My kid's teacher taught them the Alanis definition of "ironic".

In My Humble Opinion
1

:smack:

WhyKid (13) loves irony. He gets it, identifies it when he sees it in books, TV and movies (he’s been raised on a steady diet of Joss Whedon, so it comes naturally to him). He came home yesterday and said, “Mom, my teacher told us something today that I don’t think it right. She said that if a starving family was given a can of tuna fish, but no can opener, that’s ironic.” He continued, “Then she told us about a song [yes, THAT song] that listed a bunch of ironic things, but I don’t think they were.”

He’s right, isn’t he?

I was first taught that irony is when the literal meaning of something is opposite the intended meaning. Alternately, it can be when an expected outcome is not achieved, and the opposite occurs.

So the cute perky blond girl walking down a darkened hallway with a slightly sinister looking boy…and SHE turns out to be a vampire - that’s ironic. Dramatic irony, IIRC.

“Have a nice day!” can be ironic, especially when followed by, “Asshole!” Verbal irony, which may or may not be the same as sarcasm.

Tuna fish + no can opener, or “A no smoking sign on your cigarette break” or “Ten thousand spoons, when all you need is a knife” aren’t ironic but…unfortunate, maybe?

He wantes me to write a gently worded, anonymous email to her, but I want to be absolutely sure I have my definitions correct before I do it.

(And just before school this morning, he pointed out that her teaching these things as “ironic” was, in fact, ironic, since the expected outcome of a teacher teaching is the passing on of correct information about irony. Woah. Is that, like, meta-ironic or something?)

So should I write an email? What should I say? It’s the third day of school, so I don’t want to throw down a gauntlet and get us off on the wrong foot here, but I do want her to correct her mistake and set these students straight.

2

I would write the email just to ensure that she knows the real meaning of irony. I think your definition is correct. Alanis is way off base in her definition and examples. I would also advise the teacher that the only pop music that should be used to educate our youth is The Buggles “Video Killed the Radio Star.”

Sgt Schwartz

3

Well, a song about irony in which all of the examples given are wrong, I think that’s pretty ironic, isn’t it? It’s just unfortunate that it’s been played to death.

4

Your kid is. right. Things that are simply tragic or unfortunate aren’t ironic. The word is hard to define but I more closely agree with your second definition of an expected event occurring over the much more expected one.

An example is a child that is a very gifted athlete but he happens to be a decent student as well and his parents and teachers force him to focus on the academic route because everyone knows that college is much more of a sure thing than pro sports. He follows their advice but senior year he gets in a car accident and suffers minor brain damage that makes him unable to go to college. His body intact however and he makes a decent run at the pros but the relative lack of experience sacrificed for his studies make him barely unable to succeed at that either.

5

I would think that the teach was right. It sounds like Situational Irony to me, or the Irony of Fate. I am sure someone will come along and help a little more than me. I have no time for a good search.

6

I hadn’t previously heard of the song in question, but a quick Googling later I must concur. Ms. Morissette might want to invest in a dictionary. Unfortunate and ironic aren’t synonyms. If I were you, I’d go ahead and e-mail that teacher with a couple of links like this one.

7

Send your kid’s teacher a transcript of this, from Irish comedian Ed Byrne:

8

The tuna-fish-with-no-can-opener example could be interpreted as Tragic Irony, as well as a few lines from “Ironic” – the plane crashing with the guy who’s afraid to fly, etc. However, “a black fly in your chardonnay” and “rain on your wedding day” aren’t ironic at all, they are merely unfortunate.

“A death row pardon ten minutes too late” isn’t ironic, but it could be made ironic if the inmate received a pardon, got released, and was killed by an axe-wielding maniac ten minutes later. (Actually, I’ve often misheard the lyric as “a death row hard-on ten minutes too late” – would that be considered ironic?)

The song itself could be a use of Dramatic Irony, in which the audience knows something that the narrator is blissfully unaware of – in this case, that the song “Ironic” isn’t ironic at all.

WhyKid’s teacher could be using Socratic Irony (also known as Socratic Method or Socratic Dialogue) in which the teacher feigns ignorance about a subject in order to teach it…but if she’s truly ignorant (as she seems) that doesn’t count.

It’s the nature of language for words to change their meaning over time, normally by people who use the word without knowing what it means. For example, the word “enormity” actually means “evil”, but people commonly use it as a synonym for “enormousness” – so often, in fact, that linguists admit this one’s a losing battle. So if “irony” loses its original meaning and becomes synonymous with “unfortunate” or “tragic”, that would truly be ironic. :cool:

9

KGS already hit this, but I’ll do it again. Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something that the characters don’t. IIRC, the scene you’re referring to was meant to catch both the boy and the audience by surprise.

Anyway, your kid is right.

[hijack]
Something that I’ve never heard discussed before: How is it that the guy who was afraid to fly waited his whole damn life to make that flight?
[/hijack]

10

He’s a stunt pilot now.

11

To be fair, she never claims it’s irony, does she? IIRC, the lyric goes, "And isn’t it ironic…don’t you think?’
I guess the answer is “no.” :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Thanks for your thoughts. The tuna-with-no-can-opener just didn’t seem…I dunno…BIG enough to warrant the term “situational irony.” Although a lot of sites define Situational Irony as synomous with Dramatic Irony (like this one) , I was taught that it was closer to Cosmic Irony, as follows from here :

So if a person was starving on a deserted island and a flock of seagulls flew overhead, dropping a half-eaten fish which is quickly eaten by the starving man - who then drops dead of an undiagnosed seafood allergy - that’d be ironic.

Or, from here:

It seems like a lot of Alanis’ examples are attempts at Situational Irony which fall short and only succeed in being unfortunate.
Thanks for the clarification on dramatic irony. Yes, that scene was indeed simply a surprise, not ironic. Other later scenes in which we see the same cute perky blond girl seduce unknowing men only to feed off them are dramatic irony though, right?

13

D’oh, I read that hijack wrong. I thought it said “How IS that guy…” Now how IS IT that THE guy…"

In which case, you’re right, that doesn’t make sense.

14

Y’know, I coudn’t really say. It seems to me that part of irony must somehow involve the “punch” you get when it’s triggered. Once it’s been revealed that the girl’s a vampire, the whole thing loses its punch, and it becomes just more of the same. But I really don’t know. A little help here?

15

Incidentally, for a similar scene involving dramatic irony, I submit the perky blonde in “Supernatural” who befriends Sam. Or was it Dean? No, he was Dean in “Gilmore Girls,” but now he’s Sam and his brother’s Dean. Anyway, she befriends Sam, then turns out to be a demon-possessed killing machine, but neither of the brothers know it until the end of the season.

The only problem is that, for plotting purposes, it didn’t make shit’s worth of difference whether the brothers knew it or not, so again the ironic aspect is deflated.

On the whole, maybe it’s best to get away from the horror genre and stick with somebody like Malvolio when talking about dramatic irony.

16

Linguistically, the word “enormity” is pretty interesting. The original meaning of the word is, of course, large size. Hence it’s similarity to the word “enormous”. But over time, it began to be applied to things that weren’t enormous in size but rather in evil. This phenomenon is called “pejoration” - when a word acquires a more negative meaning than its original one. Of course, the word was always used with its original, size-related meaning as well; it’s just that it acquired two distinct meanings. I’m not quite sure why people hit upon one of those meanings - and particularly, why they hit on the one that has less historical validity - and declared it “correct” while declaring the other meaning “wrong”. But of course one can’t really expect much in the way of logic from people prescribing language usage.

At any rate, “linguists” do not protest such things at all, despite your implication. Linguists don’t go into battle to try to force people to use language in a particular way; linguistics is a science, and as with all sciences, it’s fundamentally based upon observation and explanation of the phenomena it explores. Linguists have no particular problem with either use of “enormity”; it’s only the silly people who have decided that “enormity” can only be used with its newer meaning that have a problem with people who continue to use it with its original sense.

17

If nothing else if would probably be a rather embarassing form of rigor mortis.

18

What if the guy *were * a vampire and the audience knows this. If, when he lures that cute blonde down that alleyway and *she * puts the bite on *him * we’d have a good example of irony.

19

Don’t teachers have access to dictionaries any more?

:rolleyes:

20

If you do correct the teacher via a gently worded, anonymous note, don’t put the period outside the quotation mark. A correction of this sort would be, well, ironic.