Firstly, isn't it sarcasm, not irony, when someone says "very funny" and she's clearly _not_ amused? Or when someone says "oh, sure, right" when you tell them you saw a flying pig?
I understood that a great example of irony was that the best-known song about irony does not describe a single ironic scene. Or if Jonas Salk had died of polio.
Secondly, the bit about "What are you doing here?" and "How much pepper do you need?!" - is this really language-specific? Like, if I run into someone at the last place I'd expect them to be, is there any language in which the question "What are you doing here?" would be understood other than "I'm very surprised to see you here" or "You're not supposed to be here"?
Sharks are beautiful animals that have gotten an unjustified bad rap because they have big teeth and Peter Benchley wrote a ridiculously inaccurate horror book about them. Who would love sharks? I do! Seeing a shark when I'm freediving is one of the best things ever.
As for "That will be the Pizza" when the door bell rings and you're expecting the pizza delivery, I have always said that. Maybe I'm older than you? Or from a different region. But I don't think it sounds stilted at all.
I wonder if John realizes what a cliche it has (had!) become to pick apart this song. In any case, I've always slightly disagreed with the piling-on: While rain on your wedding day, or a fly in your soup are clearly not irony, a person winning the lottery and dying the next day in a plane crash is a fine example. (Bonus points if the guy had never amounted to anything financially, and perhaps chased a lot of get-rich-quick schemes.)
John is great, and a lot smarter than me, but he seems to be confusing irony & sarcasm, at least AS THESE TERMS ARE COMMONLY USED. Language evolves, as John always teaches us, and I don't think we need to get bogged down in textbook definitions of these two terms, which (strangely? obsoletely?) make them seem much more similar than they really are, AS COMMONLY USED.
It's true both terms involve "opposites." But sarcasm simply means that someone doesn't mean what they are saying, in one manner or another. Irony is more situational, and involves "karma," usually the bad sort. No one uses "irony" anymore to refer to an utterance in which the opposite is meant. John's example of saying "nice day" when it's raining is, we've all decided, an example of sarcasm, not irony... no matter what the textbooks still say.
Actually, when someone says, "I'm out of gas," they are not saying, "Could you tell me where a gas station is?" They're saying, "Tell me where a gas station is." "Could you tell me where a gas station is?" is yet another construction (if I understand "construction" correctly). When I ask my husband, "Do you know what time it is?" he is likely to say, "Yes."
An observant Jewish friend of mine used this quirk. She would ride in an elevator but she wouldn't push any buttons (like taking advantage of lights in a room in you don't turn them on yourself) or explicitly ask someone to do so. So she would get in and ask, "Has anyone pushed 7?" (or whatever). The result, of course, was that someone would push 7, but she had not explicitly requested it.
As a Brit, I'm always confused as to what Americans are trying to get at when they talk about "irony". To me, an old man winning the lottery and then dying the next is absolutely ironic. Especially if he's been buying lottery tickets all his life. While saying "real funny" if someone's done something to annoy you is just sarcasm.
The part about "I'm out of gas" meaning "where is the gas station?" I actually took some linguistics courses, and I actually learned about Grice's maxims, and this is what I was trying to explain to people when a certain book called (I'm translating it roughly from the Hungarian) Non-violent Communication was being hailed as some kind of psychological interpersonal revolution. The essence of the book is say this not that in an effort to make language less passive-aggressive and thus non-violent I guess, and a few years ago when it was all the rage I told whoever would listen that that's just not how language works, we can't train people to say "would you kindly direct me to the nearest gas station" when it's natural to say "I'm out of gas" and that the book is essentially prescriptive linguistics masquerading as psychology and some people got offended, notably my former sister in law, although that's just her style :) But I'm wondering, is this a uniquely Hungarian thing, this desire to "tame" language for the sake of mental well-being? Because I see this (in my opinion) BS crop up in sort of self-helpy, woke contexts from time to time, one that comes to mind is a blogger who wrote about admonishing a coworker for saying: boy, I could sure go for a cup of coffee because in her opinion they were passive-aggressively trying to ger her to make it (maybe they were, I wasn't there)
"THE more you see THE more you know" reminded me of a line in a children's book, "Umbrella" by Taro Yashima. I ruined one page for my wife by commenting on the line "Instead, raindrops were jumping all over, like THE tiny people dancing". Saying "like tiny people dancing" is colorful imagery, "like the tiny people dancing" means you have actual people in mind, either literal tiny people or metaphorically tiny people ("the commoners").
In reality, of course, this is just a small slip by a non-native English speaker.
I wonder if there's something interesting enough here for an episode.
I liked the episode! A few notes:
Firstly, isn't it sarcasm, not irony, when someone says "very funny" and she's clearly _not_ amused? Or when someone says "oh, sure, right" when you tell them you saw a flying pig?
I understood that a great example of irony was that the best-known song about irony does not describe a single ironic scene. Or if Jonas Salk had died of polio.
Secondly, the bit about "What are you doing here?" and "How much pepper do you need?!" - is this really language-specific? Like, if I run into someone at the last place I'd expect them to be, is there any language in which the question "What are you doing here?" would be understood other than "I'm very surprised to see you here" or "You're not supposed to be here"?
Sharks are beautiful animals that have gotten an unjustified bad rap because they have big teeth and Peter Benchley wrote a ridiculously inaccurate horror book about them. Who would love sharks? I do! Seeing a shark when I'm freediving is one of the best things ever.
As for "That will be the Pizza" when the door bell rings and you're expecting the pizza delivery, I have always said that. Maybe I'm older than you? Or from a different region. But I don't think it sounds stilted at all.
Otherwise, very interesting podcast. Thanks.
I wonder if John realizes what a cliche it has (had!) become to pick apart this song. In any case, I've always slightly disagreed with the piling-on: While rain on your wedding day, or a fly in your soup are clearly not irony, a person winning the lottery and dying the next day in a plane crash is a fine example. (Bonus points if the guy had never amounted to anything financially, and perhaps chased a lot of get-rich-quick schemes.)
John is great, and a lot smarter than me, but he seems to be confusing irony & sarcasm, at least AS THESE TERMS ARE COMMONLY USED. Language evolves, as John always teaches us, and I don't think we need to get bogged down in textbook definitions of these two terms, which (strangely? obsoletely?) make them seem much more similar than they really are, AS COMMONLY USED.
It's true both terms involve "opposites." But sarcasm simply means that someone doesn't mean what they are saying, in one manner or another. Irony is more situational, and involves "karma," usually the bad sort. No one uses "irony" anymore to refer to an utterance in which the opposite is meant. John's example of saying "nice day" when it's raining is, we've all decided, an example of sarcasm, not irony... no matter what the textbooks still say.
Alanis had a nice rebuttal to the, "those aren't ironic," charge. She said, "A song about irony with no irony in it? Pretty ironic, don't ya think?"
Actually, when someone says, "I'm out of gas," they are not saying, "Could you tell me where a gas station is?" They're saying, "Tell me where a gas station is." "Could you tell me where a gas station is?" is yet another construction (if I understand "construction" correctly). When I ask my husband, "Do you know what time it is?" he is likely to say, "Yes."
An observant Jewish friend of mine used this quirk. She would ride in an elevator but she wouldn't push any buttons (like taking advantage of lights in a room in you don't turn them on yourself) or explicitly ask someone to do so. So she would get in and ask, "Has anyone pushed 7?" (or whatever). The result, of course, was that someone would push 7, but she had not explicitly requested it.
Thank you Brandon flopped big-time. 😄
Another great episode as I'm playing catch-up.
As a Brit, I'm always confused as to what Americans are trying to get at when they talk about "irony". To me, an old man winning the lottery and then dying the next is absolutely ironic. Especially if he's been buying lottery tickets all his life. While saying "real funny" if someone's done something to annoy you is just sarcasm.
Just a thought, is it possible that “the more” construction comes from the German “je mehr”?
The part about "I'm out of gas" meaning "where is the gas station?" I actually took some linguistics courses, and I actually learned about Grice's maxims, and this is what I was trying to explain to people when a certain book called (I'm translating it roughly from the Hungarian) Non-violent Communication was being hailed as some kind of psychological interpersonal revolution. The essence of the book is say this not that in an effort to make language less passive-aggressive and thus non-violent I guess, and a few years ago when it was all the rage I told whoever would listen that that's just not how language works, we can't train people to say "would you kindly direct me to the nearest gas station" when it's natural to say "I'm out of gas" and that the book is essentially prescriptive linguistics masquerading as psychology and some people got offended, notably my former sister in law, although that's just her style :) But I'm wondering, is this a uniquely Hungarian thing, this desire to "tame" language for the sake of mental well-being? Because I see this (in my opinion) BS crop up in sort of self-helpy, woke contexts from time to time, one that comes to mind is a blogger who wrote about admonishing a coworker for saying: boy, I could sure go for a cup of coffee because in her opinion they were passive-aggressively trying to ger her to make it (maybe they were, I wasn't there)
"THE more you see THE more you know" reminded me of a line in a children's book, "Umbrella" by Taro Yashima. I ruined one page for my wife by commenting on the line "Instead, raindrops were jumping all over, like THE tiny people dancing". Saying "like tiny people dancing" is colorful imagery, "like the tiny people dancing" means you have actual people in mind, either literal tiny people or metaphorically tiny people ("the commoners").
In reality, of course, this is just a small slip by a non-native English speaker.
I wonder if there's something interesting enough here for an episode.
Was that Shostakovich's cello concerto's opening riff what the Frech horns did on the last four seconds?