Freedom of Expression ?
"Irony" comes from the Greek word "eiron," meaning a man who makes himself
appear less than he is. When Odysseus
returned at last from Troy, he appeared to be a ragged beggar, not
the rightful King of Ithaca. No one paid attention to him until he revealed
himself by stringing his own bow--which none of Penelope's suitors, or
anyone else, had the strength to do. [Incident from the end of Homer's
Odyssey.]
So irony is about saying one thing and meaning another. We're all familiar with one kind of irony: sarcasm. Your mother used to ask if you'd cleaned up your room and you answered: "Of course, mother dear." The words were perfectly polite, but your tone of voice drove your mother crazy just as you intended.
Both sarcasm and other kinds of irony rely for their effect on the perceived gap between the surface meaning of a statement and the less obvious meaning. For example, in Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Huck has written a note to the owner of Jim, a runaway black slave, saying where Jim is. Then, before sending it, Huck thinks of Jim as a friend, tears up the note, and says: "All right, then, I'll go to hell!"
From the point of view of a slaveholding society, Huck has indeed committed a sin: he's depriving a property-owner of legal property. He sees himself as a bad person by "sivilized" standards. As a social outcast, Huck is considered a juvenile delinquent by most right-thinking people. But we see his decision as truly moral, even if he doesn't see it himself.
A little later, while making up a story to explain himself, he says his riverboat blew up. "Good gracious!" says the woman he's deceiving. "Anybody hurt?"
"No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt."
If we read this without understanding Twain's irony, we're going to be offended. But Twain is really condemning the woman's bigoted values, not endorsing them.
Irony assumes we will understand what it's really trying to say, but sometimes readers miss it completely. (That's one reason why Huckleberry Finn is always coming under fire from adults who think it's racist, when it's one of the great anti-racist books of all time.) So it can be dangerous to fool around with.
Irony can also undercut what may be a perfectly serious theme. Some
kinds of story are just no longer tellable, thanks to the attacks of ironists.
Cervantes made it impossible to tell another chivalric romance with a straight
face. Even if you tried it, people would assume that you were either
trying to do a deadpan Quixote, or that you were deeply stunned.
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