At a
first glance, it seems like it would be easy to say something about irony. Like
any other word, “irony” names a concept, and concepts are always best
understood by placing them in relation to other concepts. If we want to know
what a cardinal is, for example, it’s easy enough to say that it’s a bird, that
it flies, that its feathers are usually brown or red, and that it’s generally
got a nasty temper as far as other birds are concerned. Naturally, that’s not a
complete definition of a cardinal and it would hardly do for a biologist, but
for the purposes of everyday life it’s enough to acquaint us with cardinals and
make it possible for us to recognize them as we go about our business. After
all, that seems to be the important thing to consider in a definition, isn’t
it? That it allows us to recognize when we should apply a certain concept and
when we shouldn’t? Let’s say it is.
So, if
we’re going to understand irony, it seems like a definition is a good place to
start. Wikipedia, the ever-reliable source for lazy research, defines irony as,
“in its broadest sense… a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in
which what appears, on the surface, to be the case, differs radically from what
is actually the case.” This definition works quite well, if what’s important in
a definition is that it allows us to apply a concept correctly—but it only
works within certain limits. If someone tells us that, “So-and-so is the finest human being I’ve ever met in my whole life,” it’s usually
easy enough to recognize this as an ironic statement. The tone of voice gives
it away, or the hyperbole—the finest human being ever? Really? Add the fact
that So-and-so has been known to steal candy from children and throw
firecrackers at old people, and the difference between what’s said and what’s
really the case becomes palpable. So here we have a clear-cut case of
rhetorical irony.
An
interesting little aside—on the surface, rhetorical irony has much in common
with lying. In both cases, we are knowingly saying something that’s untrue,
that is, the meaning of our words is
at odds with what we know to be the case. One difference might be that a liar
says something that’s close to the truth in order to be believed, while an
ironist says something that departs wildly from the truth in order to be
discovered. This is sarcasm, a terribly boring sort of irony that turns people
to goo if they use it too much. And given the fact that so many people never
recognize irony unless it’s explicitly pointed out to them, well, you can
imagine…
(Can
you believe there was a proposal going around a few years ago—hopefully ironic—for
a new punctuation mark to indicate ironic statements? Can you imagine? It’d
make things impossible for writers, first off… always having to go back and
think, “Now, do I really mean that?
Or that? Or any of this, really?” The end result, of course, is that verbal
irony would just get pushed one level deeper… which it has a tendency to do
anyway.)
But
then we’ve already run into a bit of trouble with our definition, now, haven’t we?
Because if we human beings are so notoriously bad at recognizing irony, even in
its more obvious forms, then our definition isn’t doing us much good, in terms
of allowing us to apply the concept. In order to recognize irony as irony, or sarcasm as sarcasm, we
first have to know all the relevant facts of the matter (“what is actually the
case”). Though we can be reasonably sure of our knowledge, at least so far as
what we know and what we need to know is concerned, we can never know all the
relevant facts of the matter beforehand. For example, we only recognize the irony
of the sign that says “For Sale,” hanging in the car window, after we talk to the owner and she tells
us, “Oh, sorry, it’s only the sign that’s
for sale. You’re right, though, it is a nice car.”
If we
find irony in the distance between the way things appear and the way things
are, then the question of irony turns into the question of what’s really the
case. Irony takes place on multiple levels as well; just think of the
well-known case of “Why did you tell me that everything was fine if everything
really was fine?” Here the irony lies
in the fact that a statement (“Everything’s fine.”) is taken to be ironic when
it really isn’t—and there are infinite variations on this theme: the unironic
statement that’s taken ironically, the ironic statement that’s taken
unironically, the ironic statement that’s made with the intention of being
taken ironically (sarcasm), and so on.
On this
level, irony seems to be the defining feature of consciousness itself. I appear
to be a free, autonomous individual, capable of setting my own goals, forming
my own opinions, thinking my own thoughts, and centered around a particular
body that I’m capable of moving at will and using to interact with other bodies
in the world. But this first appearance proves to have little to do with what I
really am. I was born at a particular place in a particular time with a
particular genetic makeup, into a particular world with a particular history.
Though my thoughts and opinions appear to be my own, they are nonetheless
conditioned (let’s not say determined)
by the experiences I’ve had, the people I’ve encountered, the books I’ve read,
the diet I’ve eaten, the quality of light where I’ve lived, and a million other
factors I’m more or less hardly aware of. I can only type this post because of
the fact that somebody invented the Internet, who could only do that because
somebody discovered electricity, who could only do that because they lived in a
relatively peaceful and civilized area, which was only possible because
somebody discovered agriculture, which was only possible because… We like to
think of ourselves as individuals, but we’re already caught up in the world and
other people, long before we can even conceive of the idea of individuality.
In a
way, all of this may amount to saying that there’s no way of discussing irony
that isn’t in itself ironic. Or maybe it only seems that way to me. Either way,
I’ve got a nagging fixation on the subject of irony that really bothers me and
I’d like to get rid of if possible, so I may very well end up writing a series
of short essays on irony. In which case, this will be the first.
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