In this talk, Vlad and I will present a synthetic approach to irony, which we believe that - at least in part - offers something new to this old topic that has been discussed since Socrates. It is also the blueprint for the first paper in his PhD thesis on irony. And also a kind of practice talk for our presentation at this coming conference: https://nordicsemiotics.org/nass-tallinn-2025/ So welcome to the room, or else to the zoom link (with cameras on), from 15:00 for introductions. Those who wish to join to Valvet for the customary post-seminar when we have onsite talks, please let me know by by May 12.

Irony is a popular topic within pragmatics, where it is most often discussed if ironic utterances like “What a smart person you turned out to be!” should be primary understood as “echoing” an idea that the speaker does not believe in or as “pretending” to be someone the speaker does not identify with. In both cases, there is an attitude of dissociation: “a crucial aspect of what is communicated” (Barnden, 2021, p. 141). Although some authors have proposed unified accounts of “verbal irony” (Popa-Wyatt, 2014), it remains unclear how to integrate so-called “situational irony”, where there is no speaker at all, and it is rather some state-of-affairs that is construed to be ironic. Ruiz de Mendoza and Lozano-Palacio (2021) have, in fact, attempted to integrate situational irony into a unified model, claiming that “irony is a single phenomenon involving a cross-scenario clash giving rise to attitude of dissociation” (ibid: 232). 

We applaud these authors’ effort to find the essence of the phenomenon of irony, and their acknowledging that the term “verbal irony” is inadequate and should be substituted with “communicated irony”, since an ironic utterance can just as well be expressed in, for example, a thumbs-up gesture (when someone has done something embarrassing). However, we argue that their common denominator of a “cross-scenario clash” is much too general: this is present in many cases, without ensuring irony. In our presentation, we propose that irony of any kind is a semiotic phenomenon that essentially, or at least prototypically, involves a sense of diminishment when something good or neutral at first glance turns out bad.  The “something” in question could be an event, as in situational irony, or a mono- or polysemiotic utterance, in communicated irony. “Good” and “bad” are of course evaluative terms, implying perspective talking and construal. The key difference is that in situational irony, it is “fate” or “life” that is (metaphorically) construed as being ironical, with classic cases like Oedipus, or modern ones like those in Alanis Morissette’s song Ironic.In our presentation, we elaborate the concept of irony based on the idea of diminishment and demonstrate its essentially (poly)semiotic and creative nature, often requiring multiple levels of interpretation.

Barnden, J. (2021). Metaphor and irony: Messy when mixed. In A. Soares da Silva (Ed.), Figurative language–intersubjectivity and usage (pp. 139-174). John Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Popa-Wyatt, M. (2014). Pretence and echo: Towards an integrated account of verbal irony. International Review of Pragmatics, 6(1), 127-168. 

Ruiz de Mendoza, F. J., & Lozano-Palacio, I. (2021). On verbal and situational irony. In A. S. da Silva (Ed.), Figurative Language – Intersubjectivity and Usage (Vol. 11, pp. 213-240). John Benjamins Publishing Company.