Common Sense and Ironic Commentary.

Irony is probably one of the most complex concepts in language. I am not even sure how many languages actually employ it, but in the English language it has a number of different meanings.

It comes from the Greek: eirōneía, which means hypocrisy, deception or feigned ignorance (I looked it up. Oxford English Dictionary). But it has sired a number of bastard children with the English language.

The most basic dictionary definition of Irony is: “A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used.” When I was an English teacher in Thailand this concept caused numerous problems with my students. We seldom realise how much irony is a part of our everyday language, and that we don’t even notice when we say the direct opposite of our intended meaning.

The forms of irony as I know them are:

• Verbal Irony - most commonly associated with sarcasm. In this way we say the opposite of what we mean, but denote it in conversation with a specific tone or emphasis.
• Dramatic Irony- When a spectator has special knowledge of situation that a character in a play (or even a person in real life) does not. It creates humour or dramatic conflict when a character is relying on certain knowledge, which the observer knows to be contrary. i.e. In Romeo and Juliet, the audience knows Juliet is not actually dead, but Romeo does not. (This is actually tragic-irony, a sub-division of dramatic-irony)
• Situational Irony- When there is a certain ‘perverse appropriateness’ to the outcome of a story or event. This was the form of irony Alanis Morissette was going on about. Another version of this is cosmic-irony, where it appears there is some grand-overseer or God deliberately toying with our lives to ensure things have an ironic outcome.

If I really looked I could probably find hundreds more definitions for Irony, but these cover the most common forms of it. I think it’s the complexity of irony (and the fact that in story telling it gives you a huge bulls-eye at which to direct the path of your narrative) that makes it so fascinating to me. I would be lying if I didn’t admit to the fact that in the majority of my strips I am trying to achieve some form of irony in the storyline.

For this strip I went mention ‘ironic commentary’ which I believe is a situation where there is the voice of a commentator describing things the opposite of how they are actually occurring. I am not even sure if it is a actual concept, but that’s the way I’m using it here.