Irony activity and students’ contribution:
Ironic understanding is the “mental flexibility to recognize how inadequately flexible are our minds, and the languages we use, to the world we try to represent in them”. This includes the ability to consider alternative philosophic explanations, and is characterized by a Socratic stance in the world.- The Educated Mind
Our group have prepared a set of activities regarding Ironic thinking. We talked about what ironic thinking is and its types, then we discussed a worksheet about the types. We also had two small activities and an online challenge game (Kahoot).
This was the worksheet and you can find the answers below:
ANSWERS:
1.Verbal irony: the waitress expresses gratitude when she intends the opposite.
2. Dramatic irony: The reader knows that Lucy doesn’t like Tom, but Tom believes the opposite.
3. Situational irony: one might believe that studying intensely would help Bobby prepare for the test, but in reality the intensity of Bobby‘s preparation resulted in his failure.
The two small activities were:
1.Finding/writing a short story or share a quote/song/picture or an individual experience. Explaining why it’s ironic and identifying the type of it.
There was a great responding from many students and their examples were very satisfactory as the discussion was clear to understand and they were great at their quick response. You can find some of the students’ examples below:
-A woman recently started to notice that her boyfriend is acting strange and he also for the last couple of nights he was coming later than usual so she started to think that he is going to leave her but he was preparing to propose to her. (Dramatic irony)
-Posting on Twitter complaining how useless Twitter is. This is ironic because one would expect someone who dislikes Twitter to stay away from it instead of using it to make their point of view. (Situational irony)
-Still in his pajamas, he reaches across the bed to pick up his computer. What are you doing she says. I’m going to my office, he replies. (Verbal/Situational irony)
-As Jack was making food in the kitchen at 3:00 AM with his belly growling, his wife asked: are you hungry? No just thought it would be a good idea to make food at 3:00 AM. (Verbal irony)
2. Students were asked to tell which form of irony they believe this is and why.
Responses were as follows:
-Maybe situational. This kind of irony helps us to express some of our feelings with regard to corona?
-The movie uses both dramatic and situational ironies but it depends on the situation, when I talk about the movie in general I’d say it uses dramatic irony because of specific events, but regarding the corona virus situation I think it uses the situational irony as it helps us express some of our feelings regarding corona.
-As mentioned previously each person has their own perspective in this case but it is definitely clear and safe to say that this is Situational Irony regarding our current situation today dealing with this epidemic.
-In an Arabic country there has been a protest with more than 500 people involved against corona virus, they were cheering to stay at home and not to over-crowd !
Ironic isn’t it ?
During our activity we discussed three questions which were: 1. How does ironic thinking differ from other thinking, such as philosophic or romantic? 2. Does the world need ironic thinking? 3.Is Ironic thinking a useful form of academic thinking and communication? For example, in History, Political Science, or Literature Studies?
Answers were as follows:
1.Both romantic and philosophical thinking are seeking for answers. For instance romantic thinking explores the boundaries and limits then applying the cognitive and affective thinking to make decisions. philosophical is looking for answers for such basic, specific questions. for example: (why are we born?); the answers to the questions philosophical thinking propose is going to be theories that we will accept. Philosophical and romantic thinking is unlike the ironic thinking. Ironic thinking is characterized by the ability to reflect in a more sophisticated way coupled with a degree of skepticism, a willingness to question ideas and beliefs rather than an uncritical acceptance of theories about how the world works.
2.An Ironic understanding of the world tells us that the way we have made sense of our world is dependent upon our historical and cultural perspective. Although this can lead to disappointment or cynicism, a more positive alternative is a kind of lightheartedness, a sense of humor about it all. People with a developed Ironic understanding are able not only to take sides on a particular question, but to understand their motives for taking sides, to understand the reasons why others might disagree with them, and perhaps to share their ironic sense of the situation.
3. -To be brief, ironic thinking is a great critical way of thinking one may use so in Academic thinking and communication.
-For example, “The narrator would like us to believe that he is not biased!!
“Irony can convey an unpleasant feeling or a hustle attitude , without bringing down the atmosphere, It can also be amazing in literature since all the amazing high rated novels had an ending that shocked everyone.
– It can be used to question overconfident statements or academic theories and it is a bit like the black hat, in the 6 thinking hats. But not good to wear it all the time.
– Being ironic can be harmful at times, over using it, can and will indicate that the person has lack of self a steam and tries to make up for it by mockery.
You can find our online game (Kahoot) using this link: https://create.kahoot.it/share/irony/039aef02-84af-4562-941e-b7ddab63ae3e
Creative Practice 