User talk:MonkeyPundit

Welcome!

Hello, MonkeyPundit, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes ( ~ ); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place  before the question. Again, welcome! William M. Connolley (talk) 18:35, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
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Irony
Interesting how people have a different take on irony. I'd say in all irony there are two degrees of knowledge or belief or understanding - the greater and the lesser. In all cases, the more the two messages or situations or beliefs or understandings contradict one another the stronger is the irony. In verbal irony, there are two meanings, M(A) and M(B), present at the same time. Which meaning is understood depends on which code the listener is aware of, A or B. The person aware only of code A (e.g. the words taken alone - "literally") understands it to mean one thing, M(A). The person detecting code B (= code A + (e.g.) the extra inflection that undermines the literal meaning) understands the message to mean something else, M(B). The person insensitive to the inflection picks up less information than the more sensitive listener who typically understands both messages.(Irony depends on someone being conscious of the discrepancy between the two meanings.) The extra inflection could be many things (e.g. a wink, a tone of voice, the implausibility of a literal meaning); it can function as extra substantive information or be an indication that the information given is to be decoded in a different way. In dramatic irony, the character understands a situation, A, to mean one thing, M(A), the audience knowing more (situation A + extra knowledge) understands things differently M(B). In cosmic irony, the extra knowledge ("the true fate") is gained later (by the character and/or the audience), even though it could be seen in retrospect that it was "fated to be so all along". In situational irony, a belief ("that A is the case"), based on a certain set of assumptions, is shown to be wrong (indeed generally "the opposite of right") in the light of a set of circumstances not previously contemplated (the world is more complicated than we think). Tsinfandel (talk) 01:11, 24 January 2011 (UTC)