Understanding Irony (and a possible example)

[Maquise]

Irony is, quite famously, one of those concepts that no one really understands. I've been studying it (as a hobby, and part of my efforts to improve my writing skills), and believe that I can... somewhat tell what it is.

A question I pose: Would the fact that the late, great Leonard Nimoy directed Star Trek IV be considered irony?

(To clarify: The actor most famous for playing a character known for their stoic, logical outlook directed the most light-hearted and comedic movie of the franchise.)

[BWR]

Irony is, quite famously, one of those concepts that no one really understands. I've been studying it (as a hobby, and part of my efforts to improve my writing skills), and believe that I can... somewhat tell what it is.

A question I pose: Would the fact that the late, great Leonard Nimoy directed Star Trek IV be considered irony?

(To clarify: The actor most famous for playing a character known for their stoic, logical outlook directed the most light-hearted and comedic movie of the franchise.)

You can start here (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/irony) and [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony"]Wikipedia[/URL.

[GolemsVoice]

Yeah, I guess that could be considered irony, in a way. Of course, since the actor and not the character directed the movie, it doesn't work 100%, but still.

Irony at it's core is basically two statements that seem to contradict each other. Like saying "Nice weather" when it's raining heavily.

[SiuiS]

So irony relies on an objectively agreeable background against which to contrast. And it's a tool used by educated people schooled to understand only subjectivity exists in such matters?


I~ro~ny~

[skypse]

Irony could also be used in the context of sarcasm. For example:

Irony is when we use the blue color to write something in the forums of GitP. Anything non-blue is not ironical or sarcastic in any sense.

That statement alone could seem like a "rule" but the ironical thing is that most of the people in this forum do actually use the blue color to represent sarcasm in their posts. So using the "coded-for-sarcasm" color to make fun of the rule itself, is irony.

[Max™]

Irony could also be used in the context of sarcasm. For example:

Irony is when we use the blue color to write something in the forums of GitP. Anything non-blue is not ironical or sarcastic in any sense.

That statement alone could seem like a "rule" but the ironical thing is that most of the people in this forum do actually use the blue color to represent sarcasm in their posts. So using the "coded-for-sarcasm" color to make fun of the rule itself, is irony.
Hmmm...
http://i.imgur.com/KlJ3Nu6.png

Looks blue and black to me.

Though I do have to take your word that the text in the preceding sentence is not in fact white, so far only the bay12 dwarf fortress section has a sane enough color scheme for me to whitelist it (since it's pretty much the same as my user script) though it does mean the rest of the sections are an awful white and blue with black text, but I don't visit them anyways.

Bender gave my favorite definition: "The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention."

[Closet_Skeleton]

Isn't irony just an ancient Greek word for lying? What you're talking about is situational irony, which isn't really a Greek concept. Its a vague concept created by extending the definition of/misapplying another vague concept.

There's nothing logical about the Vulcan concept of logic, which goes against data from neuroscience and and is pretty much entirely cultural as a concept. Reasoning and emotion are intrinsically linked enough that any separation between them is a false dichotomy so highlighting (pop) Stoicism as 'logical' is essentially incorrect.

This nonsense is still so prevalent that a recent BBC program on AI that had just talked about how useless AI is about goal orientated long term planning ended by saying the best way to deal with AI is to think more like a computer and plan carefully rather than be human and panic about the possible threat. While computers cannot function without human logic they themselves are incapable of actual logic themselves.

Some people just like the colour blue.

[Seto]

There are several concepts of irony depending on the context of its use.
Originally (ancient Greece), "irony" is just "questioning something", that's why we hear so much about socratic irony. In literary analysis, irony is what Max said : it's when the literal meaning of the sentence is the antithesis of its actual meaning. Beyond that, you have specific literary concepts such as "tragic irony", which is when, in the context of a tragedy, a character says something that involuntarily and often light-heartedly foreshadows a horrible event to come.
Its everyday use is by far the trickiest : you have to distinguish humour, irony, sarcasm, and if they are different things or subtypes of each other etc. I don't know if there're really authoritative arguments on the matter ; I know a lot of teachers have told me close but different things. For example, humour is used about oneself and irony about another, etc. The most convincing I heard was this : humour contrasts a possible crappy state of the world with the actual, better state of the world, and irony uses a possible ideal world to underline how the actual state of the world is lacking. But I get confused everytime.

[hamishspence]

The word "abbreviation" being unusually long, might be an example.

[GolemsVoice]

The Greek philosopher Alanos Moirosettoin described it as "kataphyklos" which is Koine Greek and more or less translates to "possessing the quality of rain on your wedding day"

[Aedilred]

The problem being of course that because irony has been understood so poorly by so many for so long that in itself obfuscates the issue, as it exists in a variety of different and often largely unrelated contexts, and people have different ideas about whether some things traditionally considered "ironic" actually are.

See for instance the question over whether sarcasm is a form of irony, although in that instance the question is as much over disputed definitions of sarcasm as irony.

The wikipedia page is actually pretty good, if you can get your head around the idea that irony exists in many forms and there is no one definition to rule them all.


The Greek philosopher Alanos Moirosettoin described it as "kataphyklos" which is Koine Greek and more or less translates to "possessing the quality of rain on your wedding day"
:smallamused:

[GolemsVoice]

I said it so you don't have to.

[huttj509]

The Greek philosopher Alanos Moirosettoin described it as "kataphyklos" which is Koine Greek and more or less translates to "possessing the quality of rain on your wedding day"

That song is very ironic.

In that a song called "Ironic" contains few if any examples of irony. Irony is not inconvenience.

Now the question comes, did someone do that deliberately, or was it the songwriter messing up?

[veti]

One type of irony is when someone goes out of their way to do something, and ends up with an outcome that is dramatically worse than they would have if they hadn't bothered.

Consider, for instance, roo bars or bull bars on cars. They're supposed to make the occupants safer; but the benefit to the car's occupants is marginal (after all, they're already surrounded by crumple zones, seatbelts, airbags, impact cages...), whereas the added danger to a pedestrian hit by the car - is harsh. So when these became popular in the 90s, total road deaths actually increased.

There's an irony in there somewhere, but where is it? From the car buyer's point of view, they got what they paid for - cool-looking bars that provide them, personally, some benefit. From the car seller's point of view - they sold an upgrade, made a profit, job done. Unless they get sued, or are forbidden by law to fit the things - there's no economic reason why they'd stop. The pedestrian? - didn't have a say in the decision to fit the things. So none of these is getting an outcome that's at variance with what they intended. If some idiot government mandated them by law to improve public safety, that'd be ironic - but to the best of my knowledge, that hasn't happened.

I guess the irony is how an economic system that's meant to maximise aggregate utility, produces this outcome.

[SiuiS]

Isn't irony just an ancient Greek word for lying? What you're talking about is situational irony, which isn't really a Greek concept. Its a vague concept created by extending the definition of/misapplying another vague concept.

There's nothing logical about the Vulcan concept of logic, which goes against data from neuroscience and and is pretty much entirely cultural as a concept. Reasoning and emotion are intrinsically linked enough that any separation between them is a false dichotomy so highlighting (pop) Stoicism as 'logical' is essentially incorrect.

This nonsense is still so prevalent that a recent BBC program on AI that had just talked about how useless AI is about goal orientated long term planning ended by saying the best way to deal with AI is to think more like a computer and plan carefully rather than be human and panic about the possible threat. While computers cannot function without human logic they themselves are incapable of actual logic themselves.

Some people just like the colour blue.

I would like you to expound at length on each of these. It would save me trying to discuss them with you and fumbling in an irritating way.


The Greek philosopher Alanos Moirosettoin described it as "kataphyklos" which is Koine Greek and more or less translates to "possessing the quality of rain on your wedding day"

Ha!

[CurlyKitGirl]

The Greek philosopher Alanos Moirosettoin described it as "kataphyklos" which is Koine Greek and more or less translates to "possessing the quality of rain on your wedding day"

*laughs*
That song's annoying on many levels, the least of which is that the lyrics are really stupid.

As for irony? It's a thing that happens sometimes. Often hard to discern. People try to indicate uses of sarcasm or irony in contexts where it may be taken literally. Or something.
I don't get it.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I would like you to expound at length on each of these. It would save me trying to discuss them with you and fumbling in an irritating way.

If I actually explained them properly they might stop being ironic.

I'm not a neuroscientist, I just half remember stuff from pop science books, magazines and radio programs. So ironically I can't expound on such a topic without fumbling myself.

Cultural definitions of logic would move into politics.



Originally (ancient Greece), "irony" is just "questioning something", that's why we hear so much about socratic irony.

Not according to the Greek dictionaries I looked at. The route word means 'to say', but it basically meant lying, concealing the truth or understatement.

Socrates (or at least the character in Plato's dialogues) asked ironic questions but it was the dis ingenuity that made it ironic not the questioning itself.

[GolemsVoice]

One type of irony is when someone goes out of their way to do something, and ends up with an outcome that is dramatically worse than they would have if they hadn't bothered.

Consider, for instance, roo bars or bull bars on cars. They're supposed to make the occupants safer; but the benefit to the car's occupants is marginal (after all, they're already surrounded by crumple zones, seatbelts, airbags, impact cages...), whereas the added danger to a pedestrian hit by the car - is harsh. So when these became popular in the 90s, total road deaths actually increased.

There's an irony in there somewhere, but where is it? From the car buyer's point of view, they got what they paid for - cool-looking bars that provide them, personally, some benefit. From the car seller's point of view - they sold an upgrade, made a profit, job done. Unless they get sued, or are forbidden by law to fit the things - there's no economic reason why they'd stop. The pedestrian? - didn't have a say in the decision to fit the things. So none of these is getting an outcome that's at variance with what they intended. If some idiot government mandated them by law to improve public safety, that'd be ironic - but to the best of my knowledge, that hasn't happened.

I guess the irony is how an economic system that's meant to maximise aggregate utility, produces this outcome.

I guess that's some kind of cosmic irony? A feature that was meant to make the roads safer actually made them unsafer? I've also heard that additional safety measures lead to drivers "compensating" by driving more recklessly, so in effect more safety measures mean more road deaths.

[Max™]

The wikipedia page is actually pretty good, if you can get your head around the idea that irony exists in many forms and there is no one definition to rule them all.
So you're saying we must take all of the lesser forms of irony and forge them into a ring imbued with the power of socratic or "true" irony, yes, that just might work, though we'll need a sword... maybe an axe as well.

[Duck999]

I believe blue text is closer to sarcasm, which is different from irony.
Irony is generally when
a) Someone says one thing and means another (blue text kind of)
b) Someone says or does something contradictory to what is going on
c) (In writing) The audience knows something the characters do not