In her 1996 hit “Ironic,” Alanis Morissette famously sings that irony is “like rain on your wedding day” and “a black fly in your chardonnay.” Sorry ...

Although verbal irony is one of the most common types used in casual conversation and storytelling, it can be easy to mix it up with other types of irony. Understanding how it differs can be helpful ...

Adapted from "Irony and Sarcasm" by Roger Kreuz (MIT Press, 2020). Reprinted with permission from MIT Press. In February 1996, Alanis Morissette released the fourth single from “Jagged Little Pill,” ...

Have you ever found yourself about to say “that’s ironic,” only to stop yourself – unsure whether you were using the word correctly? If you’re like most people, you probably know irony when you see it ...

Like simile, metaphor, personification and hyperbole, irony is a very useful figure of speech. Writers and other creative workers regularly make use of it, including comedians. It can, however, also ...

A recent hipster-hating New York Times column got this pop-cultural moment exactly backwards. Cultural critics love hypothesizing about hipsters. And certainly hipsters make for useful lab rats if you ...

On September 18, 2001, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, declared, “I think it’s the end of the age of irony.” He was trashed for the sentiment. Only a month after the event, Michiko Kakutani ...

Contrary to popular belief, “irony” is actually not a term invented by Alanis Morissette to describe First World inconveniences, nor is the greatest example of the technique found on a cotton shirt ...