Indications of Irony
Of course, merely understanding different types of irony will not help anyone to indicate it in a passage. However, there are easy ways to identify irony in a passage.
Irony can vary by degree in subtly. However, since irony must be covert, according to Booth, one almost always needs to look closer for some form of indication from irony. Usually, one can indicate if a piece is ironic in the following way:
A) First, the reader notices an incongruity in the statement, either with what is considered common knowledge or with another statement in the writing. Then, from that point, there are a few different routes a person can take in reading these incongruities.
Perhaps the author was simply being careless. Take the following example:
Blues music was born out of the African American folk tradition of the Southern United States. The music is based upon “blue notes,” which are notes of a regular scale which are flattened. The notes then form a new scale, the Blues Scale. There are many different types of blues scales which can be used by a blues performer.
The incongruity in this statement lies in the fact that the writer says that the “notes form a new scale, the Blues Scale,” capitalizing the words in a manner which suggests that there is only one “blues scale,” then follows by saying that “there are many different types of blues scales.” The incongruous nature of these statements doesn’t appear to be anything but carelessness or a lack of knowledge on the subject, which would isolate it from ironic discussion. Irony is something that is intentionally and carefully placed together by a designer, not simply a collection of incongruous statements born due to an author’s neglectfulness.
Another explanation could be that the author is incorrect. This could be because the author is crazy or ignorant, it doesn’t matter—either way, I think it safe to say no reader would mistake this for irony (however, ironic writer may feign incorrectness for his or her ironic point). Likewise, any instance where an author is lying, or misusing information, or merely being hypocritical can easily be ruled out as considerations for what is ironic.
However, there are many instances where we might find incongruities in a text that do not seem to be for any of the above reasons. For example, in Salmon Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair,” there is a passage which reads as follows:
“For, with a parent’s absolutist love, he had made sure they were all provided with a lifelong source of high income by crippling them at birth, so that, as they dragged themselves around he city, they earned excellent money in the begging business (Rushdie 2822)."
The incongruity in this statement is with what we, as a culture, identify as a parent’s “absolutist love,” and the description of disfigurement of one’s children which follows. Because of the calm, rational tone, and because the words “with a parent’s absolutist love” are added into a sentence that functions perfectly already, very few would conclude that such a statement is unintentional or born out of carelessness.
B)Once incongruities have been recognized, and it is clear that they author is intentionally being incongruous, we examine why the author is doing this. If it is merely for the sake of absurdity, or humor, then it might be discussed within the realm of irony, but it is not irony in itself. The basic definition of irony insists that a speaker or writer is saying one thing while, meaning something different. Thus, even in the most basic definition of the term, there has to be some kind of alternate meaning, not simply an inversion for the sake of absurdist humor. We all can name several of these—they are constantly aired on television shows such as Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Conan O’Brien (although, many of these sketches can also be talked about as clearly being ironic). But in order for irony to exist, there must be some kind of meaning or purpose that can be identified.
And so, the next step in identifying irony is to look for such a meaning. Let’s continue to analyze the passage from Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair.” We identify the contradiction between what Rushdie describes as “a parent’s absolutist love,” and the act of crippling ones children in order to provide them a fixed income by means of begging. Most readers wouldn’t be comfortable with that amount of dissonance, unless they are the ones who are doing the crippling. Additionally, our discomfort with Rushdie’s statement comes primarily from the contrasting statements. If he had simply stated, for the sake of storytelling, that this act had taken place, some readers might be uncomfortable with it, but almost all of us would allow ourselves to be immersed in the story and simply accept that this was something that this particular character had done. But, because this is described as “love,” we are greatly discomforted by it.
Furthermore, this discomfort can certainly be said to serve a higher purpose. There are parents in under-developed nations which do this to their children, and Rushdie seems to be highlighting the cruel nature of such an act by bringing our attention to the brutal, yet “loving” nature of the act.
Additionally, the statement is not, like sarcasm, instantly identifiable. Even the most attentive reader will not necessarily identify the statement as ironic immediately, and, as discussed earlier, someone who agrees whole-heartedly that such abuse is an act of love is likely to see the statement as nothing more than a declaration of fact.
The same process is usually carried out when we must look to see if a statement is ironic. (Un)fortunately, the process is not always, or even typically, clear-cut, and many statements can debatably be taken as irony, sarcasm, absurdism, or any combination thereof. However, an attentive reader who consciously looks for intentionally incongruities and then attempts to establish an alternate meaning from the literal statement will be much more likely to appropriately identify irony than one who does not keep these things in mind.
Conclusion
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