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,” ...

Life has a wicked sense of humor. Just when you expect one thing, reality delivers the exact opposite — and somehow, that gap between expectation and outcome is endlessly fascinating. Whether it’s a ...

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 ...

I COULD never, until recently, divest myself of the haunting feeling that being ironical had something to do with the entering of the iron into one’s soul. I thought I knew what irony was, and I ...