Reading Irony

The most useful book on reading irony is Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of Irony (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), although theorists argue about his philosophical assumptions, and especially about the distinction he tries to make between stable and unstable irony. (If meaning, as deconstructionists would have it, is generally or inherently unstable, Booth's distinction of stable and unstable irony seems false.) Booth (pp. 47-86) describes the following signs that a work is ironic.

1. Straightforward warnings in the author's own voice.

2. Known error proclaimed.

3. Conflict of facts within the work.

4. Conflicts of belief.

He also describes a number of internal and contextual clues.

I have found the meaning theory of Paul Grice (Studies in the Way of Words [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989] 22-40--reprinting earlier material) to be useful in approaching irony. Grice argues that there is a contractual relationship between speakers and listeners, based on the listener's assumptions that the speaker's utterance will provide sufficient but not excessive information, that it will provided information believed to be true and supported by adequate evidence, that it will provide relevant information, and that it will do so clearly, unambiguously, concisely, and in an orderly manner. When there are obvious violations of this cooperative principle of communication--violations that the speaker might have been expected to recognize--the listener might assume that the speaker is incompetent or, for some reason, opting out of the communicative contract. The listener must then consider the possibility that the speaker's violation is in itself an effort to communicate. Thus the following interpretive process (I argue) seems to follow from Grice:

1. Readers recognize that a violation has taken place.

2. They infer that the speaker is not opting out (speakers seldom do in literary works, or else there would be no point in writing them).

3. They infer that the speaker is aware of the violation and not merely making a mistake.

4. They infer that the speaker, as they do, recognizes the specific and generic assumptions in effect (for example, that an argument should be directed against another position that people actually hold).

5. They must then hypothesize plausible meanings that fit both the offensive utterance and the cooperative principle, and that seem relevant to the context of the statement.

Thus when Swift's arguer against abolishing Christianity apologizes for stating an unpopular position, the fact that no one actually proposed the position he attacks and that it certainly was not popular will lead us to step 5, since we recognize that the first four assumptions must be true. When we check the notes, we realize from the context that he must be talking about the Test Act. But even if he is, his position still violates the principle of providing clear, concise, relevant, and not excessive information. Therefore, we recognize that he must be talking not only about the Test Act but more general beliefs and behaviors.

In addition to Wayne Booth's book, the following works on irony (among many) are useful.

Dane, Joseph A. The Critical Mythology of Irony. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991.

Enright, D. J. The Alluring Problem: An Essay on Irony. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Hutcheon, Linda. Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Knox, Norman. The Word Irony and its Context, 1500-1755. Durham: Duke University Press, 1961.

Mellor, Anne Kostelanetz. English Romantic Irony. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

Muecke, D. C. The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen, 1969.

---. Irony and the Ironic. 2nd ed. London: Methuen, 1982.

Swearingen, C. Jan. Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

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