Oxyironic

I have had a few articles published (or republished) in on-line newspapers such as the Conversation and the Guardian, as well as more specialist blog sites.

One thing I have noted from the reader comments that followed my articles is that commenting is mostly embarked upon by people without any apparent sense of irony.

I once made the mistake (as the author of the original article) of replying to a comment or two with a bit of irony.None of it stuck, not a bit. And to add insult to injury, some of the commentators were also clearly loopy.

Now, of course, I don’t reply to comments at all. Nor do I read them usually.

Segue … I found an academic study on irony and these guys did some experiments that showed:

(1) people do not need to recognize irony to comprehend what speakers mean by their use of ironic statements,

(2) understanding irony does not require that people see these statements as violating norms of cooperative communication,

(3) people find statements to be especially ironic that allude to or echo societal norms or expectations, and

(4) people can understand statements as being ironic because of the situation even though speakers do not intend their utterances to be understood as irony.

These results would have me believe that irony is a ‘free set of steak knives’ intended solely for the amusement of the creator and with no other benefit.

So maybe the commenting readers of my articles weren’t as autistic as I had thought?

Maybe they just chose at some point in their development as children to ignore irony as a superfluous flourish of the egocentrics.

Well I don’t care. If people lack irony in their system then I reckon they are missing out on a lot of subtly that adds richness and meaning to communications.

The idea that ‘people do not need to recognize irony to comprehend what speakers mean by their use of ironic statements’ is oxymoronic to me.

But then again the study was undertaken in Holland where irony isn’t generally practised so it is possible that the researchers completely fucked it up.

Which brings me to the punch line. I have decided to coin a new word: