Irony's Edge

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Rabbit? Duck? Both?

Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony is a non-fiction book written by Linda
Hutcheon on the subject of irony. Hutcheon rejects the traditional definition of irony
as antiphrasis, or saying the opposite of what one means. Instead, she suggests that irony is a
...semantically complex process of relating, differentiating, and combining said and unsaid
meanings - and doing so with an evaluative edge (p. 89). She argues this process of
differentiation and relation involves a rapid oscillation between two different meanings; denotation
and connotation cannot be seen simultaneously but are also inextricable from each other. She
likens this to the famous ambiguous image involving the rabbit/duck.
Drawing on the concept of the speech genre put forth by Mikhail Bakhtin,[1] and the work on irony
by Wayne Booth,[2]Hutcheon argues that irony relies heavily on knowledge shared within what
she calls discursive communities. There is a vital relationship between ironist, interpreter and
cultural context that allows irony to happen. By way of example, she discusses visiting an art
show in Germany where she missed the artists ironic intents. After several years of living in
Germany, she revisited the exhibit and got much more out of it because of her insider knowledge
of contemporary German culture. She also suggests that lack of shared context, combined with
the evaluative "edge" of can create situations where irony misfires.