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How can I find out what Irony has been used in a sentence?

jNerd
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  • OK. I looked up in three dictonarys and understood the meaning, but I did not find answers to the second part of my question...Can you please help? – jNerd Feb 28 '15 at 05:58
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    @LittleEva: I think OP is not asking about a specific example or sentence, but how to spot irony in general? – Stephie Feb 28 '15 at 08:03

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The answer to the question "How?" is "By analogy." That is, taking into account one's understanding of irony, or looking at some canonical examples of ironic statements or situations, one may try to figure out whether the element that constitutes irony is present at all in the statements or situations in question.

Even if we all agree on what irony is, there is perhaps no easy way to find it out, or even classify its types using one's favourite irony guide. Irony is not something that pertains to sentences per se (or words, or phrases, or any larger chunks of speech or text). It depends on situation and context. Indeed some have it that a double audience is inherent in irony, which hints that it pertains to a particular understaning of the situation at hand. (The linked Wikipedia article also suggests some types of irony.)

The ability to recognize irony in utterances has perhaps, so far, been reserved to humans. Computers cannot do it (although googling "irony detection" or similar yields some valiant efforts), which is eloquent: there is no set of instructions that would enable one to recognize irony. Rather, in our attempts to machine-detect irony, we make computers do what we do ourselves: search for patterns, using ample data.

anemone
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