Behind dark glasses: irony as a strategy for indirect communication

This article outlines the model of irony seen as a "fencing game." The starting point is the metaphor of the "dark glasses" (R. Barthes, 1977), according to which irony is considered as a mask revealing, paradoxically, what it apparently hides. Basing the study on both perspectives of symbolic interactionism and planning communication theory, the authors analyze the social functions of irony (to evade censure in a socially correct way, to safeguard private space, to renegotiate meanings). In this framework, irony is described as a script of actions that people use astutely in order to strike antagonists in a graceful but "stinging" way, just like fencers in a competition. The fencing game model of irony foresees 4 steps: the textual and contextual assumptions (i.e., shared knowledge), the focal event (the trigger of irony), the dialogic comment (the ironic utterance the speaker performs by combining verbal and nonverbal aspects), and the ironic effect referring to the addressee's feedback (denying, misunderstanding, touché). The advantages of the fencing game model of irony are also considered.