Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Ironic Or Not

Alanis Morsette came out with a song several years ago called, "Isn't It Ironic." I remember a lot of the Lit Heads at the time criticizing that none of the situations mentioned in the song were ironic, but fit the common misuse of the term ironic. I feel that I often misuse the term, since I thought the things in that song were ironic. Maybe it's ironic that the song had no irony, or maybe I'm misusing that too. From my memories of literature classes, irony is defined as something happening that is the opposite of what was expected to happen. Example, a guy I work with is keeping emails to prove that he warned the CIO of the incapability of the new backup system to successfully backup the email servers. The irony is that he won't need the emails until a catastrophe happens where the email server is lost, and there are no sufficient backups. At that point he won't have his emails proving this. Is that irony?

Dictionary.com says this about irony.
"The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend."
I thought that was sarcasm.

In any case, I guess I agree that the song was more about Murphy's Law than irony. Such as a man who was afraid to fly and never would, finally flies, and his plane crashes; or rain on your wedding day, black fly in your chardonnay, etc.

2 comments:

Greg said...

I may misuse the term myself, after having read that.

Greg said...

I may misuse the term myself, after having read that.