This chapter examines the complicated relationship between irony and humor, primarily from the perspective of neo-Gricean pragmatics (e.g., an ironic utterance flouts/overtly violates the maxim of Quality). Not all irony is humorous, of course, in part because of the highly polysemous nature of irony. In this light, it is important to distinguish irony that is humorous from irony that is related to sarcasm, teasing, parody, and even playfulness. Dynel offers a formal test by which one may determine what forms of humor may be specifically viewed as “irony.” She also describes some of the reasons why irony sometimes expresses humor, focusing on the importance of contrast and incongruity in judgments of ironic humor, but extending this emphasis to include surprise, absurdity, and creativity as key facets of humorous irony. Even blindness to irony can elicit humorous responses in some interpersonal situations. Dynel’s chapter also considers some of the intricacies in the ways speakers use humorous irony to position themselves in various interactions with others.

This chapter considers two possible explanations for the paradoxes.One is Lawvere’s diagonal theorem from category theory. Theother is the inclosure schema, proposed by Priest as the structureof many paradoxes and a step toward a uniform solution to theparadoxes. Inclosure suggests that paradoxes arise at the limits ofthought because the limits can be surpassed, and also not. Theconsequences of accepting Priest’s proposal are explored, andit is found that, from a thoroughly dialetheic perspective, (i) somelimit phenomena cannot be contradictory, on pain of absurdity, and(ii) true contradictions are better thought of as local, not“limit,” phenomena. Dialetheism leads back from theedge of thought, to the inconsistent in the everyday.

This chapter shows that the book’s core transactional techniques are viable under existing law, and it defends the book’s analysis as a matter of statutory interpretation. It also provides various alternative transactional means to achieve similar goals, both as practical alternatives and to show the conceptual robustness of the book’s main proposed transactional technique.