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,” ...

Irony has a special place in the human psyche. Otherwise mundane concepts suddenly come to life when they’re recognized to have an ironic quality. British comedian David Mitchell captures this ...

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 ...

From William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s “The Book of Mormon,” the power of irony transcends genres and ...

Irony is one of those things you kind of know when you see or hear it on screen, but it's much harder to define and put into layman's terms. But don't worry, we have you covered there. Today, we're ...

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 ...