IMPORTANCE OF TONE
To misinterpret tone is to misinterpret meaning.
If students miss irony
or sarcasm, they may find something serious
in veiled humor.
IRONYOften a poem introduces distance between whathappens or is said and what we expect to happen or toperceive, causing us to feel the tension between thetwo conflicting ideas.
This uneasy (and sometimes amusing) distance, ordisassociation, is called irony. It's easier to illustrate thanexplain.
IRONY
The use of irony assumes
two audiences:
one who understands
only one meaning
and one who also understands
an alternative meaning.
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DRAMATIC IRONY
In dramatic irony,
the first audience is the speaker or
the character on stage who
doesn't have all the information.
The second audience is the
literal audience or another character
who does have all the information.
DRAMATIC IRONYIn Romeo and Juliet we know Juliet is
weeping because Romeo has been
banished. Her mother thinks Juliet is
weeping for the death of Tybalt.
Juliet says she wants to go to
Romeo to show him
how she feels about him.
DRAMATIC IRONY
In King Lear we know that Edmund
the bastard is tricking his brother and father
into believing that each is trying to harm
the other so Edmund can inherit everything.
Meanwhile Gloucester and Edgar, by
trusting Edmund, play into his hands.
VERBAL IRONY
In verbal irony, the first audience is
the person who takes a statement
at face value;
the second audience is
the person who understands that
the statement actually means its opposite.
Verbal Irony or Sarcasm?
What is the difference between ironic statements and sarcastic statements?
Irony is usually directed inwardlyat the speaker’s own flaws.
Sarcasm is usually directed at others tocriticize while maintaining deniability.
That’s it, Granddad. I’m never going to the movies with you again.
Why not?!
Because you start yelling in the theater about how you’re old and you don’t have much time left and you don’t want your precious last hours wasted by a bad movie!
It’s terribly, terribly embarrassing!
But you yell the same thing!!
It’s humorously IRONIC when I do it.
SITUATIONAL IRONY
In situational irony the first audience is
the person in the situation;
the second audience is the observer
who understands that the situation
reveals a comic
or tragic human condition.
SITUATIONAL IRONY
In The Octopus by Frank Norris, an evilrailroad agent drives farmers into bankruptcy and corners the market on wheat by raising shipping rates.
Just when he has successfully reached hisgoal, he falls into a railroad car being loaded with wheat and is smothered by it.
SITUATIONAL IRONY
• It is only when Lear goes mad that he understands what he did to Cordelia
• It is only when Gloucester is blinded that he ‘sees’ that Edgar was a good son and Edmund was the evil plotter.
Irony does not mean simply, "things that a bummer." For example, if it were to rain on your wedding day, that would be a bummer, but it would not be ironic.
A better example of irony would be to write a song with irony as its topic, and then to list a bunch of events that aren't at all ironic.
Don't ya think? Alanis Morrisette?
Which irony is this? United Fire & Casualty, a property
and casualty insurer that got flooded out of its headquarters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa this week, announced it expects to report losses this quarter because
it wasn't fully insured. True story from 2008 spring flooding
SARCASM AND IRONY
Things in the video that were
• IRONIC
• Looking for Dixie – she’s right under his NOSE
• Fire department fire• Paying to return
newspaper?
• SARCASTIC
• Her refusal of a coat?
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