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Comment by subjectHarold | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why you think I was being sarcastic. Irony isn't the same thing as sarcasm. I made no comment, implied or otherwise, about the person I was replying to. The comment was about the book, the fact that many people haven't studied Russian history, and the humour that results from the many possible interpretations...which works well when you have to explain it.

Btw, you don't need to interrogate everything for hidden meaning. Jokes about misinterpretation and misunderstandings are common, they aren't some kind of Mao-era public struggle session. The reason they are funny is because they happen to everyone and because interpretation is so personal. There is no one interpretation of Animal Farm that is correct...but some are more humorous than others (intentional).

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That was clearly sarcasm. A directed one and thus patronising. Irony happens when there is a contrast between intent and effect, like "the man had to bring his car to the repair shop after driving over a pothole. He is ironically responsible for maintaining the roads"

Truly, most of those who struggle to speak it and write it do not deserve the English language, any more than their great teacher Alanis Morrisette. The situation you describe is not irony. Irony is a property of communication, not of coincidence.

An event can still be situationally, or cosmically ironic even if it's not in fiction. if you really want it to be a property of communication, then think of the communication as being between the universe, or God and the subject.

More importantly, English is defined by common usage, and the usage of irony in describing an unexpected combination of real events has been common for hundreds of years. I believe this probably comes from people's common belief in fate, or that their lives are part of some broader story. Under this mindset, it makes perfect sense to use terms from literature to describe phenomena of life. And your insistence that irony is a property of communication is satisfied.

Words have multiple senses, and the ones from common usage are just as valid as the ones from academic usage, though they may be harder to pin down.

This is why it is important for words to have specific meanings. This muddling of "irony" is at least partially responsible for the narrative fallacy that you describe. The universe does not care about our subjective experience. "Unlikely" events occur in everyone's life, but not because the Fates are taking poetic license with that life. If the roads should be better maintained or if they are maintained much better than they should be, we won't know from repairs to the local road superintendent's car.

I love new usages that make English more capable or more entertaining. I detest those that impoverish our discourse and thus our thinking.

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