Talk:Irony/Archive 3

Inventors and Irony as Infinite
Wouldn't being killed by your invention only be ironic if you were inventing something that promoted life? Other wise you're just dying, nothing special about it. Inventors die all the time, if their invention kills them, that seems sort of like what you WOULD expect(they're always around it, why wouldn't it kill them?)

Also, the last section or too is very abstract and should be fixed or removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DJLO (talk • contribs) 04:52, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Getting killed by the very device you invented, absolutely! There's a widespread apocryphal story that Mr. Guilloutin who invented the guillotine, would have been condemned to death and actually executed during the revolutionary terror. That's just a myth, but it's perfectly true that Nikolay Krylenko, a state prosecutor who engineered several of Stalin's show trials of his opponents/old party mates in the thirties, was overtaken by the machinery he had embodied and "exposed" as a traitor in a new trial - and then he was packed off to the execution pole.


 * The reason the last two paragraphs seem abstract is, I think, because the actual use of the concept of irony - the limitations between irony, black humour, cheekiness, self-deprecation and just 'incongruously funny goings-on' - isn't easy to define. The meaning of the word is in drift these days - look through this discussion page and you'll get the idea - while at the same time irony is something very many people want to show they have and know how to use. So words like irony and "post-irony" take some efforts to work out a good definition. Strausszek (talk) 18:08, 1 January 2010 (UTC)


 * For getting killed by your own invention, I think it depends a lot on circumstance: If the invention was to help or heal, it would be ironic, and so, I believe, would it working as expected and there were no flaws (like the guillotine story mentioned above). Anything else is just a freak accident. Jef desu (talk) 03:21, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Historical Irony Addendum
Unless this is an urban legend, the woman who worked with a radioactive element and died of radiation poisoning would be a good example. --204.49.80.2 (talk) 20:29, 27 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you're thinking of Marie Curie, who died "from aplastic anemia, almost certainly ... contracted from exposure to radiation." I don't think that qualifies as irony.  Many pioneers in an unknown area die from things unknown at the time of the pioneering.  This is much more like the Otto Lilienthal example (aviation pioneer who died flying an experimental glider) than the William Bullock example (inventor of the web rotary press died from injuries after being crushed by the web rotary press).


 * I don't think we need more examples, but if we do, some good ones are:


 * Anna Jarvis, creator of Mother's Day: never married or had children.
 * Gus Grissom, astronaut: lost his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft due to a prematurely-blown hatch; died in the Apollo 1 fire, in part because the hatch was redesigned because of the Liberty Bell 7 incident to make it harder to remove, and the astronauts could not be evacuated in part because of this.
 * Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, physician who proposed a mechanism to quickly and painlessly decapitate; was sentenced to death by guillotine Actually, that one's not true, although I'd heard it a lot and up until now believed it; it's an exaggeration of the fact that Guillotin was arrested (but not beheaded) during the Reign of Terror; it would have been a great example if it were true, though, huh? TJRC (talk) 22:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Albert Camus once remarked that there is no way to die that's more meaningless than from a road accident. Of course, he was killed in a road accident. Strausszek (talk) 14:49, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Most events considered coincidental are not ironic as I understand it. I don't believe they are 100% exclusive either, but they usually don't coincide. Example: It's coincidental Albert Camus once remarked that there is no way to die that's more meaningless than from a road accident, and ended up dying in a car crash. I don't see anything ironic in that situation myself.--64.254.110.201 (talk) 20:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Perhaps because irony has come to have a sort of self-referential knock-on-wood type defintion in modern usage? Jef desu (talk) 03:26, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * With Camus, the irony isn't simply in the fact that he mentioned getting killed in a car accident and then suffered that fate years later. It's more to do with the judgment, the implicit appraisal he made of that kind of situation. He wouldn't have wanted to die a death that was totally absurd, any more than he'd have wished to be guillotined because he'd written about Meursault suffering that fate. So there is an ironic opposition between the statement that a car accident is the ultimately absurd way to die (meaningless, not desirable, cutting you off without any sense) and Camus dying in, precisely, a car accident.
 * The same with Gus Grissom and the Apollo fire, or HAL killing the astronauts in 2001 because first he feels they are interfering with the mission and then he perceives himself to be at risk, and decides to get the crew out of the way. Both of those are highly ironic - and in the Apollo case also tragic. The three Apollo men were trapped precisely because the hatches had been redesigned after Grisssom had made an earlier suggesyion, so the new design was meant to increase security. Strausszek (talk) 17:00, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Cruel twists of fate, redoux
One of the many definitions of "irony" which is used by many (poor Morissette, savaged by academics) but which is listed in dictionaries, is a sharp difference between (often idealistic) expectation, and reality. As when you take careful steps to make sure something doesn't happen, and the very things you do, end up (in retrospect) causing the thing to happen. This isn't quite the same sort of dramatic irony that happens when at least one party is aware of the truth at the time (the audience), or at least ought to be (the character). The contrast only occurs later, when people say "If only he could have looked into the future, and known.." Often, such events give people the feeling that the universe or God has played a perverse practical joke on them, perhaps to give them humility, and is laughing about it (or feeling divinely smug about it).

Since events that produce sharp contrasts between idealistic expected outcomes, and real outcomes, do have a dictionary entry as being "ironic events" (i.e., a sort of historical irony, but not one that could have been foreseen), we might devote a small section on them in this article. It's one of ten definitions I find in my dictionary, so although we can think of a hundred examples I don't think we can let it overcrowd this article.

(BTW, I don't know if it's ironic that Camus died in an an auto accident. Existentialism affirms that all kinds of pointless and meaningless and horrible things happen in the world. It's quite possible he would have made the same comment even if he had foreseen his fate. And would NOT have considered it ironic, since he emphasized that the universe doesn't work in any way to deliberately punish people for their statements, and there is no God to play such stupid jokes.) S B Harris 19:41, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, having read some Camus (including some of his work notes) and thought about him I don't believe he saw absurdism as some kind of "no future" doctrine that declared everything meaningless. He doesn't idealize Meursault, show his day-by-day, droning lifestyle as a yardstick of what we have to be (the real subversive edge of The Stranger, to me, is the ironic, deliberate parallel between Meursault killing the Arab and society (the court) having Meursault executed after a trial that doesn't really have much to do with the murder: he's sentencd to death because they are shocked at his conduct at his mother's vigil, because the attorney wants to make his name and because M. refuses to play repentant: both his murder and the court deciding to kill him are essentially arbitrary acts).
 * IMO Camus' take on absurdism broke down a lot of the old idealism but it didn't spell an idea that endeavour is meaningless. He noted about The Plague that the leading guys in the novel, who are fighting the deadly disease - compare fighting against Nazism, which Camus had done himself as a resistance writer - are not compelled by some lofty ethical aims as such, they are doing what they must do, their actions are born out of the situation, not from some abstract ethical imperative. So if they broke down completely, they would give in to "acting absurd" in an everyday sense but tht's not what he's exalting. So from that angle, I'm sure he wouldn't regard a car or airplane accident as something you couldn't feel angered about because it was "shit happens". he would see the tragedy of it, even if it's a tragedy measured only by human values. Strausszek (talk) 01:01, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The question is irony, not tragedy. Would Camus have found it ironic? As for tragedy, Obama asks the school class to give example of tragedy. He gets answers: "Child runs in front of bus and is killed." "No, that's a mistake, not a tragedy." "Bus full of kids runs off a cliff, all killed" "No, that's a great loss, not a tragedy." "Air Force One visits Iraq and you and the first lady and shot down by a friendly-fire Stinger missile." "Okay, that's a tragedy! Explain why." "Because it's no great loss, and you can bet it's not a mistake." And all sarcasm is irony. I just read a Hemingway story that has a little bit about an Algerian who is about to be guillotined on the pavement in public in Algiers. They ask him if he has any last words to say. He says, "Bonjour, toute le monde." That's Hemingway-esque sarcasm. And irony, too.  S  B Harris 04:35, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh I know we're not discussing what is tragedy here, but sometimes you need to explain what was behind your examples, don't you? As a doctor, I'm sure you don't begin to explain to your patients the full chain of conclusions from the way your instruments picked up some scattered signs of changes, your analyis, your ruling out of some things and through to your possible conclusions. All those steps were needed in your process, you might discuss them with other physicians, explain them if you use the case in a lecture, but most of the steps of analysis and alternate possibilities remain outside in talking to the patient. If it's brought up at all, there's some simplification, judging from what you feel there is time for and what the patient will understand, what they ask for etc. But an encyclopedia (if this is one) shouldn't stick to knock-on-wood or everyday definitions of concepts that are more complicated. Irony is a concept with vague limits these days and it's been through some significant, ongoing change in the last thirty years ro so; that seems to be what much of this discussion page is moving around.
 * Of course some things can be both tragic and ironic: Oedipus Rex is built on irony, the fate of King Lear or Romeo is ironic too. Strausszek (talk) 06:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Separate articles

 * OK. What do you think of the citation below for the compromise? I still don't think I'm on board with the idea that irony must be like Dramatic irony because they share the same word in common. But this has started me thinking about the way dramatic irony evolved from irony, or vice versa; and whether, because a noun phrase contains a particular noun, then somehow the one must necessarily mean - or be very close to the other. I've not had much time to chew it over. The counter-example that came to me was Welsh Rabbit. Unfortumately this is rather local to me. But it has nothing to do with rabbits with the ears, it's actually cheese on toast."A dish consisting of cheese and a little butter melted and mixed together, to which are added ale, cayenne pepper, and salt, the whole being stirred until it is creamy, and then poured over buttered toast: also, simply, slices of toasted cheese laid on toast." I think it has the name because it's what the English thought the Welsh would eat instead of rabbit, which they couldn't afford. You may see it as Welsh rarebit; but that may be a later corruption, (maybe so as not to upset the Welsh). But nobody is going to re-define rabbit to include cheese. Also, some words look and sound the same but have nothing, or very little, to do with each other. So frog means the amphibian, something in the hoof of a horse, something to hang your sword from, and a part of the railway in the 19th century. Again, words change their meanings with time. They may start the same, but get used in two or more different ways. Noun phrases can be formed from each of the different meanings.


 * There is, of course, a section on dramatic irony, but I don't see why it shouldn't be an article if there is enough to say about it. But it must be based on citations and not the writer's opinions. Also sarcasm exists.Myrvin (talk) 20:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

We can do something like the above, but there are endless ethnic and gender sarcasm jokes-- Polish jokes, German jokes, blonde jokes. OF course they are ironic (it isn't REALLY rabbit) and sarcastic in suggesting that somebody might be satisfied with it as a replacement. You know the meaning of "Dutch treat." A pillow used to be called a "Dutch wife." There is a story that God asked a Swiss what he wanted, and got an answer: "Mountains, meadows, a few cows." And so it was done, and soon the man hands God back a glass of fresh milk. "Ah, my splendid Swiss! You've not only done well but you offer something to Me. I am so pleased with you, that I'm going to ask if there's anything ELSE I can give you!" "Ja-- 3 francs for the glass of milk." S B Harris 00:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Be careful with the rabbit. By your reasoning, Dramatic irony may not really be irony!
 * I have also thought about the sea cucumber. It's presumably called that because it superficially resembles the fruit of the vegetable cucumber. Dramatic irony may only superficially resemble verbal irony. Myrvin (talk) 05:45, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * These aren't very serious objections. Of course DI has something to do with irony. But they do illustrate that the language is very slippery. Myrvin (talk) 11:14, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it would be useful to keep dramatic and verbal irony separate, and treat them separately. That doesn't have to mean separate articles, it might be done with different sections here. It's still okay to acknowledge they sometimes run parallel, and work together or pick up on similar issues. It's like tense and aspect in languages: both are syntactic means to place actions in objective time but they're also used to indicate from where someone is getting to see an action or an event, in time, and they can both be used to spell out that one person is seeing what went on through a different lense than another person. Some languages use both, some only one of them (ancient Greek, Hebrew and Russian work more with aspect; most Germanic languages use tense more; Spanish uses both). The reason I've been so determined that sarcasm does not always come under verbal irony (apart from that it seems reasonable to me), and  isn't always part ironic, is that verbal irony, as it's used by people today, has rather vague limits as it is.
 * So I figure one could try to clear up the picture on both verbal, situational and dramatic irony and both admit that things may have changed in the last few decades and that irony is still not an anything-goes concept. And including sarcasm in verbal irony and ironic jokes would be making the picture a lot smudgier, not clearer, it seems to me. I'm thinking of discussions I've seen in other places, and on other wikipedias, relating to "what makes irony?" - including sarcasm by default is often one of the first things that happen there, and it tends to lead to that anything in verbal humour that's striking, outlandish and doesn't sound old-fshioned gets classed as irony. Strausszek (talk) 16:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Irony and dramatic irony
Well well Harris, all the time I thought we were discussing verbal irony, you were really discussing dramatic irony as well. It explains a lot about your position if you are insisting on using irony to fit both forms. Not only do Europeans know about dramatic irony, I think we invented it. (I noted your sarcastic exclamation mark by the way - an examply of sarcasm without irony!). It is interesting to wonder how the word got used in both contexts, but the rest of us were only talking about verbal irony and sarcasm, their meanings and use. I read somewhere that all types of dramatic irony evolved from Socratic irony. Since the word irony and the drama are both from Ancient Greek, we could look into the way they used the terms, and how they later evolved. If you have citations that would link the two together, then I think they should be included. I take it you do not object to the way the verbal irony and sarcasm part looks at the moment, except that - if we could find such quotes - we could have a chunk on how the terms dramatic irony and irony are linked. It does still contain Jcrabb's piece on the psychologists, and sarcasm being considered by them to be a subset of irony. Myrvin (talk) 06:49, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I have found a whole book called Irony - especially dramatic etc. It is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=i6MuZcIS1BIC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q&f=false It does start with talking about the Greeks - I didn't know that before I wrote the above. I shall have a stare at it - or at least the parts Google will let me. Myrvin (talk) 09:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Compromise?
I've done a lot of reading about all this now and read all your comments. I am happy to include words to the effect that verbal irony does not just mean the saying of the opposite to what you mean - in addition to the authorities that say it is. The reader should be allowed to make up their own mind. But we need citations. In the spirit of this compromise I would like to suggest this: From A glossary of literary terms, Abrams and Hartman."Verbal irony is a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed. The ironic statement usually involves the explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation, but with indications in the overall speech-situation that the speaker intends a very different, and often opposite, attitude or evaluation." I do not, however, accept that sarcasm is ONLY expressed by irony. But, if we can find citations that say it is (like the psychologists) they could go in.Myrvin (talk) 11:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, but I suggest adding a few weords: "...attitude or evaluation, and/or a connection or conjunction between two phenomena, but with..." Much verbal irony today invents relations or statements about supposed, spoofy links between persons or things, and the comic and ironic sense isn't really hardwired to any statement of evaluation. It's oblique, using half-quotes, mock attributed quotes, allusions or almost nonsensical connections, but it's still decipherable, and comically effective, to people who are "in the know" about it. I remember seeing the headline Michael Jackson's nose missing from his corpse some time after he died; the article quoted somone who had supposedly been to th morgue and said "there was just a hole where the nose should have been". I commented, "That's a headline so good it's surprising it took three weeks before it appeared: I wonder what his surgeons are saying?"
 * Everyone knows about how his nose changed and that it was often at the centre of controversy about his changing face, so that was the reference, buty I wasn't suggesting any overt judgment about if it was good to do that, if the headline was good journalism or the likely reason the nose was now gone (if it wasn't just a rumour). I was sort of leaving that open to the people I was talking to, leaving it for their somment, silent or spoken aloud. And that's typical: verbal irony today is often less conclusively statementish than it was fifty years ago.
 * It's not an oversight that I'm not asking for those words to be added to the second leg too. That kind of mock connection or ironic set of allusions often does express some kind of implied view, but it does so only when it's seen from the subtext of the cues of an opposite or divergent view on the topic, and the precise meaning of that judgment is often unclear or instable.Strausszek (talk) 13:13, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't change the quote, 'cos it's a quote. Do you have a reference for your "Much verbal irony ...."? We should wait to see what the others sya as well. Myrvin (talk) 13:39, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll need some time for that, Myrvin. People typically don't point out as an aside that they are being ironic or exactly in what way they (or someone else, whom they quoted) are using irony. Expecially not in print or widely published media. As someone pointed out as an example at another page here on WP, if tv chef Rachel Ray is cracking an egg and it goes the wrong way and smears things up while she's on live camera, she might smile and say "Look, I'm such a klutz!" The incident might be referred to in print, reposted on Youtube, discussed widely and finally end up here on WP - as a 'source' for a paragraph on Ray really being clumsy - "she admits it herself". Everyone who was discussing it in the first place might well know that the remark was ironic, but nobody is likely to point it out, at least not widely known people (journalists and critics), because it's so obvious and because mentioning it would kill the fun. I think it's the same with comment on irony in the public media, many people know that the sense of irony and how it's used have changed or drifted a bit, but it's almost never discussed in its own right. Strausszek (talk) 14:25, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

On irony and sarcasm
OK, here is my response to all of this business. The confusion between irony and sarcasm has to do with the popular uses of the terms. There is no non-ironic sarcasm – it is necessarily ironic, that’s what makes sarcasm, and not just bitter, sharp criticism. It is true that Gibbs in the 1986 paper writes as if there is non-ironic sarcasm, but that is not a view he holds anymore (see Gibbs 2000 - “Irony in talk among friends”). One problem with all these terms is that they are not mutually exclusive. An ironic utterance can be a rhetorical question, understatement, and sarcastic all at the same time. Below I will describe in detail why sarcasm is a subtype of verbal irony.

Think closely about some of these cited definitions of sarcasm, and see how counter examples show them to be incorrect:

Why should one cite Fowler and call it done? Fowler doesn’t provide examples, and does not explain what sarcasm is, if not a form of irony. But pragmatics has come a long way since that was written. Also, it’s not clear why we should rely upon general encyclopedias to tell us what these cognitive linguistic terms mean either. The people who write these definitions are not specialists.


 * OED: A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.

This isn’t terrible, but relies on the opposite concept, which is wrong. Not to mention that the entry for sarcasm uses the term sarcasm in it. If someone does me wrong, and I say, “Thanks a lot!” – I don’t mean “No thanks a lot.” Or similarly, if we are in a car, and you ask, “Is it clear to go” and I say “yes” when a speeding bus is heading our way, we wouldn’t want to call it “ironic” even though I mean the opposite of what I say.

How about Websters:


 * Sarcasm: 1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain. 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual.

Again, this says “often satirical or ironic” but doesn’t explain what happens when it’s not. That’s because there are no examples of non-ironic sarcasm. I still challenge anybody to produce an example. If there is no irony, the “sarcasm” is really just clever criticism. If I say, “You’re stupid” – that’s cutting and meant to give pain, but it’s not sarcastic. It is the combination or irony and critical sharpness that makes it sarcasm. Any other definition will be too vague.

The Partridge definition, which started this whole thing, is one of the worst of the bunch.


 * Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, caustic, ... manner.

How does sarcasm mean precisely what it says? This is wrong by definition – sarcasm is indirect criticism. I don’t see how this makes sense at all, and I think should be removed from the Wiki page for sure.

How about Martin:
 * The psychologist Martin, in The psychology of humour, [3] is quite clear that irony is where “the literal meaning is opposite to the intended”; and sarcasm is “aggressive humor that pokes fun ...”. He has the following examples: For irony he uses the statement "What a nice day" when it is raining. For sarcasm, he cites Winston Churchill who, when told by a lady that he was drunk, said "my dear, you are ugly … but tomorrow I shall be sober" [4], as being sarcastic, while not saying the opposite of what is intended.

Here the problem is that Martin relies on this idea that irony is the opposite of what one says, but this has been handled repeatedly in the literature (see Sperber and Wilson’s "Relevance” for a good explanation – similar to the one I just gave). Martin defines sarcasm as “aggressive humor that pokes fun ...” but this is obviously wrong. What if I say “You’re so ugly your mother fed you with a slingshot”? That’s aggressive humor that pokes fun – but clearly not sarcastic, or more importantly, not ironic. Martin’s problem is that he doesn’t consider the cognitive processes required to understand the meaning.

This is where the issue lies at its core: what are the information processing processes that lead to understanding in these various uses of language?

I suggest removing the various definitions – they are just confusing the issue - and putting this in its place:

We know that many forms of irony, including sarcasm, require listeners to have certain abilities – basically a theory of mind. That is, one must be able to simultaneously represent one’s own mental state, and the mental states of others, whether real or imagined. Numerous studies in neuropsychology have demonstrated that individuals with brain deficits, or developmental issues that impair this kind of reasoning, fail to understand sarcasm, and other forms of irony (1-8). Children under the age of about four often fail to recognize irony, and after that require obvious paralinguistic signals up until at least eight years, sometimes later. These extra signals allow them to get the meaning, and prevent them from confusing the trope with something like deception (3). The bottom line is the term sarcasm has been defined very loosely and strangely in the past, mostly because the concept of irony has been vague and not well understood. But researchers studying the cognitive underpinnings of language are now carving out the types of devices people use according to the processes required to uncover speakers' intentions.

1) Channon, S., et al. (2007). Interpretation of mentalistic actions and sarcastic remarks: Effects of frontal and posterior lesions on mentalising. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1725–1734.

2) Channon, S., et al. (2005). Social cognition after head injury: Sarcasm and theory of mind. Brain Lang, 93, 123-134.

3) Dennis, M., et al. (2001). Understanding of literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise following childhood head injury. Brain Lang, 78, 1–16.

4) McDonald, S. (2000). Neuropsychological studies of sarcasm. Metaphor and Symbol, 15, 85–98.

5) Shamay-Tsoory, S. G., et al. (2005). The neuroanatomical basis of understanding sarcasm and its relationship to social cognition. Neuropsychology, 19(3), 288-300.

6) Shamay, S. et al. (2002). Deficit in understanding sarcasm in patients with prefrontal lesion is related to impaired empathic ability. Brain and Cognition, 48(2–3), 558–563.

7) Uchiyama, H., et al. (2006). Neural substrates of sarcasm: A functional magnetic-resonance imaging study. Brain Research, 1124(1), 100-110.

8) Wang, A. T., et al. (2006). Neural basis of irony comprehension in children with autism: the role of prosody and context. Brain, 129, 932–943. Neuropsychology, 19(3), 288-300.

Jcrabb (talk) 19:30, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Doesn't the article already say that sarcasm is a subset of irony, intended as a rhetorical or caustic device? If not, I have no problem with the idea, since I agree that there's irony which isn't sarcastic, but not the reverse. S  B Harris 19:42, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Saying that the views of respected sources are "wrong" is strange. And they are ALL wrong? Citing only a whole lot of psychology and neuropsychology sources on a topic of the English language and its usage is just weird. There's nothing wrong with including such sources when discussing the psychological study of sarcasm and irony - maybe in a section -, but not just those for the whole topic. Definitions and discussion from authorities on the language (maybe not Martin - he's just there as an alternative psychological view) are important when we are talking of distinguishes two forms of speech. You can't say "children ... often fail to recognise irony", if you don't say what irony is. I wonder how easy it will be to check all those sources. Do they really not have a go at defining the terms they are using? If they do the text should say so. I thought we had examples in the article and the discussion of sarcasm which is not ironic. But there is apparently even disagreement that irony is saying the opposite of what you mean. It would seem that your sarcasm is my irony and vice versa.Myrvin (talk) 21:06, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I disagree with Jcrabb; sarcasm is not invariably ironic. It's true of course that "irony" has become a concept with fluid limits - and also that the limits, and the accepted ways to use irony, are different across classes of age and between different countries and cultures (notably between the US, Britain/Europe and - probably - Eastern Asia). Everybody wants to be good at irony these days, just like every young writer or columnist now wants to be Oscar Wilde - wants to be able to talk in paradoxes and make things stick just by virtue of cool style and cool images. But sarcasm doesn't have to be ironic: it can intend just what it says but say it in a way that still discourages replies, making any expected reply sound dumb or weak. Like Napoleon about the Pope: "How many divisions can the Holy Father put on foot?" - that's non-ironic sarcasm. He doesn't mean anything other than what he says, though the intention to poke fun at the pope - and play on the contrast in military force - is between the words. Speaking of the Pope, is the American counter-question Does the Pope wear a funny hat?/shit in the woods? even ironic? The only irony about it, far as I can see, is that the 'serious' answer would be "Yes, goes without saying" and in the same way, the question posed before the pope question isn't one you need to put, because it's self-evident.
 * I'd say Myrvin hit it on the head why this has become a bit confused on the psycholinguistic side, see end of the earlier section, just before my reply there. In time after Lee/Katz, the discussion on these ironic habits among linguists pushed into a corner where sarcasm came to be seen as a subset of irony, bbecause linguists were mostly concerned with the "double audience/double meaning" thing and sarcasm is edged against complacent everyday language, not primarily against irony - so it was easy to forget that sometimes it isn't ironic. Linguists are not above simplifying things or pushing aside examples that don't fit the frame. At the same time, the wider public became more and more vague about irony. the bitch is it would likely be hard to find good citations discussing this drift of meaning because it's still a recent development that's happening all around us.   Strausszek (talk) 00:05, 8 May 2010 (CET)


 * I don't think Jcrabb etc. will accept any examples of sarcasm that are not ironic - even if we could agree on what ironic is. What I don't understand is why other ideas than their own, when properly referenced from acknowledged authorities, are so easily dismissed. I have tried to give a balanced view, leaving Jcrabb's psychology refs completely untouched. What is so wrong with that? Myrvin (talk) 23:26, 7 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Part of the trouble I think (in general, not relating to just this thread) is that the standard examples used to discuss irony and so on are so square and obvious. Most uses of irony aren't as simple as saying "What a nice day!" when the rain is pouring down. That kind of instance obscures the point that often irony works by allusion and implication, by playing on contrast with what others are supposed to be thinking (mind processes, as you were on to, Jcrabb) or with another meaning of a strategic word. The standard examples rely only on the plain, lexical meaning of the words, but language uses much more than that. Just because linguists study language doesn't mean they're always experts in disentangling word games, implied metaphors or covert implications in a phrase. A linguist can be just as ill-equipped on that as anyone else.
 * Let's say I'm writing a story in the form of a fictional diary by a troubled young loner who has difficulty getting along with people, and I make him note: Went to see Charlie and he told me how fine he's getting along with his new girl. I'm happy for him. There was too much stuff lying about the room and even some of her clothes itmes which I gentrly pointed out to him. We had coffee and later on I tried to explain to Charlie why it is vitally important to be a born-again Christian, but C had a sudden attack of extreme sneezing and regrettably we had to part.Hope to see him again soon. -The point is, of course, that the guy was so obnoxious that his friend Charlie feigned an attack of cold to get rid of him, but that's something implied between the lines, and it's not the contrast of any definite statement our man is making, only against the fussiness and narrow-mindedness we can read into his diary note. What Charlie did carried an ironic contrast in a way, but wasn't meant to be understood as such by anyone.


 * That kind of example is one you might not find in a linguistic article on irony, because it's too complex, but it's more illuminating on how people oiften use irony. And it's understood, in linguistic discussion, that even if you use simple examples, the reasoning should accommodate the more complicated instances too. Strausszek (talk) 01:30, 8 May 2010 (CET)


 * It's going to be difficult to find examples of sarcasm that is not irony because (as I said) we have to be agreed on what they are. However, here's a try. in Trollope's Autobiography, he writes "I replied that I should like to be a Member of Parliament. My uncle, who was given to sarcasm, rejoined that, as far as he knew, few clerks in the Post Office did become Members of Parliament. I think it was the remembrance of this jeer which stirred me up to look for a seat as soon as I had made myself capable of holding one by leaving the public service.".
 * Surely this is Trollope saying that this remark, which was undoubtedly what his uncle meant (and not ironic), was sarcastic. Myrvin (talk) 00:16, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Definitely, and the intended farewell line of HAL in 2001 - A Space Odyssey: shot in a softly condescending voice at Bowman, who is locked outside and whom HAL intends to have lost in space, is brilliant but non-ironic sarcasm too: "This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. Goodbye!" Strausszek (talk) 03:39, 8 May 2010 (CET)

I think HAL's speech is perfectly literal in the amoral manner of a child, and no sarcasm there is meant, and none taken by Dave. There is some irony for the audience in realizing that this highly intelligent machine with the smooth voice is about to commit a murder with a comment which surely WOULD be sarcastic if uttered by a comic book or Bond villain, just before abandoning the hero to the death trap. But here HAL is actually sincere rather than snide; that's irony. It's non-sarcastic irony, not non-ironic sarcasm. A better example of actual HAL sarcasm is HAL telling Dave that he's going to find getting inside though the airlock "rather difficult" without his helmet (which he's mistakenly left behind on the ship-- wups). The case can be made that HAL actually means "impossible" and actually IS employing a rather British style of understated sarcasm, there. But again, as with most scarcasm, the irony here is in the intentional juxtaposition of reality and ideality, by setting up a comic view of reality which by its very formulation, sounds implausable. Few postal clerks become MPs. What is meant is that none do. But setting up the idea of there being a function of getting to be an MP based on prior employment history, draws the deliberate contrast of reality and ideality. Ideally, anybody working-class should have an equal chance to be an MP. In reality, they don't. Ideally, the Pope should have some kind of authority which derives from God. Napoleon's gently sarcastic remark goes to the idea that the only real authority on Earth that counts, is how many army divisions you have. That contrast is irony. How could it not be? Popes once did field divisions, and had some guy been asking in seriousness in 15th century Italy, there would have been no irony or sarcasm, either. S B Harris 07:48, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * With HAL's "I think you'll find that rather difficult" I read it as meaning "impossible" but he's choosing to say it in an understated way. The farewell line: "This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. Goodbye!" is sarcastic too, the use of a polite 'goodbye' at the point when he thinks he is disconnecting Dave to let him die, caps it; it's honest but means to show the other that he's lost. HAL is cutting and condescending here, but he's not playing with any really non-stated, opposed meanings. Nor is he very angry at Dave, his words are about him being in control. He's carried on the conversation not like a Bond villain but more like a cold, smooth bureaucrat who communicates 'this is our rulebook and if you'll die when we follow it and order you around, sorry that's not my problem'.
 * Is HAL always childlike in his way of speaking? If he was, he wouldn't be able to use neither irony nor sarcasm.His gentle, slow voice sometimes masks understood but not quite stated meanings, like "difficult" to enter meaning 'impossible'.
 * After all, what we hear him say - but not what the astronauts hear him say, within the walls of the ship - has been written by two intelligent human script writers. Some of what HAL says as he breaks down is weighted with irony, but it's an irony of the film makers at HAL's expense: "I admit I have been making some very serious errors of judgment lately" uttered while Dave, furious, is moving in to start destroying him, is an ironic and understatedly sarcastic moment, though it's communicated by Kubrick. If HAL had been a human killer saying that, it would have been desperate self-irony, but proabvly noit sarcastic - unless he had resigned himself to the idea that he might die.


 * As for Napoleon and the pope, he's being perfectly honest in implying church/spiritual authority doesn't count in a political showdown - only political and military strength does. He's not saying the pope would have to be a general in ordinary times, but that he, Napoleon, can push the pope over anytime he likes. If the pope wisely subordinates himself, he can go on as head of the church and he won't need his non-existent army.


 * With Trollope and his dad, I think that's clearly sarcasm but not irony. His father was telling him that 'you should realize, people in such a low trade as you (practically) never become MPs, so forget it'. He's stripping down reality to indicate something that Tony might not know from his school logic or books on how Britain is ruled but which Dad thinks is true anyway - and which was true at the time, through most of the 19th century. But he's not putting the question "Do postal clerks and the like take seats in parliament?" against something he recognizes as a higher order of wisdom, an ideal world. He's measuring it against his idea of common sense, of how the world works, and ridiculing young Anthony's illusions. It would have been more spelled out if he'd begun by "Don't be a fool" but that would have taken some of the punch out of the sarcasm that followed because the outcome would already have been stated.


 * Talking of brit politics but two hundred years later, these are two comments i heard on the BBC about the parliament withij the last few months. Both of them sarcastic and caustic but, in my opinion, not ironic::
 * "Britain is the only theocracy among the major countries of the Western world. We actually have bishops seated in parliament. Not elected - they are seated by virtue of their posts in the church." - said in a discussion about the UK and the Arab world, and about "rnfiltration" of muslim religious values and hierarchies into Britain. Said by a white, ethnically English journalist. Some bishops, judges and high nobles are seated by right in the upper house of the parliament of course..


 * -Sarcasm, I think, she's pointing out a difficult home truth or what she sees as an error in the standard, clean contrast between ultra-religious, theocratic muslims/Arabs vs secular and democratic Britain


 * "Don't worry, they will miss this opportunity /to reform the framework of parliament/. It will be missed, like all opportunities for that over the past hundred years."


 * -from a debate about the expenses crisis, that's damaged the credibility of MPs more than anything since before WW2. Perfectly honest, but with an understated line "They should be able to achieve a real reform of some kind, and we should push for it, it's high time, but dammit they won't, you can be sure: it will just become some half measure"


 * Even better, I heard this amazing line shot at the President of Nigeria, Umaru Yar'Adua, in an interview by satelite on the Beeb's HardTalk after the corrupted, chaotic and bloodstained 2007 election;: "Do you want to step out onto the landing strip on a state visit and hear people saying 'Here's that man who won that dirty election'?" The election had been written off as a fraud by lots of news reporters and NGOs, but it's really unusual to see a President in office getting panned on tv that way, to his face, by a journalist. Didn't find any good reply either, in fact he looked miserable.


 * Maybe it appears to you that all sarcasm is within irony but it's not really borne out by these examples of it. The main evidence you're using is that some linguists and neurologists are lumping together irony and sarcasm in a quickie. Many linguists don't do that. Strausszek (talk) 12:40, 8 May 2010 (CET)

Just a few from the horse's mouth...
It just struck me, rock and pop journalism is a good place to look for intelligently twisted irony, ironic and non-ironic sarcasm and inventive invective. A few favourites:

"Somebody's duped these guys into thinking they are pop stars, and here they are going up and down the country making fools of themselves"

-review of tour premiere of an inept and now forgotten teenybopper band, 1990s

"Mick Jagger don't reach my knees when it comes to stage charisma"

-Robbie Pilatus of Milli Vanilli, in an interview a few months before the current broke during a show and it was revealed they didn't even sing or play on their own records.

"We don't believe in tape recorders"

--member of British band The Replacements explaining things to the interviewer.

"I was once quoted as saying I'd buy an album of Bob Dylan breathing hard. But I never said I'd buy an album of Bob Dylan breathing soft."

-Greil Marcus on Dylan's Self Portrait,

"Getting told by your record company that you're a non-commercial artist after twenty years in the business, now that's even better than a grammy"

-Neil Young commenting on his legal dispute with Geffen Records in 1985. of course any old hat who had drifted into a standstill could have technically said that, but Neil had lots of cred and a steady sales of his old output to back up the irony,

"The line may sound flippant, but it used to be a fairly common question"

-Nick Mason of Pink Floyd on the famous "Oh by the way, which one's Pink?" in Have a Cigar"

"Nothing exciting ever happens to me"

-John Paul Jones on life on tour with Led Zeppelin

"Jon, please explain: what's a khatru?"

-Bill Bruford asking Jon Anderson about his obscure lyrics as they were recording Siberian Khatru. Bill left Yes soon after.

"He /Kenneth Pitt/ told me, "''The man is a bastard. He's got David by the balls and he's going to destroy him." The first part of the sentence was true, the second was not.''"

-David Bowie biographer George Tremlett recalling a talk with Bowie's early manager Kenneth Pitt in 1971, when Bowie was switching to the support of Tony DeFries, of whom Pitt was talking.

"I think I'm gonna hire a new Bob Dylan so he can do my job"

-Dylan in a UK hotel room with The Band in May 1966, not long before he was called "Judas"; shown in No Direction Home

and finally, from a great double interview of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in Mojo (UK), August 2004, Beck talking about the early seventies and the Beck, Bogert & Appice trio::


 * 'JB: "We tried a singer but it was a disaster. Nobody wanted to look at this blonde guy waving his hair about."
 * 'Interviewer, turning to Page: "Actually you Jimmy did quite well with a blonde singer waving his hair about"
 * 'JB: "If only it had been curly, but his was straight!"

Strausszek (talk) 20:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Review
For those new to this discussion, who may be a little confused. We are trying to determine: 1. Does verbal irony mean the saying of the opposite (or the diametrically opposed) of what you really mean? Or does it mean other things? 2. Does sarcasm always need to be ironic, or can one make sarcastic remarks without them being ironic? Myrvin (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:45, 8 May 2010 (UTC).

Jcrabb. I didn't "cite Fowler and call it done", I cited several other works too. We don't have to "rely on general encyclopedias", but we can't simply ignore them. Calling irony and sarcasm "cognitive linguistic terms" is presumably meant to take them out of the realm of ordinary users of the language (and authorities) and leave them to psychologists. A dangerous move if you ask me.

To dismiss the OED definition as 'wrong' is bold. People reading Wikipedia might actually look at a dictionary as well and wonder why Wikipedia is only quoting psychologists in a section on the difference between two terms in English. I think your bus example is confused by the way. Do re-read it. If a bus is bearing down on us and I say "Of course it's safe to go", (not "no") that might be irony (although damned dangerous), because it is the opposite of the truth; but there is no necessary sarcasm. I could be questioning your sanity, in which case it might be sarcasm.

For Websters, do you really think a dictionary writer would put "often" if they meant "always"? They do understand the language a bit! (That's sarcasm, with no irony) Partridge is definitely out there on the fringe, but people might wonder why we prefer to cite psychologists rather than him. And poor old Martin teh psychologist is wrong as well is he? Maybe he was just a little more careful! (Sarcasm, not irony) I don't think you have actually said what you think irony is - just that "the opposite concept ... is wrong". Myrvin (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

This is getting rather intense. Just for fun, have a look at these (completely uncitable) sites. No (or little) irony, just sarcasm. http://www.angelfire.com/weird/theloser/dumbwisdom.html

http://blog.sarcasmsociety.com/quotes-blurbs/top-10-sarcastic-quotes-by-the-sarcasm-society.html

http://www.sarcasmsociety.com/sarcasticquotes

Myrvin (talk) 15:47, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

__________________________


 * You can't say "children ... often fail to recognise irony", if you don't say what irony is. I wonder how easy it will be to check all those sources. Do they really not have a go at defining the terms they are using? If they do the text should say so. I don't think you have actually said what you think irony is - just that "the opposite concept ... is wrong

In the article the definition of verbal irony is provided: “Speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves.” This is what is difficult for children to detect, as well as people with various types of cognitive deficits.

You ask how easy it is to check the sources – the answer is: easy. I have read them all. A typical definition that researchers like this use is the same as has been defined in the article here. Here is a quote from one of the papers I cite: “In our use of the term sarcasm here, we refer to remarks made with negative or critical intent, where there is an indirect meaning, i.e., a discrepancy between the literal meaning of the words and the social context.”


 * I thought we had examples in the article and the discussion of sarcasm which is not ironic. But there is apparently even disagreement that irony is saying the opposite of what you mean. It would seem that your sarcasm is my irony and vice versa.

Irony is definitely not limited to saying the opposite of what you mean – I have provided examples why this is true.


 * Saying that the views of respected sources are "wrong" is strange.

Why is this so strange? Just because some source is “respected” in some way doesn’t mean that the source will be correct about specific concepts. I have explained why I consider these various sources to be incorrect.

The bottom line is that these terms refer to language understanding phenomena, and so the best source for defining these terms comes from the science of language processing. When other definitions fail to capture the essence of the phenomenon, they should be discarded for better explanations.


 * I replied that I should like to be a Member of Parliament. My uncle, who was given to sarcasm, rejoined that, as far as he knew, few clerks in the Post Office did become Members of Parliament. I think it was the remembrance of this jeer which stirred me up to look for a seat as soon as I had made myself capable of holding one by leaving the public service. Surely this is Trollope saying that this remark, which was undoubtedly what his uncle meant (and not ironic), was sarcastic.

I would say this is definitely not sarcastic. What makes it sarcastic in your opinion? Just being critical is not enough. There needs to be a particular contrast between the surface form and the intended meaning. The uncle is saying literally what he means, and the literal statement implies that the man will also not likely become a member of parliament. I think because there is any implied meaning at all, and the comment was critical, you think it's sarcasm. But I think that's incorrect. There needs to be disparity between the literal utterance and the implicature.


 * The main evidence you're using is that some linguists and neurologists are lumping together irony and sarcasm in a quickie. Many linguists don't do that.

All people who do scientific experiments examining how people understand language use the terms basically as I’m explaining them. That is, they consider sarcasm to be either a subtype of irony, or use sarcastic to mean ironic. I would like to know what makes something sarcastic if it’s not ironic. It can’t be only cutting, bitter, sharp, critical (etc) language.

Strausszek: All the examples aren’t helping if you don’t explain them. Maybe pick one or two and illustrate how you think they represent non-ironic sarcasm.


 * '''For Websters, do you really think a dictionary writer would put "often" if they meant "always"? They do understand the language a bit! (That's sarcasm, with no irony)

''' This is perfect! The statement that dictionary writers “do understand the language a bit!” IS ironic – in the form of understatement (again, see the article on irony types). It’s NOT sarcasm. You say explicitly that dictionary writers understand language “a little bit” when you mean they understand language very well. That contrast makes it ironic.

You’re right – we are using the terms in opposite ways. Irony is the superordinate category, not sarcasm. As pointed out in the article, research has shown that many people overextend the term sarcasm to mean all irony – so the common uses of the term is different than technical use.


 * …but people might wonder why we prefer to cite psychologists rather than him

It seems patently obvious to me why we should rely on cognitive science as the collection of researchers who study language understanding rather than some particular early 20th century lexicographer. This guy got his BA before the field of pragmatics was even invented. He didn’t have the benefit of knowing about contemporary philosophy of language, cognitive science, or the notion of inferential communication. It’s purely an appeal to authority to rely on his confused distinction between these terms. It’s interesting historically and nothing more.


 * I think your bus example is confused by the way. Do re-read it.

Thanks – I fixed it. I meant “yes” when I put “no”

Jcrabb (talk) 21:12, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Jcrabb: I have gone into detail with many of my examples - and not just the ones I've been talking over with Harris concerning HAL, Napoleon etc, but several before that - and discussed why they appear sarcastic but not ironic (not involving widely separate meanings or different audiences, one that's in on the joke and one unknowing). You simply haven't bothered to read, or you're too die-hard committed to the idea that sarcasm must always have an ironic side.
 * The quote from The Man on the Roof - look up my bolded "agree" in the first really long thread and read that post - gives an idea of how the distinction between irony and sarcasm plays out to me and many others. The hardened street cop is angrily poking fun at the boss (who isn't his regular boss by the way) but there's next to no irony involved. At least none carried by the actual words, if there is an ironic contrast, it's loosely carried by an implication and not that closely related to the obvious sarcasm.Strausszek (talk) 21:43, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The street cop, who doesn't like or respect the paper desk boss, retorts: "So you've reached that conclusion too?" Sarcasm? Sure, but if there is irony in there, it has to be in the understated, unphrased contempt, or in something like "Did you need to tell me that, jerk?" - not in any of the wording itself

This is clearly ironic. Whether you want to call it sarcasm is debatable (it does have a critical component so I could imagine calling it sarcastic) but it definitely is an understated rhetorical question (a form of verbal irony). The street cop is illustrating the obviousness of the situation by acting like the conclusion is reached through careful deliberation. The contrast between the surface form and implied meaning is what makes it ironic. Like is written in the Wiki article, defining the tropes is secondary to the real psychological process going on – identifying speaker intentions.

I am reading all of your examples - I don't see the need to respond to them all - they all have a similar problem in my view - that is, you are calling things sarcasm that have no irony and are critical in some way, but you're not explaining why. What makes it sarcastic? I have very specifically spelled out the criteria by which something is deemed ironic and have explained how sarcasm relates, which is consistent with interdisciplinary research examining how people understand these devices - research I conduct myself. I am committed to this perspective - you are holding on to a folk model that has no reasoned basis other than your intuition about the meanings of words.

Jcrabb (talk) 22:29, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

_________________


 * "'''The uncle is saying literally what he means, and the literal statement implies that the man will also not likely become a member of parliament. I think because there is any implied meaning at all, and the comment was critical, you think it's sarcasm. But I think that's incorrect. There needs to be disparity between the literal utterance and the implicature.

'''"
 * Well, of course you can choose to ignore the difference between speaking critically in an "honest" way and being snide, really condescending or personally lampooning. But in most speech encounters, or even in writing, you don't ignore those limits unless you've actively decided to appear caustic to the one(s) you're addressing. There is an accepted range for expressing criticism, depending on how well you know the people, power relations and so on, but most people can sense it if friendly, honest, lively discussion turns into a relentless fight or a shitslinging match, and the people involved start ignoring the normal codes of honour, relevance and fair play. Those limits of decent speech are mobile of course, they depend on the culture you live in and the situation, but they're reasonably fixed within a culture at a given time and they don't move that easily.


 * With Trollope, I think part of what makes it sarcasm is that his uncle (who was his closest male relative at the time and the only surviving link to his father's family line) refers to his nephew as "a postal office worker" or something. Referring to your next-of-kin simply by his profession would have been belittling in those days, from father to son or in this case, from uncle to nephew (Anthony had been the only son his father had left and the family had been on the borders of the gentry, and had aspired to be gentlemen; that meant by implication you didn't see yourself as someone who had to claw your way up by an endless amount of work in a petty office or a shop). To the gernation of his father and his uncle, it would hav been granted that most people who made a mark in public life were gentlemen,that they belonged to the nobility in some sense, had a family fortune and had gone to the best schools.
 * In those days it wasn't considered okay at home to identify a family member with their work, at least not if you wanted to belong i the upper classes (which Trollope the father had meant his son to be, and himself too). Many nobles didn't have a profession or a salary in the modern sense. So I think the way uncle Trollope is referring to his close relative as just a postal clerk here is sardocic and belittling, it would have had a major part in driving home the insult. If he had phrased it more generally ("people without a fortune who haven't gone to Oxford or Cambridge or elite miltary schools rarely enter parliament" or something) it wouldn't have been as biting, and not sarcasm


 * Besides, sarcasm often works by "cutting down to size", by referring to the other one or his/her motives and aspirations in a smallish way that creates insult, and is perceived as a stab if it's successful. I never said sarcasm can't use hyperbole or exaggerated contrast to bring home a point - it does that regularly. Strausszek (talk) 22:17, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not ignoring any of the differences you mention - I just don't think they are relevant for what is sarcasm. Sarcasm isn't just being caustic! Being caustic is being caustic. There needs to be a disparity between the literal utterance and the implicature, period. Jcrabb (talk) 22:37, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Sarcastic statements often work by cutting dents into what other people are saying, or into lines someone is likely to say within the same convo, or on a related subject. Sometimes you can predict with absolute certainty to yourself what someone is gonna say down the line, because you know what kinds of views and arguments hang together in this kind of environment, on these issues, so you can "attack in advance" or lay a trap. It's like chess. But you can't be sarcastic in splendid isolation, it demands a relation to other people's lines of talk, to a conversation or something you know many of the people around the table might be thinking, whether they're in the same room, discussing on the same web page or taking part in a newspaper debate over the stretch of a week. So the implicature is there, but it might be situated on a different face of the discussion, or within another subject, than the literal point you made.


 * Irony works that way too sometimes; I've been giving a few examples on this page to show that the ironic contrast isn't always a direct opposite, but working through play with a subtly implied statement, a connotation, an understatement, an idiot attribution of a view you oppose but which you don't refute head-on, and so on. Sarcasm can use those kinds of implication too, but it doesn't have to involve a blunt contrast between two statements.


 * The quote from the BBC about parliament reform - everyone knew that was going to be a major issue during the elections and after: "Don't worry, they will miss this opportunity /to reform the framework of parliament/.It will be missed, like all opportunities for that over the past hundred years."


 * -on the face of it, just a sigh: they won't get anywhere this time either, although many people are furiously calling for reform after the havoc. But the words were said in contrast: just before, another journalist had said (it was a round-table program) that this is the Moment, and that MPs and parties have reason to be worried because they don't want anything to change. Many people think, just like the underlying idea of those two journalists, that it's really high time, but the edge of the line I quoted is that it says: yes, it's a rational wish and it is high time, but you have no reason to hold your breath. It ain't gonna happen. And the sarcasm grows sharper because the show was actually aimed at an international audience - it was on BBC World, not BBC UK, so that line put down the status of the British parliament, which has some sort of iconic stature in many parts of the world. Effectively, it put a distance between that journalist and some other discussions that were sure to follow, and which would be more moderate. Strausszek (talk) 23:26, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

____________________

You're not telling me here what sarcasm is - you're not defining the concept. You say "how it often works" and say it necessitates interaction, but these ideas are vague.


 * I've been giving a few examples on this page to show that the ironic contrast isn't always a direct opposite, but working through play with a subtly implied statement, a connotation, an understatement, an idiot attribution of a view you oppose but which you don't refute head-on, and so on. Sarcasm can use those kinds of implication too, but it doesn't have to involve a blunt contrast between two statements.

I think we all agree then that irony doesn't have to be direct opposites - so that's good. But I think the major issue here is that you disagree that sarcasm involves a contrast between what is said and what is meant. This is just a basic disagreement about what the word means - or what it refers to in the world. The quote ""Don't worry, they will miss this opportunity" is not sarcasm in my opinion. It is critical, and cutting, but not ironic. Besides the disagreement, I just don't even get your logic. There is no systematic criterion set for determining what is sarcastic or not. Jcrabb (talk) 23:48, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, if I did offer a "definition of sarcasm" of my own making, containing at least some steps that were not directly grabbed from established researchers, someone (you?) might call out "you're poisoning the article with original research!" Anyway, this is the irony article, not the sarcasm article, and I'm not sure I have committed to bringing in a definition of sarcasm that will be true independently of the culture, country, language or class involved. What matters to me is that sarcasm, while not a contrary thing to irony, isn't just a subset of it. That's what I've been arguing: it emphasizes the fact or the view you're claiming but it does so in a way that can be felt to go over the top, compared to an accepted way of making statements factually close to it. Those limits of what is "the accepted way" are culturally conditioned of course, and even depend on the local group of people you're in at the moment. -The reason it matters to me to keep sarcasm and irony distinct, though with some overlap, is 1)many people plainly see that distinction, and 2) if it's given up, I think, the entire concept and meaning of irony become fuzzier, not clearer.


 * Finally, sarcasm often aims to be funny in order to work, and humour isn't famous for being logical or even logically decipherable all the time. A joke you need to explain isn't a good joke, and a joke that is "emptied" by its explanation can appear trite. Sometimes sarcasm and irony - or satire - just aren't possible to decipher in any final way although they hit the target. I don't know if some here feel offended by that, to me this is no big deal. Strausszek (talk) 00:32, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think making up a definition on this page constitutes research in any way. I do think you are making the concept more complicated than it needs to be, and you are being vague. I don't think sarcasm has much to do inherently with a comparison between "accepted ways" and non accepted ways, and most of the other stuff you describe as related to sarcasm applies to all sorts of language phenomena. I think in the Wiki article, there can be a brief paragraph about how people have widely variable beliefs about what the word means, but that cognitive science researchers working on language understanding have nailed down pretty well what matters for irony understanding, and what most people consider to be sarcasm falls under the broader category of verbal irony. Jcrabb (talk) 00:48, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You consider all sarcasm to be ironic, and I am inferring you don't think it has to be acerbic, biting, pronouncedly edgy or insulting. it doesn't have to leave normal "good tone" behind in any way. To me, it's the opposite, sort of. Sarcasm can be ironic, - can use irony - but it doesn't have to, while I can't imagine sarcasm that doesn't aim to bite deep and hurt in any direction, aim to make people (not necessarily the direct recipient, but someone who is implied) feel questioned or stabbed at (or appear stabbed at, if they're long since dead or will never be aware of the text). If it aims to be soft, even with some implied contradictions or an odd angle to the situation or the speaker, then it just isn't sarcasm to me, and to where I come from (northern Europe). It could be a cultural difference, but it's not one I know how to define by myself. Or it could be grounded in different conceptions of how language is used, how people impose themselves in talk. Either of those. Bye for tonight (it's almost four in the morning here...)Strausszek (talk) 01:47, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think sarcasm is acerbic, biting, pronouncedly edgy or insulting + ironic. Without the irony, the utterance would just be acerbic, biting, pronouncedly edgy or insulting. See ya later. Jcrabb (talk) 02:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, you don't seem to be thinking that causticity, bite or ambition to belittle being set into the tone or the imagery, in the way of expressing it, are really essential to sarcasm. A bit further up in this section you're saying, in response to the attempts I've been making to unravel non-ironic sarcasm, that you're not "ignoring any of the characteristics" and differences from, let's say polite or not-over-combative speech or writing that I brought up, "I just don't think they are relevant for what is sarcasm. Sarcasm isn't just being caustic! Being caustic is being caustic. There needs to be a disparity between the literal utterance and the implicature, period" (my italics)


 * But you seem to think that when a disparity is sharp enough to count, it's always because it plays on ironic contrast in the content of the precise wording or its context, outside of style or the way the message turns at somebody or something. Even if it's ultra caustic that doesn't count in making it sarcasm, but on the other hand (i surmise) if it's less than caustic or only cheeky, but implies a contrast) then it will still be sarcastic (and ironic, of course). To me that really doesn't square. I can see it's logical if you start from the idea that it's contradictive implicature tht defines sarcasm too, and only that, but it doesn't fit how sarcasm is perceived in many places, notably in most parts of Europe (not in Japan either, I think).


 * Also, I think a counter-example you made brings home that this isn't as universal as you think. You invented the line "You're so ugly your mother had to feed you with a slingshot" and stated that wasn't a plausible sarcasm, even if it used overstated contrast to the ordinary world. But lines like that hjappen all the time in some kinds of tribal/ghetto cultures, and notably in hiphop (originally a US black thing but now spread all around the Western world). Using exaggerated, hyperbolic put-downs like that - they go far beyond what you find even in Hunter S Thompson - is an accepted part of rap lyrics and hiphop jive, both in public and in private, and the intention can be both ironic ("double intention") and completeley honest. It's.a way of battling by making up the worst insults at someone you dislike, or someone who's your friend but whom gross insults are thrown at, often relating their family ("your mum is..."). "I've got dead cops hanging on meat hooks" or "watch me rape the niggaz daughters" aren't plausible neither as literal boasts of a ganglord or as something you'd get away with saying in the newspaper, but that kind of lines are everywhere in some hiphop lyrics. I think that brings out that sarcasms, insults and irony can't be judged and defined in abstract, only in cognitive terms, without taking into count where the boundaries of accepted critical speech or writing are set at the time.


 * Returning to Trollope, your analysis is:
 * '''"The uncle is saying literally what he means, and the literal statement implies that the man will also not likely become a member of parliament. I think because there is any implied meaning at all, and the comment was critical, you think it's sarcasm. But I think that's incorrect. There needs to be disparity between the literal utterance and the implicature.


 * IMO the uncle is implying that if you're a postal clerk, or a ground-level public officer, you never become an MP. And he's making that statement in a way that reduces his nephew to "a postal clerk". That was probably a sharper sting in Trollope's time, and in that family/social stratum, than it sounds to us, because we're used to the idea that who you are is defined by your work, but to people in the nobility or lower gentry, where Trollope and his father's family spired to belong, that was a foreign idea. If you wanted to belong, wanted to be a gentleman (a very loaded concept, not just a term of honour) you didn't treat someone you claimed to see as your equal (or worse, your superior) as just a handyman, a guy with a fixed job ansd a timetable he must fulfil and which defined him. To speak to your nephew as someone you can order about by virtue of the work he happens to hold, that was a demaening move in those days and in the class they wanted to beliong to (they didn't quite belong, but that only sharpened it).


 * People sometimes say British understatement, as opposed to U.S. "brag humour" comes fom an age-old awareness of class: you had to keep silent about some things, and let off steam in a guarded way. I think that's true.


 * You ask for a "systematic criterion" of what is sarcasm - one that means we can read sarcasm independently of cultural context. That implies sarcasm, in your eyes, doesn't have a core relation to being aggressively caustic. I just don't think giving that kind of "systematic" definition is possible because what is sarcastic or funny in a sarcastic way depends so much on what people will pick up on in a given period, their social place or at a given moment: if you want any kind of definition, it will, have to be from the details, of how people perceive sarcasm in the places where they live and in what they read, not from a prior idea that it has to be about collision of ideal and reality or the like. Most of the examples I've brought up or commented on as non-ironic sarcasm (excluding the rock quotations list which weas just for fun, goes without saying, and its iown section) do have an element of exaggeration or caustic contrast. But your claim is either that it's "really" ironic or that it isn't sarcasm at all because it's just normally critical statements that, in your view, don't contain an ironic double angle of contrasted meanings and so they are not sarcastic (and not ironic either).


 * (quote Jcrabb) With the quote from the BBC on parliament reform, ""Don't worry, they will miss this opportunity" is not sarcasm in my opinion. It is critical, and cutting, but not ironic


 * You're implying that rejoinder wasn't sarcastic either, or it would have shown that non-ironic sarcasm is in fact out there. So it wasn't a sarcasm because it didn't involve contrast and because "even if a statement is caustic, stingy and unequivocally down-putting that doesn't help to make it sarcastic" (my praphrase of tyour view on this). It might just be 'normal criticism' no matter how much it gos out of its way to make a swaggering put-down.


 * I think I'd better restate the BBC quote here, becasue you only quoted the first leg which isn't enough. From a discussion aboput the future of the parlaiment afte the expenses scandal and the election (now over):


 * "Don't worry, they will miss this opportunity /to reform the framework of parliament/. It will be missed, like all opportunities for that over the past hundred years."

.
 * It's perfectly honest, but with an understated line "They should be able to achieve a real reform of some kind, and we should push for it, it's high time, but dammit they won't, you can be sure: it will just become some half measure". But there's more to it than simply somebody speaking his mind. On the surface, it just says, they won't get anywhere this time either, although many people are angry and calling for reform after it turnd out many MPs had ben making ridiculous use of their open expense funds and got away with it - or might have.


 * But the words were said in contrast: just before, another journalist had said (it was a round-table program) that this is the Moment, and that MPs and parties have reason to be worried because they don't want anything to change. Many people think, just like the underlying idea of those two journalists, that it's really high time, but the edge of the line I quoted is that it says: yes, it's a rational wish and yes it is high time, but you have no reason to hold your breath. It ain't gonna happen. And the sarcasm grows sharper because the show was actually aimed at an international audience - it was on BBC World, not BBC UK, so that line put down the status of the British parliament, which has some sort of iconic stature in many parts of the world. It's not simply about making a statement of fact: "I don't see it happening", it aims to undercut the very assumptions that some others, in the same room, or listening, or implied by that discussion, are - or will be - arguing from. It uses its caustic quality to reframe the discussion, to try and put a full stop to some lines of argument, to say, like, "You better take this into account or what you say will be useless no matter how much you talk". And to do that, hyperbole is used (hasn't there been *any* real reform of parliament in a hundred years? since before the time of equal right to vote?)


 * To me that kind of use of tropes or rephrasing to state something, but without irony (without an actual hidden layer of meaning, or a double meaning) in the normal sense, is part of what makes sarcasm and yes it takes place against tthe backdrop of talking and writing conventions, against what is seen as "okay" and "nice", not over-combative ways of making a statement at the given time and place. You can't jhave sarcasm that's just sofa talk and doesn't have sting, no matter if it includes some skilfully placed contradictions. Strausszek (talk) 10:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Sarcasm without irony
This is the nub of what we are arguing about when it comes to sarcasm and irony. I am happy that sarcasm is "acerbic, biting, pronouncedly edgy or insulting", but it doesn't need to be ironic - you insist on it being ironic as well. However, for you irony covers a much larger area than it does for me. I am happy with the opposite concept, and you seem to want it to cover all figures of speech. For me, irony is just one of many ways of making a point. If you look at the figures of speech article, you will see that irony is only one of dozens of tropes that people can use to say something, by not saying what they really mean. So understatement is meiosis; amd there's euphemism, metaphor, and many more. From the way you have analyzed my examples, I think you would call all of these tropes irony. I would not. This diminishes the language and distorts the concept.

If you would put forward some real language authorities who agree with you, then that would be worth considering. From what I have seen of the Psycholgy articles, the ones that confuse sarcasm with irony often say something to the effect of, "For the sake of this experiment, we shall assume that what we call sarcasm is ironic-sarcasm"; or, "We use a simple definition of sarcasm", which is saying the opposite of what you mean. I think many suspect that there is something wrong here. They do not aim to provide experimental evidence that irony subsumes sarcasm, they either state is as fact (without non-psychological references, except for Gibbs) or assume it (if they do) from the start.


 * What constitutes a real language authority? I have a Ph.D in Psycholinguistics and have many peer-reviewed empirical publications on this exact topic. Do I need to appeal to somebody from another discipline? The pure opposite concept is not good enough for irony - I'm surprised you find that acceptable. I agree that there is some opposition at the core of all ironies - opposition between sentence meaning and speaker meaning - that's the important nugget. But organizing ironies involves hierarchical categorization, and verbal irony in this scheme is a superordinate category with subdivisions below (after Gibbs, 2000). I do consider meiosis and hyperbole as forms of irony, but metaphor I do not. This is because of the relationship between the surface form and the implicature. With understatement and overstatement, the opposition between sentence meaning and speaker meaning is ironic. With metaphor, it is based on analogous relationships between source and target domains. These tropes are processed differently (e.g., Colston & Gibbs, 2002) - the former requires metarepresentation ability (i.e., theory of mind). The root of the issue to my mind is what kind of cognitive processes must people engage to properly understand the meaning? Any other type of analysis is missing the fundamental issue I think.


 * You mischaracterize the way psycholinguists and neuroscientists define sarcasm in their research. They all agree that sarcasm is a) critical and/or biting, and b) involves indirect meaning (i.e., contrast between sentence meaning and speaker meaning). This is consistent with Fowler too. It's really Partridge who is the outlier here.


 * The examples you provide below are illustrative of the various ways people use the word sarcasm - and I agree it is quite variable. But word use is different from categories of language use driven by how the mind works. Language is a culturally evolved product driven by biologically evolved information processing mechanisms in the brain. You want to focus on the cultural aspect it seems (how people use the word sarcasm to describe patterns of interaction). I want to focus on the information processing part (how do people use inference to recognize communicative intentions).


 * Colston, H., Gibbs, R., 2002. Are irony and metaphor understood differently? Metaphor and Symbol 17, 57-80. Jcrabb (talk) 21:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

By the way, the point of the Trollope example is that Trollope called it sarcasm. To say it is not, is to say that Trollope - along with so many other people - is wrong. I note that Jcrabb and SBHarris are in disagreement here, Jcrabb has to say it is not sarcastic, because he doesn't think it's irony; while SBHarris does think it's irony, so is happy that it's sarcastic. Good example! Myrvin (talk) 10:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * And I land in between, I agree it's sarcasm, but not ironic. I think the sting of his uncle's words was sharper in Trollope's time than a similar line would be to us, because people of the higher classes back then did not want to be defined by a job, most of them didn't have a payroll job in the modern sense. Trollope's uncle was implicitly talking to his nephew like he were a hireling, and using that to negate his ambition. That would have hurt, especially because the family had a near history of class descent. They had once been gentry, and Trollope's father had tried (and failed) to keep up that sense of status. It was a bit like an American 14-year old in 1917 telling his dad he's a coward because he isn't volunteering for the army and going to the trenches in Europe. Strausszek (talk) 11:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

More examples
Also, from Emma, by Jane Austen "He paused-- and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only sarcastic dryness, 'If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.'" Austen says this is sarcasm, and I think it is in the form of erotema, a rhetorical question. He means what he says, the sarcasm is in the knowledge of the listener that it cannot be answered, so it is caustic sarcasm without irony. If he had said "I am sure that I can convey a wife and five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty" then that would be irony and sarcasm. Myrvin (talk) 12:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

http://books.google.com/books?id=5dOKOEjRIUMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Mudrick,+Marvin.&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&cd=2#v=onepage&q=sarcasm%20%20irony&f=false

Here, Marvin Mudrick writes of some nasty people in Persuasion, that "she can end only by treating them, not with irony ... but with sarcasm, abuse, or silence." But I guess Austen and Mr Mudrick are just wrong. Myrvin (talk) 12:23, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Hardy ''The hand of Ethelberta' “I saw that, and hoped that I might speak without real harm.' 'You calculated how to be uncalculating, and are natural by art!' she said, with the slightest accent of sarcasm.”

Hardy The mayor of Casterbridge http://books.google.com/books?id=2JkJEvp7sFUC&pg=PA284&dq=hardy+sarcastic&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&cd=9#v=onepage&q=sarcastic&f=false After the Skimmington ride, “The roars of sarcastic laughter went off into ripples” – can laughter be ironic?

Stern Shandy http://books.google.com/books?id=IvVxVBI2tP0C&pg=PA381&dq=shandy+sarcasm&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&cd=1#v=onepage&q=sarcasm%20%20&f=false ‘ “Make them like unto a wheel” is a bitter sarcasm.’ Stern, He means they should be made to roll about for ever.

Pliny Letters http://www.bartleby.com/9/4/1043.html “O Fortune, how capriciously dost thou sport with mankind! Thou makest rhetoricians of senators, and senators of rhetoricians!” A sarcasm so poignant and full of gall that one might almost imagine he fixed upon this profession merely for the sake of an opportunity of applying it."

Hugo Notre Dame de Paris http://www.bartleby.com/312/0102.html “Why, upon my soul!” cried Jehan, “if it isn’t Clopin Trouillefou! Holà! friend, so thy sore was troublesome on thy leg that thou hast removed it to thine arm?” and so saying, with the dexterity of a monkey he tossed a small silver piece into the greasy old beaver which the beggar held out with his diseased arm. The man received both alms and sarcasm without wincing, and resumed his doleful petition: “Charity, I pray you!”

Eliot The mill on the floss http://www.bartleby.com/309/303.html “Yes, Mr. Glegg!” said that lady, with angry sarcasm. “It’s pleasant work for you to be giving my money away”

http://www.bartleby.com/309/112.html “You’d better leave finding fault wi’ my kin till you’ve left off quarrelling with you own, Mrs. G.,” said Mr. Glegg, with angry sarcasm."

MW Eysenck Cognitive psychology. P10 ‘When psychologists only used flowcharts, sarcastic questions abounded, such as, “What happens in the boxes?” or, “What goes down the arrows?”’

Boswell Life of Johnson Johnson says of Buchanan, “I will now say of him as a Scotchman – that he was the only man of genius his country ever produced.” J did not like the Scots. Boswell adds a note: “This prompt and sarcastic retort …” J means what he says, there is no irony, and B says it is sarcastic.

“[Johnson said,] ‘We are told the black bear is innocent; but I should not like to trust myself with him.’ Mr Gibbon muttered, in a low tone of voice, ‘I should not like to trust myself with you.’ This piece of sarcastic pleasantry was a prudent resolution.”

Johnsoniona, p405 “Dr. J. Meet her! I never desire to meet fools anywhere. – (This sarcastic turn of wit was so pleasantly received that the Doctor joined in the laugh”

Anybody doubting their position yet?Myrvin (talk) 14:36, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This one is from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov is listening to the endless flow of monologue and banter of Count Svidrigaylov, a man who once tried to push his sister into marrying him when she was in service at his estate. R. is both curious and wary about the man; at the moment S. is telling him a strange yarn about his encounters with family ghosts at his mansion:
 * '"I don't suppose you're lying, by any chance?" Raskolnikov suddenly interrupted.
 * '"I rarely lie" Svidrigaylov replied slowly as if he hadn't noticed the blunt sarcasm of the question at all.


 * Raskolnikov is clearly meaning exactly what he says, he is grabbing the chance to check if S. is lying (about this and about other stuff he says) and at the same time he's showing him that he's not afraid of him and doesn't see him as his superior despite the fact that the other man is older, still has designs on his sister and is incomparably wealthier than Raskolnikov who is almost destitute. What Rodya says is clearly sarcasm, and the kind of impoliteness that you normally keep off in a chance meeting with somebody you only know from hearsay and know you have to be a bit guarded about. Dostyoevsky also spells out that it was a sarcastic line.


 * Later on, in the final part of the book, when Svidrigaylov, by now knowing that Raskolnikov had committed the double murder, has tricked his sister to come to his own lodgings and is trying to blackmail her into betrothal by using her brother as a pawn, S. threatens to rape her, without mentioning the word. The sister reacts with disgust and shock when she realizes that's what he could do and she spells it out; Svidrigaylov replies "with a demeaning smile":


 * "You just used the word 'rape', Miss Dunya. If it is rape we are talking of you can be sure I have taken the proper measures for such a situation," /he informs her that the neighbours are out and will stay out for several hours/ "I am at least twice as strong s you and I have nothing to fear because you're not going to accuse me afterwards: surely you don't want to betray your dear brother?"
 * The implication of the last line is of course that if he has to rape her and she files charges at him with the police, he will respond by telling the cops that he heard Raskolnikov confess double murder to his lover, Sonya, which S. overheard from behind the apartment door. He finishes off by telling her that she doesn't stand a chance even if she would decide to sacrifice her brother, and that "rape is very hard to prove". When Dunya reacts with more disgust, he claims that what he just said could be seen as merely a thought experiment, but he is still clearly ready to rape her. At that point, when he is saying it was a thought exercise, he is ironic, but the lines before, which I just quoted (my own translation by way of the Swedish one, no meaning lost: it was made by really qualified people both on the Swedish and Russian side and I know my way around English) about how hopeless her situation is and how he has "taken the proper measures" are clearly non-ironically sarcastic, and Dostoevsky's description of the whole scene shows up Svidrigaylov's talk as sarcastic and almost amoral - but still aware of how his actions would be judged by the world outside, if it knew. I don't know Russian so I have no way of checking the exact original wording that is rendered by "with a demeaning smile", but it must be very close to "sarcastic smile" and it's clearly meant to colour all of the following lines to her. Which are honest and down-putting - the idea that it was a thought experiment is the ironic bit but it's introduced later, to twist the knife one turn deeper. Strausszek (talk) 15:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I like the C&P one.

Jacob Opper Science in the arts p63 "“Jeremy Bentham made the distinction between poetry and prose by saying that “All the lines except the last extend to the margin” in prose, “whereas in poetry some of them fall short”. He continues in this sarcastic vein, writing that “Poetry … proves nothing; it is full of sentimentalism and vague generalities.”" He means exactly what he says.

Shaw Arms and the man Act I p 24 "RAINA (She takes up the pistol and hands it to him) Pray take it to protect yourself against me.""MAN (grinning wearily at the sarcasm …) No use dear lady … It is not loaded."

Back to Methuselah p180"LUBIN And how have you been all this time? …""FRANKLYN [Smiling to soften the sarcasm] A few vicissitudes of health naturally in so long a time." I think he’s saying it’s been a long time since I saw you. I don’t think it’s ironic.

Lawrence The white peacock p300 "George handed over his child to the maid. And said to me with patient sarcasm, ‘Will you come into the garden?’ I rose and followed him."

Women in love "’You have never worked as the world works,’ he said with sarcasm."

Jimmy and the desperate woman "You’ve got what you want. You do as you like. ‘Do I?’ she asked, with intolerable sarcasm."

Myrvin (talk) 18:07, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Answer: If we let irony be the suggested "ignorance perceived in another" as it is most simply in dramatic irony, then most or all of the "sarcastic" comments above are merely the same sort of irony, combined with a rhetorical comment to let the ignorant one in on the truth, without being blunt as one would be with a 5-year-old who can't be expected to know better. The rhetorical question that can't be answered, simply says: "You seem ignorant of the fact that I do know what's going on, and I'm not such a fool as you take me to be." As are also faux-child-like comments that heighten the idea that the speaker is not taken in, and is not actually unsophisticated. Jehan knows that the motile sore isn't real, but isn't willing to part with his donation without a comment to let the begger know he's not fooled. But he doesn't just say: "I'm not fooled, you moved your fake lesion." And I don't think Bentham is entirely serious about poetry, and Opper doesn't either. But to the extent that he is serious and Opper has mistaken Bentham's social or artistic simplicity for feigned simplicity (thus sarcasm), then he's merely mistaken about Bentham-- this doesn't mean he's mistaken about what is (or would be) sarcasm. One can make comments to show that one percieves irony in a situation (ie, that you're not a Candide-like simpleton) without being cutting about it. It's the "talking down" (down-putting) to somebody that turns an ironic comment into a sarcastic one, so you can surely treat somebody with irony (by saying ironic things to them), without being so biting as to descend to sarcasm (which suggests that they ought to have known better about either the world or your knowledge of it, but don't). Thus, a great deal of ironic talk is between adults in the presense of children, where they let each other know that they percieve something about the world that is over the head of the child, without attempting (sometimes) even to teach the child. "Dad, our teacher says that Obama is going to fix things so that we'll all have enough money." "That could be, but I'm still waiting for my own check from him." That's really not very sarcastic, but spoken between two parents, it's a very typical bit of irony. In fact, most conversation between parents in the presence of children is ironic without being sarcastic. But let's go on: how can one actually be sarcastic without pointing out some bit of attempted foolery by somebody or some situation, that has failed? Mr. Perry knows it takes more money to transport people over a longer distance, so who is he trying to kid about it? That's sarcasm. If he was just stupid, or a 10 year-old, it would have been enough to simply point out the error in his thinking. Likewise with the suggestion that it's pleasant work for somebody to spend your money and not theirs. It's sarcastic because it's a statement in obvious contraversion of the truth, which is that it's no kind of "work" at all, however pleasant it might be. Okay, so which particularly important examples have I missed? S  B Harris 22:24, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Harris, if dramatic irony is defined by "one part being ignorant of what he/she needed to know, and the other part (their opponent, the all-knowing story teller, God and/or the audience) knowing just that truth - I think that's a good description of the key element of dramatic irony, but then you can't have both. As soon as person A (the ignorant victim) knows clearly, it is no longer really irony, at least not in rhethorical/language terms. It can only stay ironic if it leads to a fresh ignorance twist. Saying "Resistance is useless, son!" isn't irony in any sense. If you show to their face that somebody is being fooled or is helpless, like Svidrigaylov showing Dunya that she is helpless and caught in a trap - then it's not irony.
 * It's actually Dunya who is first to state that he's acting like a rapist, threatening her. At that point he hasn't even touched her in any odd way, but she asks him to let her out into the street and he says, with an obvious lie, that he has lost the key and can't find it. The situation is already tense and she responds by calling out "But that's rape!" /=you're aiming to rape me, are you?/ and the whole scene up to then, as she follows him home, suggests that she is aware of the risk that he could assault her or at least become unpleasant.


 * Svidrigaylov is ironic for sure when he feigns to pull back - in words, not in action - and tells her it was just an experiment of thought (who is he kidding?) That's cat and mouse playing of course, but they're both aware of that he might force himself on her. He actually doesn't let her out until she has first fired at him with his gun, which she had stolen long before - an ironic and almost incredible detail - and then dropped the pistol, realizing the insanity of that she'd kill him point blank and then get caught by the police and sent to Siberia herself. So there's both ironic and non-ironic things going on in the scene but S. isn't pulling any irony when he threatens to rape her and shows that she doesn't stand a chance. He is caustically aware of the fact that for the moment he's above the law, even above morals, and that she knows.


 * With the quote from "Emma", you're commenting:
 * how can one actually be sarcastic without pointing out some bit of attempted foolery by somebody or some situation, that has failed? Mr. Perry knows it takes more money to transport people over a longer distance, so who is he trying to kid about it? That's sarcasm. If he was just stupid, or a 10 year-old, it would have been enough to simply point out the error in his thinking.


 * The short answer, I think, is that the man speaking is calling Mr.Perry's bluff, the awkward fact that he's been trying to hide under a lot of smooth talking, possibly mixed-in with attempts to impose himself as Mr.Nice Guy and your soon-to-be this-and-that. People who have things to hide in a conversation do that kind of thing all the time, try to avoid mentioning somethjng that would threaten the fluff they're trying to toss into someone else's eyes, and possibly risk their own view of the world too. It's very common if you're trying to sell something, a service, a house, a daughter's hand, a car or an idea. And very often they get some help in steering clear of that by people nearby who want to stick to a certain view, a certain measure of good tone as well. That kind of hidden fact doesn't have to look extremely significant in itself, but admitting it can pull along a chain of other doubts, questions and revelations. So if X has a stake in the situation and wants to keep the strategic fact, the weak spot in what he was saying, out of view, he's going to try to avoid talking about it rather than try to mount an operation to fool you about just that particular fact (which could draw attention to it instead).
 * Of course it's only successful if X manages to make the people he's selling to (or trying to bring on board) avoid talking about it too. If a key fact or question is somehow kept outside of what youy can legitimately bring up, or isn't even recognized as a possible valid fact (ever, or until it's too late?), then the side that doesn't want it on the table has an advantage. And whether the opposite side is really aware of the fact (and that it's being brushed off) or not aware of it, if they feel they can't bring it in without breaking the rules of this conversation, this friendship, this set of relations, then they won't really use that piece of fact/question/suspicion because it seems it would cost too much. That kind of "it's not allowed" doesn't have to be logically grounded, it can be founded largely on just a gut feeling or on whose points seem to carry weight. The man in Emma is showing Perry, with a mock straight face, that he isn't buying anymore and that he knows Perry has been trying to sail past something and take advantage of them.
 * People in the news and in business life, economists and people with an agenda are often seen doing that, it's part of the job of any spin doctor but also of many editorialists, lawyers and dealers to talk things out of sight, or try to sound as if their solution is the right one by default. Trying to poke out the awkward fact can cause a *lot* of aggression. i know that from my own experience. Strausszek (talk) 00:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Harris, Your definition of verbal irony as "ignorance of another" is very wide, You would add "pointing out some bit of attempted foolery by somebody or some situation, that has failed". It doesn't matter what Bentham or Opper think about poetry. The point to address is that O calls B's comment sarcastic. Where is the ignorance or foolery in this? Of course we can use irony without sarcasm - that is not the point at issue here. I really do not see where the talking in front of children idea gets us. All my examples have adults. You have only addressed a few of the examples - the ones you think you can fit into your very wide definition.
 * How does the Pliny quote fit in with you? Or "I never desire to meet fools anywhere", or "You have never worked as the world works". Where is the ignorance or the foolery? How about the other Eliot quote? ANd the other Boswell. I think I could carry on producing quotes from literature, and you will not be able to squeeze all of them into even your wide definition. By the way, is the ignorance and foolery idea just yours, or can you produce citations for it?


 * Jcrabb, congratulations on your PhD. Was your thesis on sarcasm and irony by any chance? I think by saying my examples are "quite variable" you have conceded that they are sarcasm and do not fit with your idea of irony. Of course you are more interested in how the mind works - you are a psychologist (as once was I), but that is miles away from what a word means or how it is used. As I predicted, you do include other tropes in your idea of irony. What about all the others? Why can't meiosis and hyperbole be just that? Why must you lump them in with irony? (Note that sarcasm is not included in the tropes) Your inclusion of all sarcasm (but apparently not all my examples) in irony is another example of this. It may simplify things in your world, but it don't make it right. We cannot allow just the psychologists to define our words for us. There is the rest of the English speaking world to consider. I have been happy for a while that Partridge is 'out there', but I say such an authority should not be ignored. The question is still, should a Wikipedia article be mainly about "what kind of cognitive processes must people engage to properly understand the meaning" of a term, or the actual meaning and usage of the term? There is a plain logical difference between the two.
 * Let me be wide as well. I think that pretty well any comment or question can be delivered in a sarcastic way. That's true of many of my examples, and is probably why the writers have to add comment to show that the words were said sarcastically. A tone of voice, a look, a laugh, can make the most innocuous words into sarcasm. They can't all be covered by even your irony. "Will you come into the garden?" is as innocent as it gets, and yet, writes Lawrence, it was said with sarcasm. Myrvin (talk) 11:09, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Speaking of how much tone, phrasing and facials mean, i recall a radio interview with a writer where the reporter said, clearly with a view to the woman writer she was taking on: "Some people have the ability to make a line such as "Can I have a glass of wine, please?" sound like a declaration of war." The quoted line spoken with a touch of drama, deep voice and some added emphasis at 'wine' of course! Strausszek (talk) 11:28, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I like it! I remember someone suggesting that the words "It's raining", when it is actually raining, can be sarcastic if there was previously an argument about whether or not it would rain. It can be in the tone of the voice, facial expression and much more. Myrvin (talk) 11:53, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Psycholinguistic counter-examples?
Jcrabb, Have you read Ruth Eaton in Journal of Literary Semantics. Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages 122–148, ISSN (Online) 1613-3838, 1988? She does not say that sarcasm is always ironic, because she cites a dictionary. As I said, she uses the phrase "For the purposes of this study, the term sarcasm has ...". I would be interested in how it continues.


 * I've never read this paper - it is really obscure. I can't access it electronically, but if I happen to be in the library some time I'll go have a look. Jcrabb (talk) 00:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, Sarcasm and Other Mixed Messages: The Ambiguous Ways People Use Language Rockwell, Patricia Ann "Sarcasm has many definitions, and this variety shapes how researchers see it. Sarcasm is portrayed in most dictionary references as negative behavior; it is designed to wound, insult, or taunt. It is characterized as cutting and contemptuous. However, some researchers say that much sarcasm involves teasing and joking.""Sarcasm is a type of irony, according to most researchers, and irony is just one of many figures of speech. Some researchers argue that sarcasm and irony are intrinsically different, but others suggest that they are identical for all practical purposes." So, some researchers don't agree that all sarcasm is ironic, and some think they are identical - not you I assume. Myrvin (talk) 13:20, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Since she doesn't cite anybody, it's difficult to understand what she means exactly, but nevertheless, just about all cognitive scientists who study sarcasm treat it as a form of irony. Jcrabb (talk) 00:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * This is fuzzy thinking. Sarcasm is a subset of irony, and the statement says that "most" researchers think so. Thus, most feel (as do I) that all sarcasm is ironic, but not irony is sarcastic. And they are intrinsically different in the same sense that all subsets are intrinsically different from the larger set, by whatever it is that defines them as a subset! This is like an argument about whether or not primates are "the same" or "different" from mammals. For the rest, I think you've certain identified a reason why ironic speech shades from most gentle sorts of irony-noting to the most cutting type of sarcasm. For one thing, gentle irony preserves "plausable deniablity" that you were being ironic (and certainly sarcastic) at all. You might be talking to your social or economic superiors, after all, or your boss, or your esteemed family members whose continued good graces you desire or rely on. So there are very good reasons for employment of non-sarcastic irony. In some countries, writers have actually be hauled up in front of the local branch of the Comintern and asked if their writings were meant in a satirical vein, against the government. And naturally, it always helps if the author can say "no." There is much utility in statements than can be taken to mean the opposite of what they literally assert. Did you know that the Nazis refused to let Freud out of Europe until he'd signed a declaration that he hadn't been mistreated? He did so, and then asked to add something. It was: "In fact, I recommend the Nazis to everybody." This sarcasm was entirely missed, and they let him go. S  B Harris 18:59, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I do understand about sets and Venn diagrams (and even fuzzy logic). I do not think that irony is the same as sarcasm or a subset of it. The point is that Jcrabb suggests that all the psycholinguists say that sarcasm is a subset of irony, so that is the only view that should appear in the article. Now Rockwell says that some of them do not. I think that you are distorting her words by the sets idea. To say that two terms are intrinsically different is to say that they mean two different things, not that one is part of the other - and anyway, some say they are identical. And you are still saying that every one of my sarcasm examples is an example of irony. Again, I think you are simply using irony much too widely.Myrvin (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * When it comes to Jcrabb, I don't doubt that he has a Ph.D. in Linguistics, specializing in psycholinguistics, but that doesn't make him or his peers the only ones qualified to lay down the law about what sarcasm is, what defines it and how it works. No more than a major or a Ph.D. in literary studies would make you an unassailable literary critic, or a better judge of how to read novels and what to read. All such a degree shows is that you are familiar with some methods of literary scholarship and the history of literature, it doesn't confer any unique right to speak up about literature.


 * The only reason I brought up my education was because Myrvin expressed a need for a citation from a "language authority" - so I wondered what that was exactly. I'm not saying my degree makes me the final authority here, but I am suggesting that the Wiki article should be based on scientific approaches to the concept of verbal irony. The point of an encyclopedia is not to provide an exhaustive account of the way a word is used. Endless citations of previous authors trying to define a word is not a helpful encyclopedic entry. A more succinct explanation based on empirical research, and integrated with broader research on language understanding seems to me to be the best strategy. Jcrabb (talk) 00:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

By the same token, I cant see any reason to hand over the defining of sarcasm or other tropes from the wide range of people that actually use language to a closed circle of cognitive psychologists who would tend to disregard anything that doesn't fit their theoories, and look away from the non-lexical sides of language too (tone, phrasing, emphasis, allusions). Language uses so much more resources than the actual words and their lexical meaning, something linguists are familiar with - and the general public is too.
 * Declaring it doesn't matter if one kind (sarcasm) is a subset of another, is the same or is different though sometimes using similar rethorical means and occurring in similar places, that's like saying islam and calvinism are essentially the same because they are both monotheistic religions that emphasize a bond between mankind, in particular the faithful who follow the Book, and a strict but loving God, and which believe in a last judgment etc. They even honour some of the same forerunners: muslims regard Abraham and Jesus as great prophets. Or saying democratic socialists and hardcore communists are the same because both have worked from some concepts of Karl Marx.and they've sometimes had common enemies (fascism and military juntas). That's not any kind of reliable thinking. I contend that you, Harris, are using "irony" in a much wider and looser sense than many people do, and likely than most Europeans do. Seems to me there is a familiar rift between U.S. and European/British attitudes to irony lurking somewhere in the background, though I'm not saying even all Americans share your way of defining this (Jcrabb obviously doesn't).Strausszek (talk) 23:35, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you are demonstrating your lack of understanding of why I think the tropes under discussion are related. Your analogies here are way off. The relationship between the tropes is the contrast between surface forms and implied meaning - your examples are repeatedly showing that you aren't grasping this important component. By the way, there have been references to tone, phrasing, etc. These things do not make something ironic. They help communicate irony for sure - but the irony is not contained (or determined) in the way something is produced - it's the relationship between the surface form and the implicature. The surface forms contain signals of intent, and then people mistake the signal for the thing itself. Jcrabb (talk) 00:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Since we are blowing trumpets, I have a PhD in Computer Science. I could produce thousands of references of CS people who would assume that or define the word system as a computer system. However, during my research to get my PhD I would (and did) look outside the world of CS and find out that system has a much wider definition and usage in the rest of the world. I made it my professional task as a lecturer to remind my students that the word did have a wider meaning and they should not forget it. As a psycholinguistics PhD, dealing with the word sarcasm, I should at least have looked at a dictionary or two - along with perhaps some wider reading - and take account of the wider meaning rather than assuming that the use in psycholinguistics is the only one. Myrvin (talk) 12:20, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Believe me, I have read every dictionary entry I have got my hands on - I have read other encyclopedias, and I have been to many, many sites around the web seeing how people conceptualize irony. There is a pattern of misunderstanding that makes sense. I wasn't blowing a trumpet - I was addressing your request for an "authority.:" If we were debating a computer science topic, I would defer to your expertise without question - I surely wouldn't be presenting layman definitions of computer terms, and insisting that they be part of your technical explanation of some phenomenon. Again, I don't think the job of Wikipedia is to provide exhaustive accounts of how the word sarcasm is used. Instead, we should strive to nail down what the concept captures, and how people use these specific devices in their language use. I think you are Strausszek are much too vague in your definition. Hell, after all this, I'm still unsure how you define sarcasm. In fact, I think you have stated explicitly that you can't! Jcrabb (talk) 00:08, 23 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm only using "irony" in the sense that includes the very well-known term "dramatic irony", which I'm sure even Europeans recognize! If you don't like that, you'll have to declare that dramatic irony is really not at all the same kind of thing as the other types of irony, even though it uses the same word. Is that the thesis you're going to pin your hopes on?? To me, it's just very clear that the term "irony" in all forms refers to a certain very-pungeant type of ignorance, plus the various ways that people construct language and art in order to draw attention to such a state, in ways that not simply delarative, but are rather indirect. If you don't like that definition, it gets very, very, very messey, because you're talking about a lot of different things, and you should probably then have a bunch of different articles. Just as you would (and do) for Calvanism and Islam. :) S  B Harris 00:34, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes,.Harris, I know you're claiming all sarcasm is irony (note: what was that?) But if you're trying to claim sarcasm is always defined by dramatic irony at the point when it's uttered, but need have nothing in common with what verbal irony.looks like - innuendo, double meanings, hinted contradictions and word play - then that's a surprising thesis and one you should defend in a Ph.D. Strausszek (talk) 01:05, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, no. The audience of course would like to stand up and say: "Romeo! Wait! Take a chill pill and don't do anything rash!" In dramatic irony the audience is forced to be passive. But that is true in historical irony, as well! Example: the secret service protected JFK poorly from sniper assassination, because all presidents had been previously assassinated at very close range, by pistol. But after JFK, they focused on keeping an angry citizen sniper from killing Oswald, letting reporters and everybody else come and go and get close, without search, but going so far as to procure a bulletproof truck to transfer Oswald between buildings 2 days later, so that an angry Texan didn't pick him off with a rifle. They did such a good job that he was vulnerable ONLY to the sort of attack that had killed all presidents before JFK, and of course, that's exactly what got him-- the only thing that could have done it, in the middle of that many cops. And which would have been protected against, had he not killed JFK the way he had. Have you never had the fantasy of making a time machine to make these guys aware of the sheer childishness of their following only the LAST bad thing? And yes, the circumstances of Oswald's assassination are very ironic, but there is no sarcasm. There's just us, the historical audience, percieving the irony but unable to do a thing to change a second of it. No, of course sarcasm is not DEFINED by dramatic irony at the point where it is uttered, but a type of dramatic irony is surely the inspiration of much sarcasm! For instance, If we put you in a time machine and sent you back to Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963, nobody would believe you about their foolishness. And I'm sure that would have you resorting to angry sarcasm, Casandra style, in no time at all. Verbal irony verbalizes the sense of something being drastically "wrong," but the thing that is wrong always seems to be that somebody is clueless. Otherwise, no point in speaking your mind about it. S B Harris 03:04, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, of course sarcasm is not DEFINED by dramatic irony at the point where it is uttered, but a type of dramatic irony is surely the inspiration of much sarcasm!


 * I suppose "much sarcasm" still really means "any kind of sarcasm" here? But you're basically claiming that dramatic irony must entail a pulling away of a veil of deception that's been put in place relating to those precise circumstances by somebody else's will, and which he (or history, God, Shakespeare etc, if we're talking of terms of that kind of thing) has actively tried to trick you into believing. That's the contradiction your view needs to make it fit your idea of the root cause of irony: ignorance kept in place and heightened by another. But many of the examples Myrvin and I have been citing don't fit that. Mr Perry hasn't been mounting an elaborate cover-up, through lying on that matter, of the plain fact that 150 miles is longer and more expensive than 40 miles. rather he has been trying to keep it out of sight, to keep the talk turned to other angles and dwarf the issue of that distance - and likely tried to make himself appear indispensable to the family he was going to move.


 * Dunya isn't deceived about the fact that she might get raped; she's just as aware of it as Svidrigaylov and she's even the first one to bring up the word when he says he has "lost the key" and can't let her out. He's not really telling her anything she didn't know, except he's confirming that he's enough of an amoral brute to use the situation to the full, something she suspected beforehand anyway. So he is sarcastic but there's no square contrast between truth and an opposite deception that one part tried to engineer. Svidrigaylov has been trading on her good will and her wish to help her brother and then itr turns out she has been putinng herself in a dangerous position, and he tells her with a triumphant smirk. That's not any kind of irony, but it *is* sarcasm' The fact that I am not quoting Constance Garnett's translation dosn't matter a great deal, you can check the scene in any translation that's accessible to you: even if the precise word sarcasm isn't mentioned in your text, his tone is clearly a prime example of what we understand as sarcasm, back then and now.


 * In the same way, when HAL tells Dave "Without a helmet, I think you'll find that rather difficult" (as you suggested, he means it's 'impossible' to get past the air lock and into the ship) he isn't telling Dave anthing he was ignorant of. Dave knows the ship and its security, the controls on how to get in and out. And HAL hasn't put those locks in place, he didn't even tell Dave to leave the ship. But at the moment of speaking., Dave is probably both confused, determined to get in and feeling an adrenalin rush. The last thing he needs to hear is the machine, which he now realizes killed his friend and is planning to kill him too, telling him that the systems will keep him out. That kind of top-down speaking, or denunciation, is part pof what makes sarcsm but it doesn't have to rely on anything the other part had been inverting by means of falsehood. Sometimes the nature oif a situation, or a talk, means that things are kept oyut of sight by someone or that they are considered off limits to bring up.


 * Some way back in this thread, I kind of thought we were discussing the relation of verbal irony to sarcasm, but now you're saying sarcasm always happens against a backdrop of dramatic (not merely situational) irony. Or perhaps simulates dramatic irony. Well, dramatic irony always has a real or imaginary author, who constructed the set-up frp the events and worked out the deception, which is then torn up by a swing to the opposite side, right? Well, I can't see that srtands up for many of the examples of sarcasm here or spoken in everyday life, and that kind of straight, diametrical contrast often plays a minimal part in verbal irony too. So if you're claiming that all irony must get in under the uimbrella of dramatic irony and the contradictions it rests on, then not really.


 * Did I mention "being inspired by" dramatic irony is not the same as having anyhthing essential in common with it? Well, I have now.Strausszek (talk) 11:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree (and think it's a nice summary) that a lot of verbal irony is inspired by the need to keep within social rules, by not mentioning unpleasant facts directly, such as making accusations of intended deception (especially from somebody who holds power over you, or whose guilt you're not sure of). But the fact that such an accusation, or open disagreement, is finally directly employed, need not necessarily mean irony has disappeared--it still remains embedded in the past. If irony is abandoned and one party finally speaks plainly (the rape accusation), the previous ironic situation remains. Both verbal irony and sarcasm can serve as forms of emphasis of facts, like an exclamation point. Both attempt to emphasize the intelligence and awareness of the speaker, who is going beyond a single statement of contradiction (which might have sufficed). Verbal irony seeks to do this without confrontation (hence its utility), whereas sarcasm's point is confrontation (where its utility is in its sting). If verbal irony is judo, sarcasm is karate, but they both require more skill than a simple contraverting statement. I would not, in this vein, assume that Dave Bowman in 2001 knows all along that he doesn't have his helmet. After HAL points out sarcastically that he's forgotten it, he takes a look and sees that indeed he HAS forgotten it. Forget that HAL is a machine and regard him as a personality, and you see that HAL's remark is delivered here in a cutting fashion, as punishment for Dave's lying to him, and treating him like a stupid child, or a farm animal which can be put to sleep if it becomes a problem. HAL's first remarks to Dave are ironic, but as Dave continues to lie to him, he finally goes scarcastic before cutting Dave off completely:


 * Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
 * HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. [I'm sorry? Beginning of irony]
 * Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
 * HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. ["I think?" Irony here in not saying anything yet directly.]
 * Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL. [straight statement. Dave is still clueless]
 * HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. [finally, a direct statement]
 * Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL? [Doesn't contradict HAL; but this is a lie by implication.]
 * HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move. [Straight statement. Astronauts are like lawyers-- we know they lie whenever their lips move out of our earshot.]
 * Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock. [Threat by implication]
 * HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. [Sarcastic punishment for the threat, emphasizing HAL's superior intellect in seeing several moves ahead in this chess match].

There's very little dramatic irony here, as the audience doesn't know Dave is missing his helmet before Dave does. There is dramatic irony, however, in the fact that we heard Dave and Frank agree to disconnect HAL under certain circumstances, and we saw HAL watch their lips. So we know something HAL does and they don't. And we're set up expectationally for HAL going nuts by a hubristic comment that absolutely begs for a historically ironic interpretation:


 * Interviewer: HAL, you have an enormous responsibility on this mission, in many ways perhaps the greatest responsibility of any single mission element. You're the brain, and central nervous system of the ship, and your responsibilities include watching over the men in hibernation. Does this ever cause you any lack of confidence?
 * HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

Right. Anytime a computer tells you its incapable of error, you'd better expect that there's a pretty big problem about to come up-- like it will deliberately cut off all communication from Earth because its conscience is bothering it, not considering what that will do to the human crew, which will be left without any com-link. (This is presented as a straight error in the film, but a psychological problem caused by beaurocracy and mania for secrecy in the novel).

Anyway, if you really don't like my attempt to explain dramatic irony in the context of the other "types," of irony, okay, but I suggest then a separate article about dramatic. And the same for sarcasm if you don't think it's always ironic (which means you shouldn't just discuss it in the irony article as a subset). But let me note again that your insistance on seeing some sarcasm as not being ironic (even though I think you agree that sarcasm is always based on a cutting demonstration of somebody else's ignorant view of the world, including incompetant attempts to deceive somebody who isn't deceived) then you're missing yet one more chance to see the unity in all these uses of the same word. S B Harris 17:19, 11 May 2010 (UTC)