We experience irony in various ways other than through language. This chapter describes how irony often emerges in different modalities of human expression (e.g., talk, gesture, music, photography, dance, art). People’s conscious realizations that something is irony do not completely capture many unconscious ironic conceptualizations, including acts that are unintentionally ironic. People also sometimes call these out for others to attend to and engage in divergent nonverbal ironic performances, all of which illustrate the importance of bodily experience in ironic thinking, language, and action. Gibbs et al. specifically argue that irony is as much an appraisal process through which people deal with incompatibilities in their varied experiences (i.e., the appraisal theory of irony), as it is a particular type of meaning product. People may not simply possess a single conception of irony that is applicable to all situations in the same way. Individuals may differ, for example, in whether they view two contrasting events as just correlated as opposed to having some causal relationship with one another. The varied ways we think about, and emotionally react to, contrasts between expectations and unfolding realities leads to a family resemblance of both unconscious and conscious realizations of irony.

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.”

Hypocrisy is also closely related to irony (i.e., a disparity of word and deed) and this chapter advances the claim that hypocrisy is really a form of situational irony, especially as it relates to moral judgments (e.g., not practicing what you preach). Shelley reviews past theories in philosophy and psychology (e.g., moral hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance) that offer insights into how people detect hypocrisy in others and even excuse it in themselves. But he goes on to outline his “bicoherence theory of situational irony” in which a situation is judged as “ironic” when it displays a bicoherent conceptual structure, adequate salience, and evokes an appropriate configuration of emotions. Bicoherence is important because it shows that while incoherence can be minimized, it cannot be eliminated from people’s understandings, despite their cognitive prowess and best efforts. Shelley considers numerous examples of hypocrisy, including ones in which something is explicitly called out as “hypocrisy,” to show its effectiveness in criticizing people for their shortcomings.

This chapter explores the ways irony unfolds in music. Turner and DiBernardo examine representative pop songs, both original compositions and cover versions, to suggest several ways that irony is created and perhaps detected by listeners. As they argue, “Musical irony requires an interpretive ear for hearing contradictory or disjunctive sounds (and lyrics) within a musical context.” But inferring irony from music involves a special challenge given that music lacks it own semantic or representational signification. Lyrics are clearly a driving force in expressing ironic intent, but instrumental sounds often interact with the spoken words to convey richer ironic complexes, including both rhetorical and situational ironies. Listeners may be especially attentive to the tension, or the discrepancy, between the musical form, style, or genre of a song (e.g., the upbeat, lyrical form in Randy Newman’s song “Political Science”) and its lyrical content (e.g., the use of weapons of mass destruction). Many musical ironies may be “post-modern” because of their self-referential style (e.g., not just criticizing others, but ourselves as well). This chapter offers a compelling, beautifully detailed, argument that “music is a largely underexplored wellspring of ironic activity.”

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.

Pictorial irony is another example of nonverbal irony. This chapter addresses the need for experimental work on these topics in light of the view that irony is deeply tied to human cognition and not just language. Katz examines different ways of distinguishing between irony and sarcasm, particularly in terms of “vector space theory,” which suggests that sarcasm is more aggressive, dark, and mocking than is irony. Additional empirical analyses note important distinctions in defining the notions of verbal vs. situational irony. Katz then applies his “constraint-satisfaction” model to create an open-ended list of visual features that likely signal the presence of irony or sarcasm in visual, including pictorial, displays. Katz argues that basic psychological processes involved in scene perception, which have deep evolutionary roots, are employed when people infer either sarcastic or ironic intents in pictures (including pictures with and without accompanying words). At the same time, similar psychological processes used in detecting pretense or echoic mention within language can also be adopted for understanding visual scenes as conveying sarcasm or irony. Expertise with some visual medium, such as painting, may enhance people’s abilities to readily interpret these as expressing irony in different ways.

Irony is a complex phenomenon that may rely on several different forms of thought which are routinely relied on in verbal and nonverbal communication. This chapter outlines a theory of the “cognitive operations” that underlie the possible production and understanding of ironic meaning. These cognitive operations (e.g., strengthening and mitigation, expansion and reduction) are critical in the expression and interpretation of many figures of speech (e.g., metaphor, metonymy) and may provide the basis for a more general theory of meaning construction. Mendoza Ibáñez focuses primarily in this chapter, however, on ironic echoing, which allows speakers to pretend to be in agreement with some previously stated utterance or presumed thought. He considers many of the formal complexities of ironic echoing to demonstrate their varying, often subtle, communicative effects. His analysis also suggests how attention to cognitive operations may provide the theoretical basis for unifying verbal and situational irony.