[From Bruce Nevin (2003.12.04 22:06 EST)]
Bruce Gregory (2003.12.02.1933)
O.K. O.K. I got it. Never assume anyone
can get a joke. In the futureI will clearly label statements intended to be ironic.
Jeeez…
Irony in email has a dismal record. It seems as though even overt forms
of humor have to be clearly indicated. Shoot the messenger, not the
recipient.
In this forum, why indulge irony anyway? Is it to expose the
misconceptions of others? Is it helpful to science to use words with
meanings different or even opposite from what is usual? If you see some
incongruity between professed principle and actual performance is it a
good thing merely to allude to it in so indirect a way? If a result is
unexpected, is it not best (in this forum) to say so in the most explicit
way? Or is there some aspect of irony that my reading of
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary
omits, that is:
1 : a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other’s false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning – called also Socratic irony
2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance
3 a (1) : incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2) : an event or result marked by such incongruity b : incongruity between a situation developed in a drama and the accompanying words or actions that is understood by the audience but not by the characters in the play – called also dramatic irony, tragic irony
Is it perhaps “Irony–that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise.” (Wallace Stegner)
/Bruce Nevin
P.S.
The context of that quotation:
Sympathy I have failed in, stoicism I have barely passed. But I have made straight “As” in irony–that curse, that evasion, that armor, that way of staying safe while seeming wise. One thing I have learned hard, if indeed I have learned it now: it is a reduction of our humanity to hide from pain, our own or others’. To hide from anything. That was Marian’s text. Be open, be available, be exposed, be skinless. Skinless? Dance around in your bones.
-- Wallace Stegner, _All the Little Live Things_ (1967)
By swallowing evil words unsaid, no one has ever harmed his stomach.
– Winston Churchill
···
At 07:35 PM 12/2/2003 -0500, Bruce Gregory wrote: