Although all irony depends upon some incongruity between expectation and reality, there are specific types of irony that you’ll recognize in advertising, speeches, and literary texts: verbal, situational, and dramatic irony.

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Verbal irony, like the example that opened this Workshop, is saying one thing while meaning the opposite. Much of verbal irony depends upon context. If, for instance, someone says, “What a great day for a hike!” the context lets you know if the meaning is literal or ironic. If it’s a sunny day with temperatures in the seventies, the comment is probably literal. If it’s raining cats and dogs with gale force winds, then the comment is probably ironic. Verbal irony may result in humor or sarcasm, again depending upon context. In conversation, we can usually spot verbal irony because of a tone of voice, or possibly eye rolling or other gestures, but when we’re reading we have to be alert to context cues that signal an ironic tone.

In “Facebook Sonnet,” author Sherman Alexie writes, “Let’s all play the games / That occupy the young” (ll. 8–9). If you read that line literally and in isolation, it could be a call for a return to youthful exuberance, a plea to stop worrying about the past and future and concentrate on the pleasures of the moment. Yet, within the poem—especially the call in the previous lines to “exhume, resume, and extend / Childhood”—it’s clear that the speaker does not literally mean what he says. He uses verbal irony to mock Facebook activities that he views as childish game playing.

Situational irony involves a discrepancy between what is expected to happen and what actually happens. If you’re reading a story about an elderly man who fits the stereotype of a sweet grandfather, but it turns out that he’s an evil mobster, that’s situational irony: the situation is the opposite of what you would expect.

The following cartoon illustrates situational irony with humor: we would expect a locksmith—of all people—not to get locked out of his vehicle, specifically the truck he uses to help other people who get locked out.

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There’s situational irony at the end of Firoozeh Dumas’s piece “Hot Dogs and Wild Geese.” While we’ve been led to expect that the parents will continue to grow proficient in English under the tutelage of their daughter, the narrator surprises us by her point that “the wave of immigration” from Iran has resulted in shops where her mother can speak “in Persian, all by herself” with no help from her daughter. All along, we’ve been assuming that her family will change and blend into American culture, yet Dumas ends by reminding us that American culture was changed by her family’s culture. This reversal exemplifies situational irony.

Dramatic irony results when the audience is aware of something that a character is unaware of. A classic example is the horror movie where the protagonist thinks he is protecting himself by hiding in a basement when, in fact, the audience knows that the monster has been waiting in the basement all along. In Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, the audience knows that Brutus is plotting to kill Caesar, but Caesar believes Brutus is a loyal friend. Throughout the play Cyrano de Bergerac, Roxane is unaware that the words she finds so alluring are written by Cyrano, though often delivered by Christian, while the audience knows the loving and poetic speeches are not only Cyrano’s words but his feelings.