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,” ...

As the great British comic, Ricky Gervais once implied, England and America may not so much be divided by a common tongue, but by their distinctive use (and in the case of the Brits, their abuse) of ...

The cliché: Each year as we revisit 9/11, commentators and critics recall the "death of irony" that was widely trumpeted in the days after the attack. This year, the mentions, as with the 9/11 ...

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 ...

The apartment was furnished minimally, brimming with partygoers clumped into two semipermeable groups. One encircled the island of booze in the kitchen, the other scattered into overlapping clusters ...

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 ...