony exist: irony, dramatic/tragic irony, and Socratic irony.

I use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh edition. The following are Webster's definitions:

Irony: (1) The use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning, (2) a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony, (3) an ironic expression or utterance, (4) incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result

Dramatic/tragic irony: Incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play (for example, in Oedipus the King by Sophocles when Oedipus declares that he will capture and punish his father's murderer, the audience knows that Oedipus is the murderer, but Oedipus is unaware that the man he killed was his father)

Socratic irony: a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning (for example, the well-learned literature professor who claims to be unaware of any dramatic irony in Oedipus the King in order to get the students to describe/prove the existence of this dramatic irony)

A few examples of irony:

- A man says "Oh great" after backing his truck into a mailbox

- A woman says "Lucky you!" after a friend tells her about how he backed his truck into a mailbox

- George Bush not recognizing Zimbabwe's president because Zimbabwe's president wasn't elected

- Swearing on a stack of Bibles not to mock evangelicals

- A can opener sold inside a can

- Alanis Morisette's song "Ironic" not being ironic

- A vegetarian getting eaten by a cow