(George Mikes. How to be an Alien) devices of irony

• a device of incongruity (несоответствия):

1. Between words and thoughts

e.g.: “I think he is a nice friend for Roger to have. A thoroughly normal, clean-minded English boy”.

“Oh, thoroughly”. (“Bloody fool, bloody fool”.)

“To see the way they eat is a fair treat”.

“Yes, they seem to have enjoyed their food”. (“My Hod, I wish it could have choked them”.)

(W. S. Maugham. Theatre)

2. Between words and behaviour

e.g.: Gwendolen: But we will not be the first to speak.

Cecily: Certainly not.

Gwendolen: Mr. Worthing, I have something very particular to ask you….

(O. Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest)

• a device of incompatibility between words belonging to different semantic fields used together (=слова, различающиеся по линии «значительность – ничтожность»)

e.g.: Algernon: And speaking of the science of Life, have you got the cucumber sandwiches for Lady Bracknell?

(O. Wilde. The Importance of Being Earnest)

1. Between words contrasted to each other

e.g.: I remember her bringing me up to a truculent and red-faced old gentleman covered all over with orders and ribbons, and hissing into my ear, in a tragic whisper which must have been perfectly audible to everyone in the room, the most astounding details…

(O. Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray)

2. Between an aim and a way of its achieving

e.g.: The Duchess sighed. “I am searching for peace,” she said, “and if I don’t go and dress, I shall have none this evening”.

(O. Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray)

• a device of defeated expectancy

• a device of heterogeneous enumeration

• logical contradiction between parts of utterance

• comparisons

• paradoxes

• exaggeration

• understatement

• a device of a broken idiom

• repetition

• parallel constructions

• tag-questions (переспросы)

• exclamatory sentences

• a device of saying the opposite of what one means (“irony” in its narrow sense)