Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T07:28:10.642Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Kinds of Irony: A General Theory

from Part II - The Scope of Irony

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2023

By
Gregory Currie
Edited by
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr  and
Herbert L. Colston
Herbert L. Colston
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Get access

Summary

This chapter offers a “conceptual geography” of the ways irony is expressed and understood through several representations of irony, as seen, for example, in fiction and film. Currie draws the careful distinction between cases where an event is represented as being ironic without the event itself being ironic (e.g., a film scene may be constructed to express irony without the scene itself necessarily being an example of situational irony). Dramatic irony, for example, often succeeds because of our knowing something that the characters do not. But the characters’ lack of knowledge is only a pointer to the irony and is not what actually constitutes the irony. Many so-called instance of verbal irony are “expressive,” but not really “communicative,” because they are expressive of an ironic state of mind without a speaker specifically aiming to communicate irony. Currie’s chapter dives into many of these complexities, which are too often ignored in theoretical discussions and explications of irony. His overarching aim is to raise our awareness about what should be counted as irony and what “should be abandoned as the product of an inflated vocabulary.”

Keywords

expressive ironycommunicative ironydramatic ironyfictionfilmverbal ironysituational irony
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought , pp. 17 - 37
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angeleri, R., & Airenti, G. (2014). The development of joke and irony understanding: A study with 3- to 6-year-old children. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68(2), 133–146.Google Scholar
Booth, W. (1974). A rhetoric of irony. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bowra, C. M. (1944). Sophoclean drama. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burgess, A., Cappelen, H., & Plunkett, D. (Eds.) (2020). Conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chalmers, D. (2020). What is conceptual engineering and what should it be? Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2020.1817141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chalmers, D., & Clark, A. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58, 7–19.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the pretence theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 121–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, G. (2006). Why irony is pretence. In Nichols, S. (Ed.), The architecture of the imagination: New essays on pretence, possibility, and fiction (pp. 111–133). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Currie, G. (2010). Narratives and narrators. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Currie, G. (2011) The irony in pictures, British Journal of Aesthetics, 51, 149–167.Google Scholar
Dane, J. A. (2011) The critical mythology of irony. University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Fabry, R. E. (2021). Getting it: A predictive processing approach to irony comprehension. Synthese, 198, 6455–6489.Google Scholar
Ferrari, G. R. F. (2008). Socratic irony as pretence. Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 34, 1–33.Google Scholar
Ferrari, G. R. F. (2017). The messages we send: Social signals and storytelling. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Filik, R., Leuthold, H., Wallington, K., & Page, J. (2014). Testing theories of irony processing using eye-tracking and ERPs. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 811–828.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Foley, H. (1985). Ritual irony, poetry and sacrifice in Euripides. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gibbs, R. W., O’Brien, J. E., & Doolittle, S. (1995) Inferring meanings that are not intended: Speakers’ intentions and irony comprehension. Discourse Processes, 20(2), 187–203.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (2009). Undoing in Sophoclean drama: “Lusis” and the analysis of irony. Transactions of the American Philological Association, 139(1), 21–52. www.jstor.org/stable/40212095.Google Scholar
Goldhill, S. (2012). Sophocles and the language of tragedy. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, D. (1979). Irony in the medieval romance. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Handwerk, G. (2000). Romantic irony. In Brown, M. (Ed.), The Cambridge history of literary criticism, vol. 5 (pp. 203–225). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Happé, F. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition, 48, 101–109.Google Scholar
Jackson, F. (2002). From reduction to type-type identity. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 65, 644–647.Google Scholar
Jacobson, H. (1989). A leader on the Left meets a follower of the Left Behind: Michael & me Film Comment, 25(6), 16–18, 20, 22–26.Google Scholar
Johnson, S. K. (1928). Some aspects of dramatic irony in Sophoclean tragedy. Classical Review, 42, 209–214.Google Scholar
Kirkwood, G. M. (1958). A study of Sophoclean drama. Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Lane, M. (2011). Reconsidering Socratic irony. In Morrison, D. R. (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Socrates (pp. 237–259). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lloyd, M. (1986). Divine and human action in Euripides’ Ion. Antike und Abendland, 32, 33–45.Google Scholar
Lowe, N. J. (1996) Tragic and Homeric ironies: Response to Rosenmeyer. In Silk, M. S. (Ed.), Tragedy and the tragic (pp. 520–533). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lucariello. (1994). Situational irony: A concept of events gone awry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 129–145.Google Scholar
MacDowell, J. (2016). Irony in film. Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Maine, B. (2016). Bring the bodies up: Excavating Washington Square. American Literary Realism, 48, 209–231.Google Scholar
Miller, G. D. (2012). An intercalation revisited: Christology, Discipleship, and dramatic irony in Mark 6.6b-30. Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 35. https://doi-org.libproxy.york.ac.uk/10.1177/0142064X12462659.Google Scholar
Muecke. (1969). The compass of irony. Methuen.Google Scholar
Paltin, J. (2014). Problems with theory of mind in “Victory”. Conradiana, 46, 95–107.Google Scholar
Rey, G. (2022). The innocuousness of folieism and the need of intentionality where transduction fails. Mind & Language, 37, 274–282.Google Scholar
Rosenmeyer, T. (1996). Ironies in serious drama. In Silk, M. S. (Ed.), Tragedy and the tragic (pp. 497–519). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rush, F. (2016). Irony and idealism: Rereading Schlegel, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rutherford, R. B. (2012). Greek tragic style. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schier, F. (1986). Deeper into pictures. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silk, M. S. (1996). Greek tragedy and “tragedy as a whole.” In Silk, M. S. (Ed.), Tragedy and the tragic (pp. 351–357). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, D. (1984). Verbal irony: Pretence or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 130–136.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981). Irony and the use-mention distinction. In Cole, P. (Ed.), Radical Pragmatics (pp. 295–318). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Thirlwall, C. (1833). On the irony of Sophocles. The Philological Museum, 2. Reprinted in Remains literary and theological of Connop Thirlwall (Vol. 3), ed. J. J. Stewart Perowne. Daldy, Isbister & Co. 1878. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Philological_Museum_vol_2/On_the_Irony_of_Sophocles.Google Scholar
Thomson, J. A. K. (1927). Irony. An historical introduction. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, K. (1990). Mimesis as make-believe. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Walton, K. (1994). Morals in fiction and fictional morality. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, 68, 27–66.Google Scholar
Warren, C., & Mohr, G. S. (2019). Ironic consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 46(2), 246–266.Google Scholar
Wilson, D., & Sperber, D. (2012). Meaning and relevance. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wright, M. (2005). Euripides’ escape-tragedies. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×