Is it or isn’t it ironic?

I was listening to the radio the other day when they played Ironic by Alanis Morissette. Being somewhat pedantic this irritates me as it should, more accurately, have been called Sod’s Law. Admittedly this would have caused some serious scansion problems but would have safeguarded the blood pressure of many a language purist.

In fairness, irony can be a tricksy minx and difficult to pin down. Students of Eng. Lit. pepper their essays liberally with such phrases as “it is ironic that…” or “the ironic tone of…” to indicate a nebulous idea that fails to identify itself fully in the student’s alcohol marinated brain. In fact, I was once told by a relatively senior purveyor of knowledge, that irony and ironic were good essay words to use when nothing else seemed to fit – a bit like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (although I’ve personally never seen this used in an essay, possibly because irony is easier to spell!)

Poor misunderstood irony.

In an attempt to explain my understanding of this strangely elusive concept, I would like to cite 2 examples:

1.       A conversation overheard during lunch at a writing conference…

Woman:     What was your talk about this morning?

Man:          Oh…er…I can’t remember. Isn’t that silly? Um…goodness…Yes that’s it. “How to make your                   work stand out from the crowd.”

If the talk had been on character development I wouldn’t have nearly choked on my pasta salad. But the IRONY of forgetting a talk about how to be unforgettable, amused me. A lot.

2   An incident on the outskirts of the concourse seating area in Waterloo station of Costa Coffee: A blind person using a white stick tripped over the guide dog belonging to a blind person sitting drinking coffee.

Now, if the stick user had tripped over ANYTHING else it would have been just an unfortunate accident. The fact that it was a Guide Dog (not so much the blind leading the blind as the blind impeding the blind) makes it ironic AND HILARIOUS. In fact, I embarrassed my companions with my spontaneous guffaw – hey, I’m a doolally*. I have the right.

So, going back to the much maligned Miss Morissette, here are some suggestions that, as an English tutor, I would have scrawled in obnoxious red ink on her homework:

A traffic jam when you’re already late (for a road planning meeting?)

A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break (working for Imperial Tobacco?)

It’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife (in the canteen of a                                                                              knife factory?)

                           Must try harder, Alanis. See me.

(*please refer to a future post regarding names and stereotypes for a full explanation of this)