Reasonable Reconstruction of Socratic Irony in Public Discourse

It is of course also critical for the reasonable interpretation of legally relevant statements (e.g. defamations, see Macagno and Capone 2016), but by no means limited to a formal legal context.

Depending on their historical context and background, theorists emphasize either the “Dialectical” or the “Socratic” aspect of this type of irony. As will be shown below, the defining core is the same and I will use the two labels interchangeably in this essay.

Excellent introductions into the various meanings of ‘irony’ are given by Muecke 1969, 64ff.; Ibid. 1970, 7ff.; Behler 1998, 599ff.; Olson and Olson 2004, 28ff.; Dynel 2018, 157ff. Regarding the problem of defining the essence of irony see also Detweiler 2016, 152ff.

Contrary to the above assessment, Fogelin presents a strong case in favour of a limited number of cases of popular irony, namely poetic justice, structurally resembling irony in the narrow sense, thus providing a connection between the popular usage and the more theoretical terminology (2011, 22f.). The use of ‘irony’ in the popular sense can also be found in the rhetorical literature, e.g. in Mercieca (2008) 447ff.

Leaning heavily on Schlegel’s work, Oesterreich (2002, 292ff.) dedicates three of his thirteen theses about philosophical rhetoric in the 21st century to different aspects of irony. Interestingly, he predicts that one of the dangers of the “boundless ironification” (thesis VIII), the “loss of serious meaning” could lead to a longing for a totalitarian feeling of security.

In a related sense, Plett (1999, 315) describes intertextual irony as resulting from “the tropical inversion of a pre-text statement in a post-text.”

Wright (2001, 93ff.) observes complications in reconstructing meaning within the space of the opposite, but it is not entirely clear if the kind of irony she discusses in the works of Fanny Fern is Textbook Irony proper or may be closer to the Dialectical Irony discussed below.

Although even the hostile misinterpreter should have accused him of calling her a lipstick, not a pig; but once one chooses to ignore the evident rules of reasonable reconstruction, these details might easily fall by the wayside as well.

Grano (2006, 9) adds an interesting perspective on Socratic Irony by comparing it to Bakhtin’s internal dialogue or microdialogue that is also characterized by simultaneously invoked contrasting voices. Schaeffer (1996, 14) illustrates the close relationship between Burkean and Socratic Irony by contrasting it with Vico’s Contrary Irony, and Murray (2002, 24ff.) shows its connection to Levinas. See also Linck 2003, 266. For a narrower interpretation of the role of the “enemy” in irony see Jensen 2018, 395.

See for example the sharp contrast between the literal meaning of this section and Lévystone’s interpretation of Callicles contribution and aims in the Gorgias (2020, 140f.)

Eiron and alazon are famous stock characters and antagonists in ancient Greek comedy. The former, frequently portrayed as sly trickster with deceitful understatement is usually victorious over the latter who is commonly boastful and vein (Behler 1998, 601).

Metcalf (2004, 158) analyses similar cases of Socrates “deep irony” in the Apology, Euthyphro and Theaetetus as a tool “to catalyze the agonistic combativeness that will make the elenctic encounter genuinely epideictic.”

In Sperber & Wilson’s sense (see above) the speakers technically of course do not “use” these words, but rather “mention” them. This systematically very useful difference will however be all but indistinguishable to the literally minded listener.

Given the highly offensive nature of some of the words that occur in the examples, the question of including the term unaltered, or changing them to reduce the offensiveness needs to be addressed. This is a hard question with no easy answer. I have chosen to print them unaltered in this text for three reasons: 1) doing so seems to follow the best practice of experts in the field (e.g. Hayes 2019, Xiong and Zenker 2018, Eguchi 2016, Blair 2015 and Linker 2014), 2) it avoids the “use” of the term acknowledging the use-mention distinction (Sperber and Wilson 1981) and 3) given the target audience of this journal, a normalization of the terms by mentioning alone seems unlikely, while the need for distinguishing very similar terms is high. I hope that with this warning, readers will not take offense at the examples.

This is the contrary opposite of “big bad dude”, as explicitly invoked by Anaximenes, Quintilian, Lanham, Burgers, Van Mulken & Schellens, and other representatives of Textbook Irony. Reconstructing it as mere contradictory opposite “not a big bad dude” would make the example less absurd, but it would also melt down any meaningful distinction between irony most other tropes (metaphor, hyperbola, etc).

Desilet and Appel (2011, 353) hint at a third important function of Dialectical Irony, its ability to help understand the “enemy” and introduce a level or “ironic humility”. Contrary to the observations of Wright, Holcomb (2006, 85) notes that some forms of irony are historically reserved for socially superiors addressing their inferiors or at least equals. Boogaart et al. (2021, 217) also additionally note the value of irony for variety and brevity of discourse. For the role of irony in feminism see also Renegar and Sowards (2003, 344ff.), Graban (2007, 389ff.), Galewski (2007, 84ff. and 2008, 291ff.). Kauffer (1983, 453) additionally emphasizes the function of irony in building group cohesion. Rossing (2017, 547ff.) and Waisanen (2018, 75ff.) discuss comedic silence and comic counterfactuals as an alternative tool with the potential of similar subversive effects. “Banishing” Socratic Irony, or declaring it an “indecent luxury” (the position that Terrill 2003, 216 critically opposes) would still leave room for the kind of Irony as contrastive performance that Steudeman (2013, 69ff.) observes in Nixon and Obama.

Irony is of course not the only figure that could be abused thusly if one uses the subjective speaker autonomy as the sole standard for reasonable interpretation (see e.g. Walton 1996, 50ff.) Gunn discusses a similar problem for occultatio (Gunn 2018, 161, 172f.) and goes as far as to call Trump’s frequent disavowals from his statements via this figure one of the main symptoms of his rhetorical perversion (ibid. 179). Attardo (2000, 13) considers “Retractability” to be a (seemingly unproblematic) feature of irony.

Brooke Stanley points out that there is another systematically possible, and frequently practiced option (3b), based on comparative social status of speaker and audience. In the case of the Machine Head line cited above, it would give interpretative priority to gay audiences, people of color and Hispanics to determine whether the expressions should be read literally (offensively) or ironically (inoffensively). The problems with this option are however even graver then those of Option 3, because it inherits all disadvantages of Option 3 (loss of communicative reliability and violation of principle of charity) and adds two additional ones: a) challenges in reasonably and defensibly determining speaker and audience social status or group membership and b) loss of conversational egality and reciprocity. Additionally, this option would, of course, only work for cases in which the potential offense is clearly linked to an identifiable group of people. Ultimately, this option might be less apt to identify if offense was given (ironic vs literal) and instead might be a tool to assess whether offense may be given (speaker-audience relationship).

For the general value of Grice’s model for the reasonable reconstruction of text comp. Dynel 2008 162ff. I have no intention in taking sides in the complex Gricean vs Neo-Gricean versus Post-Gricean vs Relevance Theory disputes, but rather take Grice as an example of a reconstructive model. For a more detailed discussion see Hoppmann 2019. Comp. also Dynel 2018, 33ff. and Garmendia 2015, 40ff. for a defense of the Gricean group against some of the Relevance Theory challenges.

In the case of some, e.g. Veach, the sufficiency of the list for the presence of humour is even made explicit (Veatch 1998, 163ff).

These three steps are then followed by fourth step: choosing a new meaning. It is important to note that while Booth is here grouped with Quintilian and the VIP as a representative of Textbook Irony, he explicitly rejects the idea that that the literal expression of an ironic statements and its means have to be necessarily contrary to each other (Booth 1974, 11) and the Candide example he takes from Muecke (Ibid, 10) is actually a rather clear example of Socratic Irony. Attardo (2000, 3f.) adopts a similar list to Booth, but clearly restricts irony to the textbook variety.

Boogaart et al (2021, 233) list two additional considerations: activity type in which the potential irony occurs and the perceived personality of the speaker, but they do not develop these criteria into concrete markers.

Making the attribution thus explicit thereby also implies that Socrates does not (necessarily) believe that Callicles has these characteristics. Similarly, Dr. Crutcher does not hold that her brother was a “big bad dude” and so on.

Note that the final section of this enumeration already breaks out of the irony by making the reference to the other explicit. Whether this is an intentional solving of the figure or simply follows metric necessity (or both) is difficult to decide.

The lead singer, Robb Flynn, delivered a purely vocal poetry slam version of the song’s lyrics in 2018, but this delivery does not provide bonus cues of Socratic Irony either.

Evidently having made a twice removed statement did not save Norton from being at once removed from a position at the New York Times.