Re:Benefits of Sarcasm
by dragonwriter on Thursday November 19, 2015 @01:21PM
(#10596463)
> None of the examples in the song are actually ironic (i.e. taking an action with the intention of causing A which actually prevents A [or vise versa]).
There are several definitions of irony, and as far as I can tell, that's not any of them. The threefold division into verbal, situational, and dramatic irony presented in Wikipedia [0] seems reasonably typical. The song is overtly about situational irony, and the examples are all -- as would be expected -- situational irony (though in a few of the cases this is only apparent when you consider normal, but unstated, thought processes or planning that is likely to have occurred by the people in the events described; when describing a situation in half-dozen words, there is quite a lot of implicit context), and the longest example also features verbal irony in interior monologue of the subject of the example.
(And the delivery of the last stanza strongly suggest that the last two lines are, themselves, verbal irony.)
The usual complaints about the song not being ironic seem to result from restricting the definition of "irony" to dramatic irony, which the song doesn't feature (except perhaps in the longest example, where given the context of the situational irony of the previous examples and the initial setup, the eventual outcome is clear to the listener from the start.)
There are several definitions of irony, and as far as I can tell, that's not any of them. The threefold division into verbal, situational, and dramatic irony presented in Wikipedia [0] seems reasonably typical. The song is overtly about situational irony, and the examples are all -- as would be expected -- situational irony (though in a few of the cases this is only apparent when you consider normal, but unstated, thought processes or planning that is likely to have occurred by the people in the events described; when describing a situation in half-dozen words, there is quite a lot of implicit context), and the longest example also features verbal irony in interior monologue of the subject of the example.
(And the delivery of the last stanza strongly suggest that the last two lines are, themselves, verbal irony.)
The usual complaints about the song not being ironic seem to result from restricting the definition of "irony" to dramatic irony, which the song doesn't feature (except perhaps in the longest example, where given the context of the situational irony of the previous examples and the initial setup, the eventual outcome is clear to the listener from the start.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony