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Thursday, October 1, 2020

Reporters Without Borders

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Reporters Sans Frontières
Reporters Without Borders.png
Formation1985
FounderRobert Ménard, Rémy Loury, Jacques Molénat and Émilien Jubineau
TypeNonprofit organization, non-governmental organization with consultant status at the United Nations
HeadquartersParis, France
Director General
Christophe Deloire
(since July 2012)
Key people
Christophe Deloire, Secretary General
Pierre Haski, President RSF France
Mickael Rediske, President RSF Germany
Christian Mihr, CEO RSF Germany
Rubina Möhring, President RSF Austria
Alfonso Armada, President RSF Spain
Gérard Tschopp, President RSF Switzerland
Erik Halkjær, President, RSF Sweden
Jarmo Mäkelä, President, RSF Finland
Budget
€6 million (RSF France)
Staff
Approximately 100
Websitersf.org/en

Reporters Without Borders (French: Reporters sans frontières (RSF)) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization that safeguards the right to freedom of information. Its advocacy is founded on the belief that everyone requires access to the news and information, inspired by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that recognizes the right to receive and share information regardless of frontiers, along with other international rights charters. RSF has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, and the International Organisation of the Francophonie.

Activities

RSF works on the ground in defence of individual journalists at risk and also at the highest levels of government and international forums to defend the right to freedom of expression and information. It provides daily briefings and press releases on threats to media freedom in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Farsi and Chinese and publishes an annual press freedom round up, the World Press Freedom Index, that measures the state of media freedom in 180 countries. The organization provides assistance to journalists at risk and training in digital and physical security, as well as campaigning to raise public awareness of abuse against journalists and to secure their safety and liberty. RSF lobbies governments and international bodies to adopt standards and legislation in support of media freedom and takes legal action in defence of journalists under threat.

To mark World Day Against Cyber-Censorship on 12 March, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has unveiled a list of 20 Digital Predators of Press Freedom and announces that it is now unblocking access to a total 21 websites in the sixth year of its Operation Collateral Freedom.

History

Head office in Paris

RSF was founded in Montpellier, France in 1985 by Robert Ménard, Rémy Loury, Jacques Molénat and Émilien Jubineau. It was registered as a non-profit organization in 1995. Ménard was RSF's first secretary general, succeeded by Jean-Francois Juillard. Christophe Deloire was appointed secretary-general in 2012.

Structure

RSF's head office is based in Paris. It has 13 regional and national offices, including Brussels, London, Washington, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro and Dakar, and a network of 146 correspondents. It employs 57 salaried staff in Paris and internationally. A board of governors, elected from RSF's members, approves the organization's policies. An International Council has oversight of the organization's activities and approves the accounts and budget.

Advocacy

World Press Freedom Index

2020 Press Freedom Index
 

Information and Democracy Initiative

In 2018, RSF launched the Information and Democracy Commission to introduce new guarantees for freedom of opinion and expression in the global space of information and communication. In a joint mission statement, the Commission's presidents, RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi identified a range of factors currently threatening that freedom. This includes: political control of the media, subjugation of news and information to private interests, the growing influence of corporate actors, online mass disinformation and the erosion of quality journalism.

This Commission published the International Declaration on Information and Democracy to state principles, define objectives and propose forms of governance for the global online space for information and communication. The Declaration emphasised that corporate entities with a structural function in the global space have duties, especially as regards political and ideological neutrality, pluralism and accountability. It called for recognition of the right to information that is diverse, independent and reliable in order to form opinions freely and participate fully in the democratic debate.

At the Paris Peace Forum in 2018, 12 countries launched a political process aimed at providing democratic guarantees for news and information and freedom of opinion, based on the principles set out in the Declaration.

Journalism Trust Initiative

RSF launched the Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) in 2018 with its partners the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Agence France Presse (AFP) and the Global Editors Network (GEN). JTI defines indicators for trustworthy journalism and rewards compliance, bringing tangible benefits for all media outlets and supporting them in creating a healthy space for information. JTI distinguishes itself from similar initiatives by focusing on the process of journalism rather than content alone. Media outlets will be expected to comply with standards that include transparency of ownership, sources of revenue and proof of a range of professional safeguards.

Actions

RSF's defence of journalistic freedom includes international missions, the publication of country reports, training of journalists and public protests. Recent global advocacy and practical interventions have included: opening a centre for women journalists in Afghanistan in 2017, a creative protest with street-artist C215 in Strasbourg for Turkish journalists in detention, turning off the Eiffel Tower lights in tribute to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Kashoggi and providing training to journalists and bloggers in Syria. In July 2018, RSF made an unprecedented mission to Saudi Arabia calling for the release of 30 journalists. The organization publishes a gallery of Predators of Press Freedom, highlighting the most egregious international violators of press freedom. It also maintains an online Press Freedom Barometer, monitoring the number of journalists, media workers and citizen journalists killed or imprisoned. Its programme Operation Collateral Freedom, launched in 2014, provides alternative access to censored websites by creating mirror sites: 22 sites have been unblocked in 12 countries, including Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. RSF offers grants to journalists at risk and supports media workers in need of refuge and protection.

Cumhuriyet's former editor-in-chief Can Dündar receiving the 2015 RSF Prize. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested.

Prizes

RSF's annual Press Freedom Prize, created in 1992, honours courageous and independent journalists who have faced threats or imprisonment for their work and who have challenged the abuse of power. TV5-Monde is a partner in the prize.

A Netizen Prize was introduced in 2010, in partnership with Google, recognizing individuals, including bloggers and cyber-dissidents, who have advanced freedom of information online through investigative reporting or other initiatives.

In 2018, RSF launched new categories for the Press Freedom Prize: courage, independence and impact.

Press Freedom Prizewinners 1992-2019

Netizen Prize

RWB 2011 Netizen Prize

Annual reports

Report 2012

Reporters Without Borders, in its comprehensive statistical report released on Wednesday, December 19, 2012, called 2012 the "deadliest year" for journalists compared to previous years. According to the report, 67 journalists were killed or killed in 2012, while 879 were arrested and 38 were abducted. In this report, Iran is called one of the largest prisons in the world for journalists.

Report 2013

The 2013 World Press Freedom Index was published on 30 January 2013 and intends to reflect the situation of The Relatives held hostage in Iran. Iran rises one place and exceeds to (174th). The report emphasized that in Iran the print and broadcast media and news websites are all controlled by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian authorities have internationalized their repression by making hostages out of the relatives of Iranian journalists who work abroad or in Iran for foreign news media. The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the world's five biggest prisons for news and information providers.

Report 2014

According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) on the 2014 annual report, the number of journalists killed worldwide in 2014 was 66, two-thirds of whom killed in war zones. The deadliest areas for the journalists that year were Syria and Palestine, Ukraine, Iraq and Libya. The number of journalists forced to flee their country has doubled since 2013, and the number of journalists convicted by their respective governments has risen to 178, most of them in Egypt, Ukraine, China, Eritrea and Iran. Another point mentioned in the annual report is the reduction of the number of journalists killed.

Report 2015

According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) released its annual report on Thursday, February 12, 2015. It surveyed 180 countries, including Iran, and ranked them in terms of press freedom, independent media, and the status of correspondents and journalists. Iran ranks 173rd, indicating that the situation of Freedom of the press and journalists has not improved despite the promises of Rouhani's government, but the efforts of the organization's concerns about the situation of journalists in Iran continue. According to the report, also named Iran ranks third in the world where journalists are imprisoned. The organization announced the number of journalists killed for their careers, or suspiciously 110 dead, during 2015.

Report 2016

According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) released, its annual report on December 13, 2016, states that in 2016, there were 348 imprisoned journalists and 52 hostages. After Turkey, China, Syria, Egypt and Iran are nearly two-thirds of imprisoned journalists in the world. "According to the report, the role of the journalist's citizen has been emphasized in recent years, especially in suppressive regimes or in war-torn countries. Which have played a decisive role in reflecting and publishing news."

Report 2017

According to the Reporters without Borders (RSF) released, its annual report on 2017, 65 journalists, including 50 professional journalists killed, 326 prisoners and 54 journalists have taken hostage. China, Turkey, Vietnam, Iran and Syria are the largest prisons for journalists and media activists. In 2017, over 65 journalists, Citizen Correspondents and media colleagues killed worldwide.

Report 2018

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on the 2018 annual report of deadly violence and abuse of journalists, announced that over 80 journalists have been killed and 348 are currently being imprisoned, and another 60 are being held hostage, indicating Iran is the most repressive countries for journalists. The (RSF) also named Iran as one of the five countries where journalists are imprisoned, along with China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. According to the report, Iran ranks 164th and remains one of the world's largest prisons for journalists.

Report 2019

According to the 2019 Reporters Without Borders' annual World Press Freedom Reporting Report, Norway was ranked among the 180 countries as the freest and safest countries for the media, with Iran ranked 170th, Saudi Arabia 172nd, Afghanistan 121st Turkmenistan 180th. Compared to last year, Iran's position is six points lower.

Report 2020

The 2020 World Press Freedom Index published on 21 April 2020 and intends to reflect the crisis has intensified the disinformation excesses of the Iranian government. Iran rises three places and exceeds to (173th). Hiding information, disinformation, official lies - methods used by the Islamic Republic in times of crisis and disaster- again, have been deployed on a regular basis since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of informing the public about the reality of the pandemic, the Iranian government hiding information and disinformation (according to official figures, the country has had 70,000 cases and 4,500 deaths caused by the virus) could put the lives of millions of Iranians at risk.

Publications

In addition to its country, regional and thematic reports, RSF publishes a photography book 100 Photos for Press Freedom three times a year as a tool for advocacy and a fundraiser. It is a significant source of income for the organization, raising nearly a quarter of its funds in 2018:

Selected reports

  • 2016 Freedom of expression under state of emergency, Turkey (with ARTICLE 19 and others)
  • 2016 When oligarchs go shopping
  • 2017 Who owns the media?
  • 2017 Media Ownership Monitor, Ukraine (with Ukrainian Institute of Mass Information)
  • 2018 Women's Rights: forbidden subject
  • 2018 Journalists: the bête noire of organized crime
  • 2018 Cambodia: independent press in ruins
  • 2018 Women's rights: forbidden subject
  • 2019 China's Pursuit of a New World Order Media
  • 2019 Media Ownership Monitor, Pakistan (with Freedom Network)

Statements

On June 25, 2020, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement entitled "Enforced online repentance, Iran's new method of repression". According to the report, the Revolutionary Guards summoned a number of journalists, writers and human rights activists and threatened to detain them, forcing them to express their regrets or apologies for publishing their comments in cyberspace in order to silence them.

On Saturday, February 22, 2020, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement condemning the IRGC's call for journalists to be detained in Iran. IRGC intelligence has summoned some journalists and banned any media activities. Reporters Without Borders described the IRGC's intelligence action as "arbitrary and illegal" and aimed at "preventing journalists from being informed on social media."

Following the outbreak of the Coronavirus coronations in Iran, Reporters Without Borders on Thursday, March 6, issued a statement expressing concern over the safety of the imprisoned journalists, stressed that they were in danger of death.

On April 16, 2020, Reporters Without Borders has written a letter to two United Nations special rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Health, urging the United Nations to issue serious warnings to governments that restrict freedom of expression in the context of the coronavirus epidemic. The letter, signed by Christian Mihr, Director, Reporters without Borders (RSF) Germany, states: "Freedom of the press and access to information are more important than ever at the time of Corona's pandemic."

On June 25, 2020, Reporters Without Borders issued a statement entitled "Online Repentance, a New Method of Repression in the Islamic Republic of Iran." According to the report, the Revolutionary Guards summoned and threatened to detain a number of journalists, writers, and human rights activists, forcing them to express regret or apology for posting their views online to silence them. The organization condemned the pressure, threats and silence of social activists.

On April 21, 2020, The RSF based in Paris said that the pandemic has amplified and highlighted many crises and over shadowed freedom of the press. Pointing the global impact of the coronavirus crisis, in a statement, the high representative of the EU, Josef Bourl reminded that the pandemic should not be used to justify the limitation of democratic and civil atmosphere and respecting the rule of law and international commitments. It should not limit the freedom of speech and media and also access to the information, both online and offline. These measures should not be used for restriction of human rights advocates, reporters, media staffs, and institutions of civil societies.

Funding

RSF's budget for 2018 totalled €6.1m. Fifty per cent of the organization's income comes from public subsidy; 12 per cent from foundations; 24 per cent from the publication of photography books and 9 per cent from public donations. Foundations supporting RSF's work include Adessium, IEDDH (International Cooperation and Development, European Commission), Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency), and Omidyar.

RSF has attracted criticism in previous years for accepting funding from the National Endowment for Democracy in the US and the Center for a Free Cuba. At the time, secretary-general Robert Ménard pointed out that funding from NED totalled 0.92 per cent of RSF's budget and supported African journalists and their families. RSF ceased its relationship with the Center for a Free Cuba in 2008.

Public profile

Recognition

RSF has received multiple international awards honouring its achievements:

RSF was criticized for accepting the Dan David Prize, awarded by the Dan David Foundation in Israel.

Criticism

Funding

Reports published in the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and the US Newspaper Guild journal in 2005 criticized RSF for receiving funding from the US government and Cuba opposition groups, and for being part of a "neocons crusade" against the Castro regime. RSF denied the allegations of a political agenda, but confirmed that it had received a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy which is funded through the State Department and from the Centre for a Free Cuba. In 2006, online magazine CounterPunch claimed that RSF had falsely linked former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the murder of journalists and had failed to criticize his successor's crackdown on press freedom. RSF was criticized for supporting media outlets that were in favour of the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002. In response, RSF pointed out that it had in fact condemned media support of the coup.

Otto Reich

Lucie Morillon, RWB's then-Washington representative, confirmed in an interview on 29 April 2005 that the organization had a contract with US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, who signed it in his capacity as a trustee for the Center for a Free Cuba, to inform Europeans about the repression of journalists in Cuba. CounterPunch, a critic of RWB, cited Reich's involvement with the group as a source of controversy: when Reich headed the Reagan administration's Office of Public Diplomacy in the 1980s, the body partook in what its officials termed "White Propaganda" – covert dissemination of information to influence domestic opinion regarding US backing for military campaigns against left-wing governments in Latin America.

Cuba

RWB has been highly critical of press freedom in Cuba, describing the Cuban government as "totalitarian", and engages in direct campaigning against it. RWB's campaign includes declarations on radio and television, full-page ads in Parisian dailies, posters, leafletting at airports, and an April 2003 occupation of the Cuban tourism office in Paris. A Paris court (tribunal de grande instance) ordered RWB to pay 6,000 Euros to the daughter and heir of Alberto Korda for non-compliance with a court order of 9 July 2003 banning it from using Korda's famous (and copyrighted) photograph of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in a beret, taken at the funeral of La Coubre victims. RWB said it was "relieved" it was not given a harsher sentence. The face had been superimposed by RWB with that of a May 1968 CRS anti-riot police agent, and the postcard handed out at Orly Airport in Paris to tourists boarding on flights for Cuba. On 24 April 2003, RWB organized a demonstration outside the Cuban embassy in Paris

RWB, as well as Ménard himself, in turn has been described as an "ultra-reactionary" organization by the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma. Tensions between Cuban authorities and RWB are high, particularly after the imprisonment in 2003 of 75 dissidents (27 journalists) by the Cuban Government, including Raúl Rivero and Óscar Elías Biscet. An article by John Cherian in the Indian magazine Frontline alleged that RWB "is reputed to have strong links with Western intelligence agencies" and "Cuba has accused Robert Meynard [sic] the head of the group, of having CIA links".

RWB has denied that its campaigning on Cuba are related to payments it has received from anti-Castro organisations. In 2004, it received $50,000 from the Miami-based exile group, the Center for a Free Cuba, which was personally signed by the US State Department's Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich. RWB has also received extensive funding from other institutions long critical of Fidel Castro's government, including the International Republican Institute.

Haiti

In 2004, Reporters Without Borders released an annual report on Haiti, saying that a "climate of terror" existed in which attacks and threats persisted against journalists who were critical of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

An August 2006 article in CounterPunch accused RWB of ignoring similar attacks on journalists under the Latortue government in 2005 and 2006, including that of Pacifica Radio reporter Kevin Pina. Pina himself said:

It was clear early on that RWB and Robert Menard were not acting as objective guardians of freedom of the press in Haiti but rather as central actors in what can only be described as a disinformation campaign against Aristide's government ... They provide false information and skewed reports to build internal opposition to governments seen as uncontrollable and unpalatable to Washington while softening the ground for their eventual removal by providing justification under the pretext of attacks on the freedom of the press.

Venezuela

Le Monde diplomatique has criticized RWB's attitude towards Hugo Chávez's government in Venezuela, in particular during the 2002 coup attempt. RWB is said to have lent its support for Venezuelan pro-coup media outlets, and have had as a Caracas correspondent María Sol Pérez-Schael, an opposition adviser. In a right of reply, Robert Ménard declared that RWB had also condemned the Venezuela media's support of the coup attempt. RWB has also been criticized for supporting Globovision's version of events about its false reporting in relation to a 2009 earthquake, claiming Globovision was "being hounded by the government and the administration". RSF has received criticism in relation to historic campaigns.

Overemphasis on "third-world dictatorships"; alleged bias in favor of Europe and the U.S.

In 2007 John Rosenthal argued that RWB showed a bias in favor of European countries. In the 2009 article about RWB and Venezuela cited above, Salim Lamrani stated that "RSF is not an organization that defends freedom of the press, but is an obscure entity with a political agenda precisely commissioned to discredit through all possible means the progressive governments in the world that find themselves on the United States' blacklist."

Reports published in the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and the US Newspaper Guild journal in 2005 criticised RSF for receiving funding from the US government and Cuba opposition groups, and for being part of a ‘neocons crusade’ against the Castro regime. RSF denied the allegations of a political agenda, but confirmed that it had received a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy which is funded through the State Department and from the Centre for a Free Cuba.

The Observatoire de l'Action Humanitaire (Centre for Humanitarian Action) criticized RWB's lukewarm criticism of US forces for their shelling, in 2003, of Palestine Hotel, in Baghdad, Iraq, which killed two Reuters journalists. The family of one of the deceased journalists, Spanish citizen José Couso, refused to allow the Spain chapter of RWB to attach its name to a legal action led by the family against the US Army, voicing disgust at the fact that RWB interviewed US forces responsible for the shelling, but not the surviving journalists, and that RWB showed acquiescence to the US Army by thanking them for their "precious help".

In 2006, online magazine CounterPunch claimed that RSF had falsely linked former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the murder of journalists and had failed to criticise his successor's crackdown on press freedom.

According to the Observatoire, ever since Robert Ménard was replaced by Jean-François Julliard in September 2008, RWB has been concerned with violations of press freedom not only in "third-world dictatorships" but also in developed countries like France. Through widening its geographical scope, RWB aims at countering accusations of overly focusing on left-wing regimes unfriendly to the US. For example, RWB condemned the 35-year sentence received by American soldier Chelsea Manning, calling it "disproportionate" and arguing that it reveals how "vulnerable" whistleblowers are. In April 2019, the RWB stated the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could "set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers, and other journalistic sources that the US may wish to pursue in the future."

RSF was criticised for supporting media outlets that were in favour of the coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002. In response, RSF pointed out that it had in fact condemned media support of the coup.

UNESCO support for International Online Free Expression Day

UNESCO, who initially had granted patronage to the first International Online Free Expression Day to be held on 12 March 2008, withdrew its patronage on the day of the event giving as reasons that RWB "published material concerning a number of UNESCO's Member States, which UNESCO had not been informed of and could not endorse" and that "UNESCO's logo was placed in such a way as to indicate the Organization's support of the information presented." RWB responded in a press release that "UNESCO has withdrawn its support to the promotion of this campaign because several of the nations which are part of the list of Internet Enemies published by the nongovernmental organization have directly put pressure to achieve it."
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Hypocrisy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another. In moral psychology, it is the failure to follow one's own expressed moral rules and principles. According to British political philosopher David Runciman, "Other kinds of hypocritical deception include claims to knowledge that one lacks, claims to a consistency that one cannot sustain, claims to a loyalty that one does not possess, claims to an identity that one does not hold". American political journalist Michael Gerson says that political hypocrisy is "the conscious use of a mask to fool the public and gain political benefit".

Hypocrisy has been a subject of folk wisdom and wisdom literature from the beginnings of human history. Increasingly, since the 1980s, it has also become central to studies in behavioral economics, cognitive science, cultural psychology, decision making, ethics, evolutionary psychology, moral psychology, political sociology, positive psychology, social psychology, and sociological social psychology.

Etymology

The word hypocrisy comes from the Greek ὑπόκρισις (hypokrisis), which means "jealous", "play-acting", "acting out", "coward" or "dissembling". The word hypocrite is from the Greek word ὑποκριτής (hypokritēs), the agentive noun associated with ὑποκρίνομαι (hypokrinomai κρίση, "judgment" »κριτική (kritikē), "critics") presumably because the performance of a dramatic text by an actor was to involve a degree of interpretation, or assessment.

Alternatively, the word is an amalgam of the Greek prefix hypo-, meaning "under", and the verb krinein, meaning "to sift or decide". Thus the original meaning implied a deficiency in the ability to sift or decide. This deficiency, as it pertains to one's own beliefs and feelings, informs the word's contemporary meaning.

Whereas hypokrisis applied to any sort of public performance (including the art of rhetoric), hypokrites was a technical term for a stage actor and was not considered an appropriate role for a public figure. In Athens during the 4th century BC, for example, the great orator Demosthenes ridiculed his rival Aeschines, who had been a successful actor before taking up politics, as a hypocrites whose skill at impersonating characters on stage made him an untrustworthy politician. This negative view of the hypokrites, perhaps combined with the Roman disdain for actors, later shaded into the originally neutral hypokrisis. It is this later sense of hypokrisis as "play-acting", i.e., the assumption of a counterfeit persona, that gives the modern word hypocrisy its negative connotation.

History

American historian Martin Jay in The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics (2012) explores how writers over the centuries have treated hypocrisy, deception, flattery, lying and cheating, slander, false pretenses, living on borrowed glory, masquerading, conventions of concealment, playacting before others and the arts of dissimulation. He assumes that politics is worthwhile, but since it is unavoidably linked to lying and hypocrisy, Jay concludes that lying must not be all that bad.

Great Britain

Hypocrisy became a major topic in English political history in the early 18th century. The Toleration Act of 1689 allowed for certain rights, but it left Protestant nonconformists (such as Congregationalists and Baptists) deprived of important rights, including that of office-holding. Nonconformists who wanted office ostentatiously took the Anglican sacrament once a year in order to avoid the restrictions. High Church Anglicans were outraged and outlawed what they called "occasional conformity" in 1711 with the Occasional Conformity Act 1711. In the political controversies using sermons, speeches, and pamphlet wars, both high churchmen and Nonconformists attacked their opponents as insincere and hypocritical, as well as dangerously zealous, in contrast to their own moderation. This campaign of moderation versus zealotry, peaked in 1709 during the impeachment trial of high church preacher Henry Sacheverell. Historian Mark Knights, argues that by its very ferocity, the debate may have led to more temperate and less hypercharged political discourse. Occasional conformity was restored by the Whigs when they returned to power in 1719.

In his famous book Fable of the Bees (1714), English author Bernard Mandeville ( 1670–1733) explored the nature of hypocrisy in contemporary European society. On the one hand, Mandeville was a ‘moralist’ heir to the French Augustinianism of the previous century, viewing sociability as a mere mask for vanity and pride. On the other, he was a ‘materialist’ who helped found modern economics. He tried to demonstrate the universality of human appetites for corporeal pleasures. He argued that the efforts of self-seeking entrepreneurs are the basis of emerging commercial and industrial society, a line of thought that influenced Adam Smith (1723–1790) and 19th century utilitarianism. The tension between these two approaches modes ambivalences and contradictions—concerning the relative power of norms and interests, the relationship between motives and behaviours, and the historical variability of human cultures. In the Enlightenment of the 18th century, discussions of hypocrisy were common in the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montaigne.

In the 1750 to 1850 era, Whig aristocrats in England boasted of their special benevolence for the common people. They claimed to be guiding and counseling reform initiatives to prevent the outbreaks of popular discontent that caused instability and revolution across Europe. However Tory and radical critics accused the Whigs of hypocrisy—alleging they were deliberately using the slogans of reform and democracy to boost themselves into power while preserving their precious aristocratic exclusiveness. Historian L.G. Mitchell defends the Whigs, pointing out that thanks to them radicals always had friends at the centre of the political elite, and thus did not feel as marginalized as in most of Europe. He points out that the debates on the 1832 Reform Bill showed that reformers would indeed receive a hearing at parliamentary level with a good chance of success. Meanwhile, a steady stream of observers from the Continent commented on the English political culture. Liberal and radical observers noted the servility of the English lower classes, the obsession everyone had with rank and title, the extravagance of the aristocracy, a supposed anti-intellectualism, and a pervasive hypocrisy that extended into such areas as social reform. There were not so many conservative visitors. They praised the stability of English society, its ancient constitution, and reverence for the past; they ignored the negative effects of industrialization.

United States

In the propaganda battles of World War II, Japan attacked American hypocrisy by emphasizing the injustice of the incarceration camps for Japanese in the United States. Radio Tokyo emphasized that the camps revealed the hypocritical American claim to democratic ideals and fair play. The propaganda quoted American founding fathers, neutral sources, and dissenting opinions from major American newspapers. Radio Tokyo utilized fictitious sources as well. It proclaimed the moral superiority of Japan while threatening to mistreat American POWs in retaliation.

Moral and religious codes

Many belief systems condemn hypocrisy.

In Islam, Quranic Chapter 63 is often titled "The Hypocrites" Hypocrisy is viewed as a serious sickness. The Qur'an rails against those who claim to be believers and peacemakers, thinking they are fooling God and others, but only fool themselves.

In some translations of the Book of Job, the Hebrew word chaneph is rendered as "hypocrite", though it usually means "godless" or "profane". In the Christian Bible, Jesus condemns the scribes and Pharisees as hypocrites in the passage known as the Woes of the Pharisees. He also denounces hypocrites in more general terms in Matthew 7:5.

In the 16th century, John Calvin was critical of Nicodemites.

In the Buddhist text Dhammapada, Gautama Buddha condemns a man who takes the appearance of an ascetic but is full of passions within.

Psychology

Hypocrisy has long been of interest to psychologists.

Carl Jung

In Switzerland Carl Jung (1875–1961) attributed hypocrisy to those who are not aware of the dark or shadow-side of their nature. Jung wrote:

Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power.

Jung went on:

It is under all circumstances an advantage to be in full possession of one's personality, otherwise the repressed elements will only crop up as a hindrance elsewhere, not just at some unimportant point, but at the very spot where we are most sensitive. If people can be educated to see the shadow-side of their nature clearly, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more self-knowledge can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.

In New Paths in Psychology Jung pointedly referred to the "hypocritical pretenses of man". "Dream-analysis above all else mercilessly uncovers the lying morality and hypocritical pretences of man, showing him, for once, the other side of his character in the most vivid light". Jung omitted this characterization from his later essay On the Psychology of the Unconscious, which developed out of the former.

Preference for the effortless

Niccolò Machiavelli noted that "the mass of mankind accept what seems as what is; nay, are often touched more nearly by appearances than by realities". Natural selection works by the principle of survival of the fittest, and several researchers have shown that humans evolved to play the game of life in a Machiavellian way. The best way to cultivate a reputation for fairness is to really be fair. But since it is much harder to be fair than to seem fair, and since laziness is built deep into human nature, humans more often choose appearance over reality.

Self-deception

"So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." Benjamin Franklin's observation has been confirmed by recent studies in self-deception. In everyday reasoning, humans do little to get real evidence when taking positions or making decisions, and do even less to get evidence for opposing positions. Instead, they tend to fabricate "pseudo-evidence" – often after the decision had already been made ("post hoc fabrication").

Humans take a position, look for evidence that supports it, then, if they find some evidence – enough so that the position "makes sense" – they stop thinking altogether (the "makes-sense stopping rule"). And, when pressed to produce real evidence, they tend to seek and interpret "evidence" that confirms what they already believe (the "confirmation bias").

Moreover, humans tend to think highly of themselves, highlighting strengths and achievements, and overlooking weakness and failures (the "self-serving bias"). When asked to rate themselves on virtues, skills, or other desirable traits (including ethics, intelligence, driving ability, and sexual skills), a large majority say they are above average. Power and privilege magnify the distortion: 94% of college professors think that they do above average work. This effect is weaker in Asian countries and in other cultures which value the group more highly than the self.

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychologist Robert Kurzban argues that one's moral modules lead one to condemn infidelity while mating modules induce one to commit it.

Self-ignorance

Robert Wright wrote that "Human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse." Humans are very good at challenging the beliefs of other people, but when it comes to their own beliefs, they tend to protect them, not challenge them. A consistent finding of psychological research is that humans are fairly accurate in their perceptions of others, but generally inaccurate in their perceptions of themselves. Humans tend to judge others by their behavior, but think they have special information about themselves – that they know what they are "really like" inside – and thus effortlessly find ways to explain away selfish acts, and maintain the illusion that they are better than others.

Social psychology

Social psychologists have generally viewed hypocrisy as an instantiation of attitudinal and/or behavioral inconsistency. Accordingly, many social psychologists have focused on the role of dissonance in explaining individuals' aversion to hypocritical thinking and behavior. Individuals are motivated to avoid hypocritical stances in order to forestall the negative drive state of dissonance. For example, a dissonance-based study on the use of condoms among young adults showed that induced hypocrisy can lead to increased purchase and use of condoms.

Alternatively, some social psychologists have suggested that individuals view hypocrisy negatively because it suggests that hypocrites are providing a false signal regarding their moral goodness.

Philosophy

Hypocrisy has been an intermittent topic of interest to philosophers since at least Machiavelli. Philosophical issues raised by hypocrisy can be broadly divided into two kinds: 

metaphysical/conceptual and ethical. Most philosophical commentary on hypocrisy is concerned with the ethical questions it raises: is hypocrisy morally wrong or bad? If it is, is there anything distinctly objectionable about it, or can it be easily subsumed under a broader category of morally objectionable conduct–for example, deceit? Is hypocrisy necessary or desirable for the sake of certain valuable activities–most notably, politics? 

Recently, hypocrisy has emerged as a key focus in philosophical discussions of the ethics of blame. It seems that even if a person has violated some moral norm and is genuinely blameworthy for doing so, it is open to them to challenge the blame leveled at them on the grounds that it is hypocritical; a typical expression of this idea is the phrase, "You have no right to blame me!" Accordingly, some philosophers argue that in order to have the standing or entitlement to blame others, one's blame must not be hypocritical. Defenses of this position have usually focused on the connection between hypocrisy and fairness: the basic idea is that the hypocritical blamer in some way fails to treat the target of her blame as a moral equal. Other proposed explanations include the idea that standing in a moral community requires a reciprocal willingness to accept blame, a willingness that hypocrites lack. Patrick Todd argues that all and only those who are committed to the relevant norms possess the standing to blame, and hypocrites lack commitment in the relevant sense. Other philosophers reject the "No-hypocrisy" condition on standing altogether. Typically, these philosophers do not deny that sometimes the wrongness of hypocrisy can outweigh a would-be blamer's entitlement to blame others; but they will insist that this is not invariably the case, and some hypocrites do have standing to blame. R.A. Duff suggests that underlying the disagreement between these two views is a disagreement about the size and scope of moral community, while Kyle Fritz and Daniel Miller suggest that the rejection of the "No-hypocrisy" condition reflects a failure to distinguish between the right to blame and the value of blaming.

What is a hypocrite? This is the fundamental question in the relatively new philosophical discussions of the nature of hypocrisy. Early answers tended to focus on the deceptive or inconsistent qualities of hypocrisy. For Eva Kittay, for example, the fundamental attribute of hypocrites is "self-referential deception," and for Gilbert Ryle, to be hypocritical is to "try to appear activated by a motive other than one's real motive." On Dan Turner's view, by contrast, the fundamental feature is "conflict or disparity" between a person's attitudes, where this may or may not involve deception. Bela Szabados and Daniel Statman argue that self-deception is the characteristic attribute of "garden variety of hypocrisies." Roger Crisp and Christopher Cowten identify four types of hypocrisy: pretense of moral goodness, moral criticism of others by those possessing faults of their own, failure to satisfy self-acknowledged moral requirements, and a complacent, unreflective commitment to virtues feigned or preached. What unifies these types is a "metavice," a lack of "moral seriousness." More recently, some philosophers–notably, Benjamin Rossi and Fritz and Miller–have defined hypocrisy in terms of dispositions to blame others or to avow commitment to certain norms together with an unwillingness to accept blame from others or to blame themselves. Rossi's "Commitment Account of Hypocrisy" addresses paradigmatic cases of hypocrisy that Fritz and Miller's "Differential Blaming Disposition Account" does not include.

Benefits

Although there are many negatives to hypocrisy, there can be benefits from it as well. There are also benefits from ignoring it. Political theorist Judith N. Shklar argues, in "Let Us Not Be Hypocritical," we are all too eager to construe even minor deviations from our opponents' professed beliefs as hypocrisy, rather than understandable imperfections and weaknesses to everyone is prone.

Political journalist Michael Gerson notes that, "There is often hypocritical deception involved in political and diplomatic negotiations, which generally start with principled, nonnegotiable demands that are negotiated away in the process of finding a compromise." Gerson concludes:

hypocrisy is unavoidable and necessary. If people were required, at all times, to live up to ideals of honesty, loyalty and compassion in order for those ideals to exist, there would be no ideals. Being a moral person is a struggle in which everyone repeatedly fails, becoming a hypocrite in each of those moments. A just and peaceful society depends on hypocrites who ultimately refused to abandon the ideals they betray.

 

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Irony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
A stop sign ironically defaced with a plea not to deface stop signs

Irony (from Ancient Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning 'dissimulation, feigned ignorance'), in its broadest sense, is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or event in which what on the surface appears to be the case or to be expected differs radically from what is actually the case.

Irony can be categorized into different types, including verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony. Verbal, dramatic, and situational irony are often used for emphasis in the assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, used in sarcasm, and some forms of litotes can emphasize one's meaning by the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of the truth, denies the contrary of the truth, or drastically and obviously understates a factual connection. Other forms, as identified by historian Connop Thirlwall, include dialectic and practical irony.

Definitions

Henry Watson Fowler, in The King's English, says, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." Also, Eric Partridge, in Usage and Abusage, writes that "Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant."

The use of irony may require the concept of a double audience. Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage says:

Irony is a form of utterance that postulates a double audience, consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension.

The term is sometimes used as a synonym for incongruous and applied to "every trivial oddity" in situations where there is no double audience. An example of such usage is:

Sullivan, whose real interest was, ironically, serious music, which he composed with varying degrees of success, achieved fame for his comic opera scores rather than for his more earnest efforts.

The American Heritage Dictionary's secondary meaning for irony: "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs". This sense, however, is not synonymous with "incongruous" but merely a definition of dramatic or situational irony. It is often included in definitions of irony not only that incongruity is present but also that the incongruity must reveal some aspect of human vanity or folly. Thus the majority of American Heritage Dictionary's usage panel found it unacceptable to use the word ironic to describe mere unfortunate coincidences or surprising disappointments that "suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly."

On this aspect, The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has also:

A condition of affairs or events of a character opposite to what was, or might naturally be, expected; a contradictory outcome of events as if in mockery of the promise and fitness of things. (In French, ironie du sort).

Douglas C. Muecke identifies three basic features of all irony. First, irony depends on a double-layered or two-story phenomenon for success. “At the lower level is the situation either as it appears to the victim of irony (where there is a victim) or as it is deceptively presented by the ironist.” The upper level is the situation as it appears to the reader or the ironist. Second, the ironist exploits a contradiction, incongruity, or incompatibility between the two levels. Third, irony plays upon the innocence of a character or victim. “Either a victim is confidently unaware of the very possibility of there being an upper level or point of view that invalidates his own, or an ironist pretends not to be aware of it.”

Origin of the term

According to Encyclopædia Britannica:

The term irony has its roots in the Greek comic character Eiron, a clever underdog who by his wit repeatedly triumphs over the boastful character Alazon. The Socratic irony of the Platonic dialogues derives from this comic origin.

According to Richard Whately:

Aristotle mentions Eironeia, which in his time was commonly employed to signify, not according to the modern use of 'Irony, saying the contrary to what is meant', but, what later writers usually express by Litotes, i.e. 'saying less than is meant'.

The word came into English as a figure of speech in the 16th century as similar to the French ironie. It derives from the Latin ironia and ultimately from the Greek εἰρωνεία eirōneía, meaning 'dissimulation, ignorance purposely affected'.

Types

A "No smoking" sign surrounded by images of a smoking Sherlock Holmes at Baker Street tube station

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics distinguishes between the following types of irony:

  • Classical irony: Referring to the origins of irony in Ancient Greek comedy, and the way classical and medieval rhetoricians delineated the term.
  • Romantic irony: A self-aware and self-critical form of fiction.
  • Cosmic irony: A contrast between the absolute and the relative, the general and the individual, which Hegel expressed by the phrase, "general [irony] of the world."
  • Verbal irony: A contradiction between a statement's stated and intended meaning
  • Situational irony: The disparity of intention and result; when the result of an action is contrary to the desired or expected effect.
  • Dramatic irony and tragic irony: A disparity of awareness between an actor and an observer: when words and actions possess significance that the listener or audience understands, but the speaker or character does not; for example when a character says to another "I'll see you tomorrow!" when the audience (but not the character) knows that the character will die before morning. It is most often used when the author causes a character to speak or act erroneously, out of ignorance of some portion of the truth of which the audience is aware. In tragic irony, the audience knows the character is making a mistake, even as the character is making it.

Verbal irony

According to A glossary of literary terms by Abrams and Harpham,

Verbal irony is a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed. An ironic statement usually involves the explicit expression of one attitude or evaluation, but with indications in the overall speech-situation that the speaker intends a very different, and often opposite, attitude or evaluation.

Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers. For instance, if a man exclaims, "I'm not upset!" but reveals an upset emotional state through his voice while truly trying to claim he's not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony). But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that he was upset by claiming he was not, the utterance would be verbal irony. This distinction illustrates an important aspect of verbal irony—speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. There are, however, examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.

In a clear example from literature, in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Mark Antony's speech after the assassination of Caesar appears to praise the assassins, particularly Brutus ("But Brutus says he was ambitious; / And Brutus is an honourable man"), while actually condemning them. "We're left in no doubt as to who's ambitious and who's honourable. The literal truth of what's written clashes with the perceived truth of what's meant to revealing effect, which is irony in a nutshell". 

Ironic similes are a form of verbal irony where a speaker intends to communicate the opposite of what they mean. For instance, the following explicit similes begin with the deceptive formation of a statement that means A but that eventually conveys the meaning not A:

The irony is recognizable in each case only by using knowledge of the source concepts (e.g., that mud is opaque, that root canal surgery is painful) to detect an incongruity.

Verbal irony and sarcasm

A fair amount of confusion has surrounded the issue of the relationship between verbal irony and sarcasm.

Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage states:

Sarcasm does not necessarily involve irony and irony has often no touch of sarcasm.

This suggests that the two concepts are linked but may be considered separately. The Oxford English Dictionary's entry for sarcasm does not mention irony, but the irony entry includes:

A figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used; usually taking the form of sarcasm or ridicule in which laudatory expressions are used to imply condemnation or contempt.

The Encyclopædia Britannica has "Non-literary irony is often called sarcasm"; while the Webster's Dictionary entry is:

Sarcasm: 1 : a sharp and often satirical or ironic utterance designed to cut or give pain. 2 a : a mode of satirical wit depending for its effect on bitter, caustic, and often ironic language that is usually directed against an individual.

Partridge in Usage and Abusage would separate the two forms of speech completely:

Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, caustic, ... manner.

The psychologist Martin, in The Psychology of Humour, is quite clear that irony is where "the literal meaning is opposite to the intended" and sarcasm is "aggressive humor that pokes fun". He has the following examples: for irony he uses the statement "What a nice day" when it is raining. For sarcasm, he cites Winston Churchill, who is supposed to have said, when told by Bessie Braddock that he was drunk, "But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly", as being sarcastic, while not saying the opposite of what is intended.

Psychology researchers Lee and Katz (1998) have addressed the issue directly. They found that ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not of verbal irony in general. By this account, sarcasm is a particular kind of personal criticism levelled against a person or group of persons that incorporates verbal irony. For example, a woman reports to her friend that rather than going to a medical doctor to treat her cancer, she has decided to see a spiritual healer instead. In response her friend says sarcastically, "Oh, brilliant, what an ingenious idea, that's really going to cure you." The friend could have also replied with any number of ironic expressions that should not be labeled as sarcasm exactly, but still have many shared elements with sarcasm.

Most instances of verbal irony are labeled by research subjects as sarcastic, suggesting that the term sarcasm is more widely used than its technical definition suggests it should be (Bryant & Fox Tree, 2002; Gibbs, 2000). Some psycholinguistic theorists (e.g., Gibbs, 2000) suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony. The differences between these rhetorical devices (tropes) can be quite subtle and relate to typical emotional reactions of listeners, and the rhetorical goals of the speakers. Regardless of the various ways theorists categorize figurative language types, people in conversation who are attempting to interpret speaker intentions and discourse goals do not generally identify, by name, the kinds of tropes used (Leggitt & Gibbs, 2000).

Verbal irony and echoic allusion

Echoic allusion is the main component involved in conveying verbally ironic meaning. It is best described as a speech act by which the speaker simultaneously represents a thought, belief or idea, and implicitly attributes this idea to someone else who is wrong or deluded. In this way, the speaker intentionally dissociates themselves from the idea and conveys their tacit dissent, thereby providing a different meaning to their utterance. In some cases, the speaker can provide stronger dissociation from the represented thought by also implying derision toward the idea or outwardly making fun of the person or people they attribute it to.

Echoic allusion, like other forms of verbal irony, relies on semantically disambiguating cues to be interpreted correctly. These cues often come in the form of paralinguistic markers such as prosody, tone, or pitch, as well as nonverbal cues like hand gesture, facial expression and eye gaze.

An example of echoic allusion and its disambiguating paralinguistic markers is as follows:

  • Person 1: I wasn't going to eat the cake, you know.
  • Person 2: Interesting, that's what it looked like you were doing, but I just must have been mistaken.

From simple semantic analysis, Person 2 appears to believe Person 1. However, if this conversation is given the context of Person 2 walking in on Person 1 about to eat some cake, and Person 2 speaking their sentence in a significantly decreased rate of speech and lowered tone, the interpretation of "I just must have been mistaken" changes. Instead of being taken as Person 2 believing Person 1, the utterance calls to mind someone who would believe Person 1, while also conveying Person 2's implication that said individual would be considered gullible. From this, Person 2 negates the possible interpretation that they believe Person 1.

Dramatic irony

Dramatic irony exploits the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Connop Thirlwall in his 1833 article On the Irony of Sophocles originally highlighted the role of irony in drama. The Oxford English Dictionary defines dramatic irony as:

the incongruity created when the (tragic) significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience but unknown to the character concerned; the literary device so used, orig. in Greek tragedy.

According to Stanton, dramatic irony has three stages—installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) —producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. In summary, it means that the reader/watcher/listener knows something that one or more of the characters in the piece is not aware of.

For example:

  • In City Lights, the audience knows that Charlie Chaplin's character is not a millionaire, but the blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) believes him to be rich.
  • In North by Northwest, the audience knows that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not Kaplan; Vandamm (James Mason) and his accomplices do not. The audience also knows that Kaplan is a fictitious agent invented by the CIA; Roger (initially) and Vandamm (throughout) do not.
  • In Othello, the audience knows that Desdemona has remained faithful to Othello, but Othello does not. The audience also knows that Iago is scheming to bring about Othello's downfall, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, and Roderigo.
  • In "The Cask of Amontillado", the reader knows that Montresor is planning on murdering Fortunato, while Fortunato believes they are friends.
  • In The Truman Show, the viewer realizes that Truman is on a television show, but Truman himself only gradually learns this.
  • During the 1960 U.S. presidential election, an older woman reportedly teased John F. Kennedy at a campaign event for pursuing the presidency despite his relative youth, saying "Young man, it's too soon." Kennedy had been diagnosed with Addison's disease in 1947 – with the attending physician estimating that he would not live for another year – in addition to suffering from multiple other chronic medical conditions that required as many as a dozen daily medications by the time of his presidency which were not publicly disclosed (or acknowledged, in the case of the Addison's diagnosis) until after his death. Kennedy responded to the older woman by saying, "No, ma'am. This is my time."

Tragic irony

Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters contradict the real situation, which the spectators fully realize. The Oxford English Dictionary defines this as:

the incongruity created when the (tragic) significance of a character's speech or actions is revealed to the audience but unknown to the character concerned, the literary device so used, orig. in Greek tragedy.

Ancient Greek drama was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar with the legends that most of the plays dramatized. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest. Colebrook writes:

Tragic irony is exemplified in ancient drama.... The audience watched a drama unfold, already knowing its destined outcome.... In Sophocles' Oedipus the King, for example, 'we' (the audience) can see what Oedipus is blind to. The man he murders is his father, but he does not know it.

Further, Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused, not knowing that the murderer he has cursed and vowed to find is himself. The audience knows that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon, and Jocasta do not.

Irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker's perception of paradox that arises from insoluble problems. For example, in the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged, deathlike sleep, he assumes her to be dead. The audience knows that Juliet has faked her death, yet Romeo believes she is truly dead, and commits suicide. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet stabs herself with a dagger thus killing herself, too.

Situational irony

1937 Louisville, Kentucky. Margaret Bourke-White.[33] There's no way like the American Way

Situational irony is a relatively modern use of the term, and describes a sharp discrepancy between the expected result and actual results in a certain situation.

Lars Elleström writes:

Situational irony ... is most broadly defined as a situation where the outcome is incongruous with what was expected, but it is also more generally understood as a situation that includes contradictions or sharp contrasts.[34]

For example:

  • When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however, a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, a vehicle made to protect the President from gunfire instead directed gunfire to the president.[35][36]
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a story whose plot revolves around situational irony. Dorothy travels to a wizard and fulfills his challenging demands in order to go home, before discovering she had the ability to go back home all along. The Scarecrow longs for intelligence, only to discover he is already a genius, and the Tin Woodman longs to have a heart, only to discover he is already capable of love. The Lion, who at first appears to be a whimpering coward, turns out to be bold and fearless. The people in Emerald City believed the Wizard to be a powerful deity, only to discover that he is a bumbling, eccentric old man with no special powers at all.[36][37]
  • In O. Henry's story "The Gift of the Magi", a young couple are too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The wife cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a chain for his heirloom pocket watch. She's shocked when she learns he had pawned his watch to buy her a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair. "The double irony lies in the particular way their expectations were foiled." [38]

Cosmic irony (irony of fate)

The expression cosmic irony or "irony of fate" stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals with deliberate ironic intent. Closely connected with situational irony, it arises from sharp contrasts between reality and human ideals, or between human intentions and actual results. The resulting situation is poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.

According to Sudhir Dixit, "Cosmic irony is a term that is usually associated with [Thomas] Hardy. ... There is a strong feeling of a hostile deus ex machina in Hardy's novels." In Tess of the d'Urbervilles "there are several instances of this type of irony."[39] One example follows:[40]

"Justice" was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Æschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess.

Historical irony

When history is seen through modern eyes, there often appear sharp contrasts between the way historical figures see their world's future and what actually transpires. For example, during the 1920s The New York Times repeatedly scorned crossword puzzles. In 1924, it lamented "the sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern." In 1925 it said "the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast." Today, no U.S. newspaper is more closely identified with the crossword than The New York Times.

In a more tragic example of historical irony, what people now refer to as the "First World War" was called by H. G. Wells "the war that will end war", which soon became "the war to end war" and "the war to end all wars", and this became a widespread truism, almost a cliché. Historical irony is therefore a subset of cosmic irony, but one in which the element of time is bound to play a role. Another example could be that of the Vietnam War, where in the 1960s the US attempted to stop the Viet Cong (Viet Minh) taking over South Vietnam. However, it is an often ignored fact that, in 1941, the US originally supported the Viet Minh in its fight against Japanese occupation.

In the introduction to The Irony of American History, Andrew Bacevich writes:

After 9/11, the Bush administration announced its intention of bringing freedom and democracy to the people of the Middle East. Ideologues within the Bush administration persuaded themselves that American power, adroitly employed, could transform that region ... The results speak for themselves.

Gunpowder was, according to prevailing academic consensus, discovered in the 9th century by Chinese alchemists searching for an elixir of immortality.

Historical irony also includes inventors killed by their own creations, such as William Bullock – unless, due to the nature of the invention, the risk of death was always known and accepted, as in the case of Otto Lilienthal, who was killed by flying a glider of his own devising.

In certain kinds of situational or historical irony, a factual truth is highlighted by some person's complete ignorance of it or his belief in its opposite. However, this state of affairs does not occur by human design. In some religious contexts, such situations have been seen as the deliberate work of divine providence to emphasize truths and to taunt humans for not being aware of them when they could easily have been enlightened (this is similar to human use of irony). Such ironies are often more evident, or more striking, when viewed retrospectively in the light of later developments which make the truth of past situations obvious to all.

Other prominent examples of outcomes now seen as poignantly contrary to expectation include:

  • In the Dred Scott v. Sandford ruling in 1856, the United States Supreme Court held that the Fifth Amendment barred any law that would deprive a slaveholder of his property, such as his slaves, upon the incidence of migration into free territory. So, in a sense, the Supreme Court used the Bill of Rights to deny rights to slaves. Also, Chief Justice Taney hoped that the decision would resolve the slavery issue, but instead it helped cause the American Civil War.
  • In the Kalgoorlie (Australia) gold rush of the 1890s, large amounts of the little-known mineral calaverite (gold telluride) were ironically identified as fool's gold. These mineral deposits were used as a cheap building material, and for the filling of potholes and ruts. When several years later the mineral was identified, there was a minor gold rush to excavate the streets.
  • John F. Kennedy's last conversation was ironic in light of events which followed seconds later. Seated in the middle row of the presidential limousine in Dallas, First Lady of Texas Nellie Connally reportedly commented, "Mr. President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you." Kennedy replied, "That's very obvious." Immediately after, he was mortally wounded.
  • In 1974, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission had to recall 80,000 of its own lapel buttons promoting "toy safety", because the buttons had sharp edges, used lead paint, and had small clips that could be broken off and subsequently swallowed.
  • Introducing cane toads to Australia to control the cane beetle not only failed to control the pest, but introduced, in the toads themselves, a much worse pest.

Use

Comic irony

Irony is often used in literature to produce a comic effect. This may also be combined with satire. For instance, an author may facetiously state something as a well-known fact and then demonstrate through the narrative that the fact is untrue.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice begins with the proposition "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." In fact, it soon becomes clear that Austen means the opposite: women (or their mothers) are always in search of, and desperately on the lookout for, a rich single man to make a husband. The irony deepens as the story promotes this romance and ends in a double marriage proposal. "Austen's comic irony emerges out of the disjunction between Elizabeth's overconfidence (or pride) in her perceptions of Darcy and the narrator's indications that her views are in fact partial and prejudicial."

"The Third Man is a film that features any number of eccentricities, each of which contributes to the film's perspective of comic irony as well as its overall cinematic self-consciousness."

Writing about performances of Shakespeare's Othello in apartheid South Africa, Robert Gordon suggests: "Could it be that black people in the audience ... may have viewed as a comic irony his audacity and naïvety in thinking he could pass for white."

Romantic irony and metafiction

Romantic irony is "an attitude of detached scepticism adopted by an author towards his or her work, typically manifesting in literary self-consciousness and self-reflection". This conception of irony originated with the German Romantic writer and critic Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel.

Joseph Dane writes "From a twentieth-century perspective, the most crucial area in the history of irony is that described by the term romantic irony." He discusses the difficulty of defining romantic irony: "But what is romantic irony? A universal type of irony? The irony used by romantics? or an irony envisioned by the romantics and romanticists?" He also describes the arguments for and against its use.

Referring to earlier self-conscious works such as Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy, Douglas Muecke points particularly to Peter Weiss's 1964 play, Marat/Sade. This work is a play within a play set in a lunatic asylum, in which it is difficult to tell whether the players are speaking only to other players or also directly to the audience. When The Herald says, "The regrettable incident you've just seen was unavoidable indeed foreseen by our playwright", there is confusion as to who is being addressed, the "audience" on the stage or the audience in the theatre. Also, since the play within the play is performed by the inmates of a lunatic asylum, the theatre audience cannot tell whether the paranoia displayed before them is that of the players, or the people they are portraying. Muecke notes that, "in America, Romantic irony has had a bad press", while "in England […] [it] is almost unknown."

However, in a book entitled English Romantic Irony, Anne Mellor writes, referring to Byron, Keats, Carlyle, Coleridge, and Lewis Carroll:

Romantic irony is both a philosophical conception of the universe and an artistic program. Ontologically, it sees the world as fundamentally chaotic. No order, no far goal of time, ordained by God or right reason, determines the progression of human or natural events […] Of course, romantic irony itself has more than one mode. The style of romantic irony varies from writer to writer […] But however distinctive the voice, a writer is a romantic ironist if and when his or her work commits itself enthusiastically both in content and form to a hovering or unresolved debate between a world of merely man-made being and a world of ontological becoming.

Similarly, metafiction is: "Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and narrative techniques." It is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, thereby exposing the fictional illusion.

Gesa Giesing writes that "the most common form of metafiction is particularly frequent in Romantic literature. The phenomenon is then referred to as Romantic Irony." Giesing notes that "There has obviously been an increased interest in metafiction again after World War II."

For example, Patricia Waugh quotes from several works at the top of her chapter headed "What is metafiction?". These include:

The thing is this. That of all the several ways of beginning a book […] I am confident my own way of doing it is best

— Tristram Shandy

Since I've started this story, I've gotten boils […]

— Ronald Sukenick, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories

Additionally, The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction refers to John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman:

For the first twelve chapters […] the reader has been able to immerse him or herself in the story, enjoying the kind of 'suspension of disbelief' required of realist novels […] what follows is a remarkable act of metafictional 'frame-breaking'. Chapter 13 notoriously begins:

I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. […] if this is a novel, it cannot be a novel in the modern sense.

Socratic irony

Socratic irony is "the dissimulation of ignorance practised by Socrates as a means of confuting an adversary". Socrates would pretend to be ignorant of the topic under discussion, to draw out the inherent nonsense in the arguments of his interlocutors. The Chambers Dictionary defines it as "a means by which a questioner pretends to know less than a respondent, when actually he knows more".

Zoe Williams of The Guardian wrote: "The technique [of Socratic irony], demonstrated in the Platonic dialogues, was to pretend ignorance and, more sneakily, to feign credence in your opponent's power of thought, in order to tie him in knots."

A more modern example of Socratic irony can be seen on the American crime fiction television series, Columbo. The character Lt. Columbo is seemingly naïve and incompetent. His untidy appearance adds to this fumbling illusion. As a result, he is underestimated by the suspects in murder cases he is investigating. With their guard down and their false sense of confidence, Lt. Columbo is able to solve the cases, leaving the murderers feeling duped and outwitted.

Irony as infinite, absolute negativity

Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and others, sees irony, such as that used by Socrates, as a disruptive force with the power to undo texts and readers alike. The phrase itself is taken from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, and is applied by Kierkegaard to the irony of Socrates. This tradition includes 19th-century German critic and novelist Friedrich Schlegel ("On Incomprehensibility"), Charles Baudelaire, Stendhal, and the 20th century deconstructionist Paul de Man ("The Concept of Irony"). In Kierkegaard's words, from On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates:

[Socratic] irony [is] the infinite absolute negativity. It is negativity, because it only negates; it is infinite, because it does not negate this or that phenomenon; it is absolute, because that by virtue of which it negates is a higher something that still is not. The irony established nothing, because that which is to be established lies behind it...

Where much of philosophy attempts to reconcile opposites into a larger positive project, Kierkegaard and others insist that irony—whether expressed in complex games of authorship or simple litotes—must, in Kierkegaard's words, "swallow its own stomach". Irony entails endless reflection and violent reversals, and ensures incomprehensibility at the moment it compels speech. Similarly, among other literary critics, writer David Foster Wallace viewed the pervasiveness of ironic and other postmodern tropes as the cause of "great despair and stasis in U.S. culture, and that for aspiring fictionists [ironies] pose terrifically vexing problems."

Irony and awkwardness

The 1990s saw a cultural expansion of the definition of irony from "saying what one doesn't mean" into a "general stance of detachment from life in general", this detachment serving as a shield against the awkwardness of everyday life. Humor from that era (most notably, Seinfeld) relies on the audience watching the show with some detachment from the show's typical signature awkward situations.

The generation of people in the United States who grew up in the 90s, Millennials, are seen as having this same sort of detachment from serious or awkward situations in life, as well. Hipsters are thought to use irony as a shield against those same serious or genuine confrontations.

Opposition between Perception and Concept

Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2, Chapter 8, claimed that the complete and total opposition between what is thought and what is seen constitutes irony. He wrote: "... if with deliberate intention something real and perceptible is brought directly under the concept of its opposite, the result is plain, common irony. For example, if during heavy rain we say: 'It is pleasant weather today'; or, of an ugly bride it is said: 'He has found himself a lovely treasure'; or of a rogue: 'This man of honor,' and so on. Only children and people without any education will laugh at anything of this kind; for here the incongruity between the conceived and the perceived is total.”

Misuse

Some speakers of English complain that the words irony and ironic are often misused, though the more general casual usage of a contradiction between circumstance and expectation originates in the 1640s.

Dan Shaughnessy wrote:

We were always kidding about the use of irony. I maintained that it was best never to use the word because it was too often substituted for coincidence. (Alanis Morissette's song "Isn't it Ironic?" cites multiple examples of things that are patently not ironic.)

Tim Conley cites the following: "Philip Howard assembled a list of seven implied meanings for the word "ironically", as it opens a sentence:

  1. By a tragic coincidence
  2. By an exceptional coincidence
  3. By a curious coincidence
  4. By a coincidence of no importance
  5. You and I know, of course, though other less intelligent mortals walk benighted under the midday sun
  6. Oddly enough, or it's a rum thing that
  7. Oh hell! I've run out of words to start a sentence with."

Punctuation

No agreed-upon method for indicating irony in written text exists, though many ideas have been suggested. For instance, an irony punctuation mark was proposed in the 1580s, when Henry Denham introduced a rhetorical question mark or percontation point, which resembles a reversed question mark. This mark was also advocated by the French poet Marcel Bernhardt at the end of the 19th century, to indicate irony or sarcasm. French writer Hervé Bazin suggested another pointe d'ironie: the Greek letter psi Ψ with a dot below it, while Tom Driberg recommended that ironic statements should be printed in italics that lean the other way from conventional italics.

 

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