This chapter offers a “conceptual geography” of the ways irony is expressed and understood through several representations of irony, as seen, for example, in fiction and film. Currie draws the careful distinction between cases where an event is represented as being ironic without the event itself being ironic (e.g., a film scene may be constructed to express irony without the scene itself necessarily being an example of situational irony). Dramatic irony, for example, often succeeds because of our knowing something that the characters do not. But the characters’ lack of knowledge is only a pointer to the irony and is not what actually constitutes the irony. Many so-called instance of verbal irony are “expressive,” but not really “communicative,” because they are expressive of an ironic state of mind without a speaker specifically aiming to communicate irony. Currie’s chapter dives into many of these complexities, which are too often ignored in theoretical discussions and explications of irony. His overarching aim is to raise our awareness about what should be counted as irony and what “should be abandoned as the product of an inflated vocabulary.”

Films offer many interesting examples of irony in action. This chapter highlights the extent to which filmmakers create scenes that convey a range of both situational and verbal ironies. Films can express many types of irony (e.g., Charlie Chaplin films sometimes alerts viewers to ironic situations that the film character, Chaplin, is himself unaware of). Several of MacDowell’s arguments explicitly stand in contrast to Greg Currie’s claims that irony in film is rather limited. This chapter goes into many detailed examples of possible irony in films, including various cases of parody and dramatic irony, which greatly extend our understanding of the complexities of irony in both film and ordinary life. He later focuses on the larger, unresolved, question of whether films “contain” irony (i.e., as a property of films) or create conditions for viewers to infer their own ironic interpretations and experience particular emotional reactions (i.e., irony is an “effect” from films but not actually a property of films). MacDowell concludes that films offer viewers “invitations” to recognize an intended irony as being part of an artwork, even if that may not happen to all audiences.

This chapter describes the main themes of the volume, including “the scope of irony” (the diverse ways that irony is manifested in human experience), “irony’s impact” (e.g., the complex ways irony affects both personal and social life), “irony in linguistic communication,” “irony, affect, and related figures,” and “irony in expressive, multimodal contexts.” Taking a close look at chapters from different sections of the volume illustrates some of the incredibly diverse ways of studying, and writing, about irony in human life. We urge readers to pay close attention to the examples discussed, methods employed by different scholars, the way their arguments unfold, and their larger aims to address the ways irony and thought are closely intertwined. And we should remain open to being “shaken up” by what is read for the wide world of irony scholarship can disrupt our preconceived notions about the meaning and functions of irony exactly in the ways that irony itself can “piece illusions” about how we see ourselves, each other, and the world around us.