Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Journal of Pragmatics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

Are ironic acts deliberate?

Raymond W. Gibbs Jr.
University of California, Santa Cruz, Dept. of Psychology, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history: Many figurative language scholars maintain that ironic acts, involving linguistic and
Received 5 July 2011 nonlinguistic behaviors, are deliberate and quite consciously performed for special
Received in revised form 1 November 2011 pragmatic purposes. This article explores some of these common assumptions about irony
Accepted 7 November 2011
as a deliberate pragmatic action in light of contemporary research in psycholinguistics and
cognitive science on meaning, consciousness and human action. My claim is that ironic
Keywords:
acts may not be as ‘‘deliberate’’ in their creation and use as is often believed, especially in
Irony
Ironic acts the sense that ironic meanings arise from completely conscious states of mind. I propose
Deliberateness an alternative, dynamical view of intentional action that better explains the psychological
Psycholinguistics complexities of how ironic acts are created and understood.
Meaning ß 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.
Interpretation

1. Introduction

Are ironic acts, involving both linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors, created deliberately to convey special pragmatic
messages? Consider several examples of irony. First, imagine that you had promised a close friend to help him move from his
apartment on a Saturday morning, but you forget about your commitment and failed to show up. Several days later you
encountered your friend at the supermarket, and upon seeing you, he approached and said rather angrily, ‘‘A fine friend you
are!’’ After hearing this you immediately recognized your friend’s rebuke, and felt terrible for forgetting to uphold your
promise to help him move. The question is whether your friend deliberately used irony, in this case sarcasm, to convey the
message that you should have fulfilled your original promise to him.
Imagine now a different situation in which you are attending a basketball game involving your favorite professional team,
the Boston Celtics. Despite the fact that the Celtics has a great team, with many excellent players, on this evening they were
terrible, and at one point went over 10 min without making a shot. Finally, after what seemed like forever, one of the Celtic
players made an easy shot, and many fans started to applaud in a slow, methodical manner, clearly trying to sarcastically
comment on the team’s poor performance up to that moment. Once again, the question is whether the fans deliberately
employed irony in their non-verbal action of sarcastically applauding to mock the team’s long scoring drought.
Both of these situations have the appearance of deliberate ironic acts being performed for the special rhetorical effects
that irony is widely known to create in interpersonal interactions. Irony is particularly notable for its ability to forcefully
highlight the discrepancy between some reality and what some people expected or desired. When people feel caught in the
grip of the incompatibility between expectation and reality, irony seems very appropriate to let others know of the
psychological consequences of being so disappointed or surprised. Irony may have its greatest power to succinctly, yet
indirectly, express the mockery, disdain, and sometimes delight (in the case of jocularity) when finding ourselves in a
challenging context that we can do little about. Numerous scholars, throughout the centuries, have concluded that irony is a
wonderful tool for reestablishing equilibrium in our social relationships by alerting others to the disparities we presently

E-mail address: gibbs@ucsc.edu.

0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.

doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2011.11.001
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 105

experience (Gibbs, 1994; Gibbs and Colston, 2007; Hutcheon, 1994). One assumption underlying much of this scholarship is
that ironic speech ‘‘by its very nature is a well wrought art, a deliberate and conscious manipulation of language for rhetorical
effect’’ (O’Connor, 1986:2). As one dictionary noted, irony is, ‘‘a form of deliberate mockery in which one says the opposite of
what is obviously true’’ (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/irony). Irony is performed in a deliberate, strategic way and
presumably understood as such by listeners and readers (for other examples of deliberate irony see Colebrook, 2004;
Hutcheon, 1994; Muecke, 1969).
However, my goal in this article is to raise several serious doubts about the idea that ironic acts are necessarily deliberate
and reflections of conscious, communicative thought processes. In previous writings, I have criticized the claim that certain
metaphorical expressions (e.g., ‘‘Juliet is the sun’’) are deliberate in the sense of being consciously created and understood to
have unique rhetorical purposes because of their deliberate employment (Gibbs, 2011a,b). Some of these earlier points about
metaphor also apply to the analysis of ironic actions. But irony is often viewed as different from metaphor, precisely because
of its more complex cognitive structure in being reliant on metarepresentations in order to be produced and understood
(Colston and Gibbs, 2002; Gibbs, 2000), and for the evaluative and emotional effects that ironic speech and writing often
communicate (Garamendia, 2010; Leggitt and Gibbs, 2000; Partington, 2007). For this reason, a critical analysis of some of
the common beliefs about the deliberate nature of ironic acts, in both language and behavior, is clearly warranted.
My main argument is both that not all forms of irony are deliberate, or even intentional, and that the very idea of
‘‘deliberateness’’ in language and human action places too much value on conscious, reflective thought in communicative
acts. Irony emerges from the interaction of multiple constraints that operate simultaneously in any moment of human
experience. A proper psychological account of what people are doing when engaging in irony, or experiencing irony,
demands recognition of the complexities of adaptive, mostly unconscious, processes in which our conscious thoughts may
have far less to do with our actions than we intuitively believe (e.g., see work on both cognitive pragmatics, such as Wilson
and Sperber, 2004; and the psychology of fast and frugal heuristics in adaptive human action, such as Gigerenzer et al., 1999).
None of this claims that irony, or any other aspect of language, is not intentional or strategic in being the product of people’s
attempts to communicate, and coordinate, with others (see Gibbs, 1999, and also Haugh, 2008 for a collection of articles
debating intention in pragmatics). But acting in a ‘‘deliberate’’ manner implies a marked awareness of what one is doing and
the reasons for this action, and my argument, again, is that our conscious, deliberate thought processes do not serve as the
primary causal forces for strategic ironic behaviors.

2. The varieties of ironic experience

People use the terms ‘‘ironic’’ and ‘‘irony’’ to describe a wide range of situations and linguistic phenomena (Gibbs, 1994;
Gibbs and Colston, 2007; Lucariello, 1994; Shelley, 2001), and it is not clear whether these labels necessarily reflect a
monolithic concept for ‘‘irony.’’ The concept of irony may be structured as a type of family resemblance or radial category in
which various instances are connected by different motivated links, yet there is no single essence that underlies all aspects of
the concept. For example, Lucariello (1994) identifies seven major types of situational irony, along with various subtypes,
and claimed that there are at least 27 different types of ironic events. Studies of verbal irony in psycholinguistics indicate that
irony is not a unified form of talk, but instead represents a global term for different forms of ironic language, including
sarcasm (e.g., ‘‘A fine friend you are’’), jocularity (e.g., ‘‘I just love it when you spread your clothes all over the living room’’),
hyperbole (e.g., ‘‘I have absolutely nothing to wear’’), rhetorical questions (e.g., ‘‘Isn’t it lovely weather?’’ in the midst of a
rainstorm), and understatement (e.g., ‘‘John seems to be a tad bit tipsy’’ when John is extremely intoxicated) (Gibbs, 2000).
People employ these different forms of talk on varying occasions to communicate different, complex pragmatic goals. Irony’s
capacity to convey different emotions and evoke various affective states in listeners, depending on the exact form of irony
that is used, illustrates irony’s important role in helping speakers negotiate social relationships and adapt to changing
circumstances.
Despite these complex properties of ironic language and events, there may be important differences between ironic
speech and ironic situations. For example, I argued many years ago that, ‘‘one can intend to say something ironic (verbal
irony), but cannot intend to do something ironic (situational irony). I cannot say that I will perform three ironic acts today
(situational irony), because when I say that some act is ironic, I am asserting that is somehow unexpected or inconsistent
from my point of view, and I cannot claim this with respect to my own intentions. Yet I can say of my past acts that it was
ironic that I did such-and-such, or I could say of some hypothetical action that were I to do such-and-such, it would be ironic
(Booth, 1974)’’ (Gibbs, 1994:363). Most generally, like many scholars, I once maintained that ironic speech and writing are
intentional and arise from forethought, but that our analysis that some acts are ironic is an after-the-fact judgment.
However, the problem with this simple distinction between ironic language and action is that some nonverbal acts,
including ironic situations such as sarcastic applause, can be mentally conceived and enacted with prior communicative
intent. When the basketball fans applaud in a sarcastic manner, this event originated from some mental process about what
was best to do at the moment. People did not sarcastically applaud and then, after-the-fact determine that their actions were
ironic or sarcastic. Indeed, many nonverbal actions express ironic messages that are intentional and communicative, ranging
from the fashion we wear, to the food, music, and art we create, as well as bodily actions such as gestures and facial
expressions. In each case we have the impression, again, that the perpetuator of the action (i.e., the clothes wearer, the chef,
the composer, or actor displaying a wry grin) knew beforehand what they were doing as they created and performed these
nonverbal actions. There are even websites that serve as advice columns on ‘‘How to be ironic’’ that emphasizes the
106 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

importance of awareness of irony in creating ironic acts. Consider two bits of advice on how to be ironic with fashion and in
television watching (http://www.askmen.com/money/how_to_400/469_be-ironic.html).

‘‘Irony in fashion
Ironic clothing is essentially about wearing something unfashionable, while seeming to attempt to be fashionable.
However, in order to use irony successfully, both you and your audience need to be in on the joke. A great example of this
is wearing a slogan T-shirt, which makes reference to something that you and your audience (anyone who sees the
T-shirt) understands. The famous ‘‘Vote for Pedro’’ T-shirt (from ‘‘Napoleon Dynamite)’’ is an example of this, as are
throwback sweatshirts with images of wolves or other wilderness scenes.
‘‘The key with each of these examples is to be wearing it knowingly. Our definition of irony involves taking something and
making its meaning its direct opposite. Understanding the message you are conveying is essential. It is not ironic if you
wear a slogan T-shirt without understanding the reference. Nor is it ironic to wear a ridiculous Christmas sweater if you
think it looks nice. That’s just wrong.
‘‘Ironic TV viewing
The phrase ‘‘It’s so bad it’s good’’ is often used as an explanation by people who watch TV ironically. The irony is derived
from being entertained, not by the storyline or the acting, but by how terrible it really is. If, however, you actually enjoy
the hyperbolic drama, or the ridiculous plot, or the ham-acting, you are not viewing it ironically.’’

Overall, the main message of this internet advice column is that having awareness of the ironic nature of the act is critical
to one successfully pulling off an ironic act without ending up looking like a fool. Our judgments of the deliberate nature of
ironic events is closely tied to the impression that a person was mindful of irony and wanted others to interpret their actions
as being deliberately ironic.
Yet observers may vastly overinterpret the presumed ironic actions of others. Teenage children may wear all sorts of hip
clothing that can express humorous, irreverent messages, but have little sense that what they are wearing is ironic because it
‘‘echoes’’ some previous type of fashion. Even in instances where some non-verbal act was originally intended to be seen as
making an ironic statement, this does not imply that every subsequent repetition of that act is understood as a thoughtful,
deliberate ironic action. In a similar way, I know many younger people who find the clothing and speech in certain movies,
such as the Austin Powers series, to be humorous because of the way these films mock what the actors are doing and saying.
But these same people have no idea that the Austin Powers movies are ironic commentaries on the famous James Bond films
of the 1960s, and indeed have never seen any of the original Bond movies. But it is possible to appreciate something of the
rebellious, even ironic, nature of certain dress, food, and other non-verbal actions without having any deep awareness of
what is actually being mocked. Observers may sometimes comment that the people laughing at, for example, an Austin
Power’s movie, really do not understand the true, deep ironic commentary. People may actually understand ironic meanings
in different ways and at different levels (see below).
But we can still ask whether all of our experiences of irony necessarily demand recognition of the deliberate
communicative attempts of others. Many situational ironies arise accidentally, often through the otherwise good intentions
of the participants involved. Although there may be cases in which a person acts in a particular manner to highlight the irony,
and sometimes, hypocrisy, in life events, situations are typically judged as ironic when an intended action leads to an
opposite, and usually highly improbable, outcome. For example, a financial planner who ends up bankrupt because of his
own foolish actions seems rather improbable and ironic. A key feature in these judgments of situations as being ironic is the
extent to which a person’s actions specifically led to the undesired outcome. If the financial planner had all his money stolen,
through no fault of his own, we would not view the resulting bankruptcy as being ironic. In other cases, situational irony
arises accidentally from the juxtaposition of different individuals’ actions, such as in the O’ Henry story of ‘‘The Gift of the
Magi’’ in which the husband sold his beloved pocket watch so that he could buy his wife a comb for her hair, while the wife
cut her hair and sold it so she could buy her husband a gold chain for his watch.
For the most part, the psychological study of ironic situations, and the typical contexts used in psycholinguistic studies,
focus on cases where people conceive of some external circumstance, which they are not involved in, as ironic, such as the
case in ‘‘The Gift of the Magi’’ and then maybe comment on the situation in some ironic manner (Gibbs and Colston, 2007).
Yet people also experience irony within themselves whenever conscious attempts to accomplish something (e.g., fall asleep,
stop smoking, stop thinking of a past romantic relationship) lead to completely contrary results (e.g., staying awake, wanting
to smoke more, constantly thinking of one’s ex-lover). These situations sometimes feel ironic and evoke strong emotional
reactions precisely because people recognize the significant incompatibility between what they personally desired and what
has occurred, enough so that the sense of irony pops into consciousness. Psychological studies in social psychology now
reveal that the difficulty in suppressing unwanted thoughts is shaped by distinct ‘‘ironic processes of mental control’’
(Wegner, 2002). Under this perspective, thought suppression involves two mechanisms, an intentional operating process
that seeks thoughts that will promote the preferred state (i.e., anything other than the unwanted thought), and an ironic
monitoring process that remains in the background of consciousness and searches for mental contents that signal the failure
to achieve the desired state (i.e., an unwanted thought). Unintentional ironies arise especially when individuals are
experiencing cognitive and emotional stress that interferes with the operating process that seeks out desired behaviors.
Experimental research has gone on to demonstrate that people can often recognize situations where irony arises from
their own private, failed attempts to do something. In fact, studies show that people view these ‘‘internally generated ironic
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 107

situations’’ to be even more ironic than cases where they recognize an external ironic situation (e.g., learning that your
financial advisor has gone bankrupt) (Gibbs, 2007). These internally generated ironies are not typically seen as mere
coincidence, although people sometimes view these as being related to fate, because of the inevitability of some negative
effect arising from failed attempts at thought suppression. Although people do not typically comment to others about their
failed attempts at thought control, people sometimes comment, when asked in empirical studies, that they find themselves
speaking ironically or sarcastically when alone, such as ‘‘This is just great,’’ when tossing and turning in bed at night, unable
to sleep despite their best efforts (Gibbs, 2007).
The claim here, then, is that certain events (e.g., failing to fall asleep despite your strong attempts to do so) are
experienced as being highly ironic even when our deliberate goals aims at achieving the very opposite of what eventually
occurred. These internally generated ironies are still clearly tied to our own actions and thoughts – they do not appear by
sheer magic or by forces of nature beyond our control. Psychological research has also shown different methods for
overcoming internally generated ironic situations, with the avoidance of deliberate, conscious thoughts being one of the keys
toward achieving one’s real goals (Wegner, 2002). In this way, people possess the ability to resist ironic experiences from
arising in consciousness. But the main point is that certain ironic events may arise, and be understood as such, despite our
deliberate intentions for completely different outcomes.

3. Unintended ironic meaning

Even if different ironic acts and experiences have complex origins, one could still argue that ironic speech is very much a
deliberate communicative act. Speakers chose to articulate ironic statements for varying social purposes, such as when a
friend says, ‘‘A fine friend you are!’’ after you disregarded an earlier promise. Exactly what these social purposes may be are
matters of much debate within the psychological literature, with some studies suggesting that irony mutes the harshness of
the speaker’s message (Dews and Winner, 1995), and others showing that many ironies are especially hurtful compared to
non-ironic remarks (Colston and O’Brien, 2000). Yet all of these studies assume that speakers have some specific social goals
when using certain ironies and that listeners must recognize these intentional messages.
However, there are cases in which a speaker’s utterance is understood as ironic despite the clear recognition that the
comment was not intended to be interpreted in this manner. Consider the following two situations, each of which ends with
the identical statement ‘‘I would never be involved in any cheating’’ (Gibbs et al., 1995):

John and Bill were taking a statistics class together.

Before the final exam, they decided to cooperate during the test.
They worked out a system so they could secretly share answers.
After the exam, John and Bill were really pleased with themselves.
They thought they were pretty clever for beating the system.
Later that night, a friend happened to ask them if they ever tried to cheat.
John and Bill looked at each other and laughed, and then John said,
‘‘I would never be involved in any cheating.’’

John and Bill were taking a statistics class together.

They studied hard together, but John was clearly better prepared than Bill.
During the exam, Bill panicked and started to copy answers from John.
John didn’t see Bill do this, and so he didn’t know that he was actually helping Bill.
John took the school’s honor code very seriously.
Later that night, a friend happened to ask them if they ever tried to cheat.
John and Bill looked at each other, and then John said,
‘‘I would never be involved in any cheating.’’

Both of these situations end in a statement that may be understood to some listeners as being ironic. The speaker in the
first story specifically intends his audience to understand that what is said is ironic, but the speaker in the second context
does not intend his utterance to be understood ironically. In the second story, only the addressees and overhearers see the
irony in what the speaker actually said. It is quite possible for people to understand a speaker’s utterance as irony even
though the speaker did not intend the utterance to be understood as irony.
Is it more difficult to interpret unintended verbal irony than intended irony? A large body of psycholinguistic research
shows that people can easily understand ironic remarks and requests in appropriate contexts (Gibbs, 1994, 2002). But do
these results imply that listeners always infer intentional meaning first before unintentional messages are possibly derived?
Participants in one series of experiments read a series of stories, like the ones shown above, on a computer terminal (Gibbs
et al., 1995). They read each story one line at a time, pushing a button on an accompanying keyboard to indicate that they had
understood each sentence. The data of interest concerned the amount of time it took people to read the last line of each story.
Participants only saw one story from each pair of stories (i.e., either the intended irony or unintended irony story). The results
showed that people took much less time to read unintentionally ironic statements than to process intentionally ironic
utterances. People find it easier to comprehend verbal ironies that spontaneously create ironic situations than it is to make
sense of ironies that remind listeners of other speakers’ attitudes and beliefs.
108 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

One could argue that the participants in Gibbs et al. (1995) studies may not have understood the unintentionally ironic
statements as being all that ironic. Yet these same participants rated the unintentionally ironic statements as being more
ironic than they did the intentionally ironic utterances. Thus, people viewed the final statements in the unintentional stories
as being highly ironic, and as noted in another study, recognized, when explicitly asked about this, that the speakers of
unintentional irony had intentions in saying what they did that differed from the ironic interpretations readers quickly
recovered. A different experiment showed that when people were asked to judge whether the contexts alone, without the
final speakers’ statements, made it likely that someone was about to use irony, participants said that this was more likely for
the intentionally ironic contexts than the unintentional ones. This latter result confirms that a speakers’ utterance can create
an ironic understanding of the situation, and not that the situation in an unintentional context set up ironic expectations.
Finally, many of the participants in the above experiments commented that they found great humor in what they read,
with these observations being characteristic of the link between different types of irony and humor. But the humor in
intended and unintended irony may differ in that there is a greater conflict between expectation and reality in unintended
irony than in intended irony. Many situation comedy programs on television demonstrate how much of the humor is
grounded in characters saying things that are intended in one way but which, we the audience, understand as conveying
some different meaning given our understanding of the full context (i.e., dramatic irony). Overall, although verbal irony often
reflects a speaker’s communicative goal of identifying aspects of ironic situations, speakers may unintentionally create irony
by what they say and listeners may interpret these remarks as conveying ironic messages more easily than cases where a
person really intends an utterance to be understood ironically. These empirical findings are damaging to the claim that all
verbal ironic acts are necessarily deliberate or that our interpretation of so-called intended ironic meaning is temporally
prior to our understanding of non-authorized ironic messages.
People can also unintentionally exhibit ironic meaning through mixed modalities as well. Signs and advertisements can
sometimes be hilariously ironic, probably without any intention to be ironic on the part of those creating these artifacts. For
example, consider a sign that simply states, ‘‘Caution, no warning signs,’’ or a notice by a public telephone that says, ‘‘The
courtesy phone is temporarily out of service. For assistance please call 503-849-7515.’’ A sign warning people that there are
no warning signs, and a broken telephone with a note telling you of a number to call to help with this problem are both ironic,
even if some of us may attribute stupidity, rather than irony, to the persons writing these messages. It is difficult to know if
people were at all aware of the irony in what they have created in these situations. For example, there is a famous photograph
by Margaret Bourke-White from the 1930s showing a long line of black Americans waiting for a food handout during the
‘‘Great Depression’’ with a large billboard advertisement above them showing a picture of a smiling, white family inside a car,
with the caption underneath saying, ‘‘There’s no way like the American Way!’’ Bourke-White probably understood the
incompatibility between the image of the happy, wealthy white Americans and the poor black Americans waiting for food
handouts. Still, we are not always sure of this judgment. In any event, unintentional irony is not an unusual phenomenon,
and we seem quite able to interpret these events as ironic without any assumptions about the deliberate intent of the
persons involved in those acts.

4. Complexities of irony understanding

We can admit that some ironic statements and ironic experiences may arise without any deliberate intent to produce
irony. Speakers often automatically produce many standard ironic phrases (e.g., ‘‘That’s great,’’ ‘‘Lovely, just lovely’’) that
appear to be generated with little forethought. Listeners may recognize that the speaker imply something by their use of
these words without necessarily coming to a conscious decision of ‘‘Oh, that is meant ironically.’’ But one can nonetheless
argue that the vast majority of verbal ironies are deliberately created and then understood as deliberately ironic. I examine
this idea by first considering a proposal about deliberate metaphor that is, unknowingly, quite relevant to any claim that
verbal irony may be deliberate. For example, Steen (2006:221) writes, ‘‘I propose that a metaphor is deliberately used when it
is expressly meant to change the addressee’s perspective on the referent or topic that is the target of the metaphor, by
making the addressee look at it from a different conceptual domain or space, which functions are a conceptual source. In such
cases as ‘Juliet is the sun,’ this is precisely what is being asked of the addressee. The utterance expresses a blatant falsehood,
while drawing attention to the new information presented at the end of the sentence that causes the falsehood, ‘sun’. It
cannot be anything but a deliberate invitation for the addressee to adopt a different perspective of Juliet from a truly alien
domain that is consciously introduced as a source for reviewing the target. . ..’’ Steen goes on to say that, ‘‘Deliberate
metaphors are those cross-domain mappings that involve the express use, in production and/or reception, of another domain
as a source domain for re-viewing the target domain. Deliberate metaphor is a relatively conscious discourse strategy that
aims to elicit particular rhetorical effects’’ (Steen, 2006:223).
This conclusion is very similar to that made by scholars who argue that irony involves the conscious, deliberate
manipulation of language for special rhetorical purposes. Although Steen maintained that only a few selected groups of
metaphorical expressions are truly deliberate, with the rest being produced and understood automatically, his proposal can
be extended to suggest that all irony should be deliberate. Thus, with deliberate metaphor a speaker aims to express
something new about a target domain through reflection of a source domain concept. If one thinks of an ironic speaker as
trying to assert something new about the target in context, then each of these verbal acts would also, by definition, be
deliberate. For example, saying ‘‘A fine friend you are!’’ invites an addressee to adopt a different perspective of the target, or
the person now being referred to as a ‘‘fine friend.’’ Of course, the entire point of ironic language is to express an evaluative
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 109

judgment about the target, and making us view the target, at least momentarily, in a ‘‘distinct conceptual domain or space’’
(i.e., the target is not at all a fine friend given his disappointing failure to assist the speaker moving out of his apartment). For
these reasons, all ironic acts appear to have the deliberate aim of getting others to think differently about the topic.
But this characterization of deliberate irony assumes that speakers have singular goals in saying what they do. Yet an
examination of many verbal ironies suggests that the pragmatics of irony is far more complex, enough so that we cannot
accept the idea that all ironic acts are deliberate. Consider one example of irony that seems quite consciously deliberate in
order to make people re-think their understanding of a target domain (Gibbs and Izett, 2004). The following radio
advertisement, sponsored by the California Department of Health Services, played in May 1998 on California radio stations.
The radio spot was spoken in the voice of a 60-year-old man in a very sincere tone:

‘‘We the Tobacco Industry, would like to take this opportunity to thank you, the young people of America, who continue to
smoke our cigarettes despite Surgeon General warnings that smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema, and heart disease.
Your ignorance is astounding, and should be applauded. Our tobacco products kill 420,000 of your parents and
grandparents every year. And yet, you’ve stuck by us. That kind of blind allegiance is hard to find. In fact, 3000 of you start
smoking everyday because we tobacco folks tell you it’s cool.’’ (Starts to get carried away). ‘‘Remember, you’re rebels!
Individuals! And besides, you impressionable little kids are makin’ us tobacco guys rich!! Heck, we’re billionaires!!’’
(Clears throat/Composes himself). ‘‘In conclusion, we the tobacco conglomerates of America, owe a debt of gratitude to all
teens for their continued support of our tobacco products despite the unfortunate disease and death they cause. Thank
you for your understanding. Thank you for smoking. Yours truly, The Tobacco Industry.’’

This passage appears to most listeners to be riddled with irony, with many of the utterances being instances of sarcasm.
There are several questions that need to be asked, though, in considering whether this ironic piece was deliberate or not.
First, did the creators of this ad have some clear, conscious intention in mind to be ironic? As is the case for possible
instances of deliberate metaphor, answering this question is not easy to do. One could simply ask the ad’s creators if they
intended this to be ironic. Yet a long history of research in Psychology shows that experts are notoriously poor at describing
their thought processes when engaging in their expertise (Anderson, 2001). Simply asking people to decide what thoughts
they had when they made an ironic remark may not provide an accurate indication of the variety of mostly unconscious
processes that led to the creation and production of the ironic act. (Gibbs, 2006a). For instance, even if the creators could
readily speak up and say, ‘‘Yes, this is an ironic ad,’’ that assessment is more of a post-hoc reflection than a veridical statement
about the underlying, possibly complex, causal basis for the ultimate ironic performance. Unless we have some privileged
access to the creators’ thought processes, it may be impossible for us to say ‘‘this is deliberate irony’’ by only looking at the
language alone or by examining our own reactions to the ad (i.e., it seems ironic to us and therefore must have been
deliberately produced exactly for this effect).
But let us suppose that the creators of the above ad did say it was intentionally, even deliberately, ironic. What exactly
does this statement imply? As mentioned earlier, verbal irony is really composed of at least five different tropes, and one can
ask, if we believe in deliberate irony, which particular figure of speech was intended by each so-called ironic utterance
(e.g., sarcasm, jocularity, hyperbole, etc.). My argument is that even clever advertizing people cannot unanimously, and
consistently, describe the specific rhetorical forms they employ when they speak or write ironically. Irony scholars, in fact,
vigorously debate some of the different ways that irony can be classified, and it is by no means obvious that ordinary
speakers and listeners of irony possess the requisite linguistic knowledge to label statements as either being ‘‘ironic’’ or more
specifically as being a certain type of irony. Only quite recently has there been a reliable, operational way proposed for
identifying irony in discourse (Burgers et al., 2011), yet this ‘‘verbal irony procedure’’ takes much effort to learn and apply to
discourse, and surely does not capture what people normally do when engaging in ironic speech and action. Of course,
authors may make very plausible arguments about the different rhetorical, pragmatic effects they wish to achieve, such as in
the anti-smoking ad. But consciousness of what one hopes to get others to believe or feel is very different from the specific,
and presumably deliberate intent to produce something called ‘‘irony’’ that brings about those effects.
Another possibility is that certain linguistic cues reveal deliberate ironic intent, apart from any consideration of the actual
creators of this ad and their particular aims in creating it. Not every utterance in the ad is a specific instance of irony, as
several expressions are clearly not ironic (e.g., ‘‘Our tobacco products kill 420,000 of your parents and grandparents every
year’’). But the linking or chaining together of various ironic statements in one stretch of discourse may create a strong sense
of deliberateness on the part of the authors. Different linguistic and psychological studies illustrate that speakers sometimes
respond ironically to ironic statements and the sheer frequency of ironic messages may give listeners/readers a clue that
some ironic meanings may have been deliberately produced for their interpretive benefit (Gibbs, 2000; Kothhoff, 2003).
Many ironic acts, therefore, may create a sense of ‘‘ironic coherence’’ in discourse that affects not only what is understood,
but how subsequent words and phrases should be interpreted (i.e., ‘‘ironic priming’’).
The problem, though, is that the frequency and distribution of irony in human interactions, including both verbal and
nonverbal acts, does not necessarily entail that the ironic acts in question were created with conscious and deliberate intent.
First, there is no empirical evidence to support the claim that people typically recognize irony, or any other type of figurative
language, as a special type, during their online interpretation of ironic language. Thus, people do not unconsciously, or
otherwise, label utterances as being ‘‘metaphoric,’’ ‘‘idiomatic,’’ metonymic,’’ ‘‘sarcastic’’ or otherwise as part of their fast-
acting unconscious comprehension processes (Gibbs, 1994). There is research that shows how the presence of metaphor, and
110 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

to a lesser degree irony, is positively correlated and coordinated with subsequent figurative speech (Gibbs, 1994; Gibbs and
Colston, 2007), yet, once more, there is no sense that people make judgments that speakers are deliberately using any type of
language, as opposed to any other, in the course of discourse interaction. Moreover, studies demonstrate, at least for
metaphor, that people may be greatly influenced by the figurative nature of certain arguments when making decisions, but
have little conscious awareness, even when asked, of the type of language that shaped their thinking (Thibodeau and
Boroditsky, 2011).
Second, some cases of irony involve situations where no single utterance is necessarily ironic, and thus stands out as such
in a conversation or text, because irony is conveyed at the entire discourse level. Thus, Jonathan Swift’s famous essay ‘‘A
Modest Proposal’’ is understood as irony, or satire, because a general ironic mode of processing is given to the discourse, and
not because some specific utterances, and only these, are deliberately used as irony in the essay. There is an important
distinction between ‘‘processing of irony’’ and ‘‘ironic processing’’ where the latter refers to a general interpretive strategy
and the former something one does to infer the ironic messages conveyed by specific linguistic utterances. Readers may learn
to adopt ironic processing as a special kind of discourse strategy and possibly interpret certain texts as exhibiting higher-
order forms of ironic communication (e.g., the social and political messages one may interpret from Swift’s famous essay)
(Gibbs, 1994, 1999). Nonetheless, the occasional employment of an ironic mode of processing is not indicative of what
people typically do when understanding verbal ironies in discourse.
Another major problem with deliberate irony is that not all listeners or readers understand people’s ironic intentions,
with this being exactly what speakers and writers sometimes intend to communicate. Even if irony can be consciously
created, this does not demand that listeners must recognize this fact when understanding the implied meanings of irony.
Irony divides its audience in two different ways (Kaufer, 1977). First, there is the distinction between those who recognize
the irony and those who don’t. Those who recognize the irony understand what the speaker/author intends to say, and
because of their wisdom may be called ‘‘wolves.’’ Those who fail to recognize the irony mistake what the speaker/author
appears to say for what he or she intends to say. For their gullibility, these people may be called ‘‘sheep.’’
Another difference in audiences is between those who agree with the speaker/author’s intended meaning and those that
do not. Supporters of irony are ‘‘confederates’’: and those that disagree are ‘‘victims.’’ These two groups are not the same as
wolves and sheep, because understanding what the author intends to say and agreeing with it are distinct aspects of
communication.
Employing irony, therefore, divides the audience into four groups: (1) those who recognize the irony and agree with the
author’s intended message (i.e., wolf-confederates), (2) those who recognize the irony but disagree with the author’s
intended message (i.e., wolf-victims), (3) those who do not recognize the irony but would agree with the author’s message if
they had correctly understood it (i.e., sheep-confederates), and (4) those who do not recognize the irony and would not
accept the author’s communicative message (i.e., sheep-victims).
One proposal suggests that the main job of an ironic speaker or author is to create as many wolf-confederates as possible
while keeping to a minimum the number of sheep-confederates who wrongly believe themselves opposed to the creator’s
position (Kaufer, 1977). For example, in the anti-smoking ad presented above, there are sufficient cues to the ad’s ironic
message (e.g., obvious incongruity, statements like ‘‘Your ignorance is outstanding,’’ dramatic tones of voice) for listeners to
understand the ad and agree with its underlying message (i.e., wolf-confederate). Of course, there may be some, like the
Tobacco Industry, who recognize the irony, but are not persuaded by its urgent appeal for young people not to smoke
(i.e., wolf-victim). Yet the California Department of Health Services may specifically intend to mock these ‘‘wolf-victims’’ as
part of their message. In fact, teenagers may be more likely persuaded to not smoke by realizing that they are part of a special
group of individuals who are smart enough to make fun of the Tobacco Industry for its continued efforts at promoting
cigarette smoking.
Most generally, the complex ways that irony is used and interpreted make it impossible to state that each act of irony is
deliberate and understood as a deliberate rhetorical choice by listeners and readers. People may recognize the ambiguity of
ironic messages, and realize that they are either part of the wolves or sheep. Yet to say that irony is a deliberate act entailing
some conscious awareness of all the complex effects that such language or action may create overestimates ordinary
people’s cognitive abilities, and would, if true, necessitate a slow, cognitively demanding communicative process. Some
language scholars may be able to articulate some of the possible complexities of ironic communication, but these highly
conscious, analytic assessments are not part of what people ordinarily do in discourse.
Once again, not all irony is intended to be understood as such by ironic speakers. A wonderful example of an ironic
speaker who fools some people into believing that he is serious and not ironic is the American political satirist Steven Colbert.
Colbert, who has a popular TV show titled ‘‘The Colbert Report’’ on the ‘‘Comedy Channel,’’ uses deadpan satire to mock
conservative TV pundits, notably Bill O’Reilly. Part of the beauty to Colbert’s work is that he dances along the edge of ironic
ambiguity to make cutting observations about political events and people. For instance, Colbert was the keynote speaker at
the 2006 ‘‘White House Correspondents’ Dinner,’’ where Washington, DC politicians and media get together for at least one
night of playful teasing of each other, with the President often serving as the main target. Consider some of Colbert’s
controversial remarks from his speech that night, all in tongue-in-cheek statements at then President George W. Bush:

‘‘. . .my name is Stephen Colbert, and tonight it is my privilege to celebrate this president, ‘cause we’re not so different, he
and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we’re not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We’re not members of the factinista. We go
straight from the gut. Right, sir? That’s where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 111

endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, ‘‘I did look it
up, and that’s not true.’’ That’s ‘cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me
that’s how our nervous system works’’.
‘‘The greatest thing about this man is he’s steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that
he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man’s beliefs never will.’’

The seriousness of Colbert’s narrative was, for some, a cue to his sarcastic criticisms of conservatives, and in this case,
President Bush and his hypocritical political positions. Some commentators were outraged at the manner in which Colbert
‘‘crossed the line’’ in his mockery of Bush and his stupidity, with others howling with laughter at the way Colbert ironically
parodied Bush’s twisted logic. However, other people may misinterpret Colbert’s ironic intentions and assume that he
seriously means what he says, even though on his TV show, the studio audience is clearly amused by Colbert (and, again, his
program is on ‘‘The Comedy Channel’’). Do some people actually misunderstand the irony in Colbert’s performances? One
study asked a large group of university students to watch a video clip from ‘‘The Colbert Report’’ and then answer a series of
questions about their perceptions of Colbert (e.g., credibility of Colbert’s opinion, Colbert’s political ideology, the seriousness
of Colbert’s opinion, whether Colbert was humorous) (LaMarre et al., 2009). Participants also answered a series of
demographic questions (e.g., sex, age, household income, political party affiliation). The results of most interest were that
both politically conservative and liberal participants found Colbert to be equally funny, but the two groups differed in what
they believed were Colbert’s intentions. Conservatives believed that Colbert genuinely believed what he said, while liberals
reported that Colbert was using sarcasm to criticize the people he was talking about.
Many irony scholars have noted ‘‘irony’s edge’’ in creating an ambiguous frame in which people’s speech, writing, and
actions are to be interpreted (Hutcheon, 1994). Stephen Colbert’s work is clearly an instance of someone who uses irony for
complex rhetorical purposes, perhaps to convey different messages to different audiences, giving everyone something to
appreciate in his performances. One could go back and argue that Colbert’s shows are entirely deliberate, even in fooling
some people, while letting others in on the joke. On the surface, this approach to ‘‘what the speaker or actor’’ intended
points to the idea that producers of irony must have some complex intentions in mind that they want others to understand.
Yet this claim does not prove that Colbert’s messages are a special, ‘‘deliberate’’ form of communication that is particular to
‘‘irony.’’
But are there any clues we can use to say with great assurance that Colbert’s speech or actions are keys to his aims to use
‘‘deliberate irony’’? Even if a person denies using irony, which individuals often do when confronted with their sarcasm
(e.g., ‘‘I didn’t mean to be sarcastic’’), people may still give explicit evidence of their ironic performance. Just as some scholars
speculate about different markers or signals of metaphor (Goatly, 1997; Steen, 2006), deliberate irony may be accompanied
by special signals both in speech (e.g., low pitch, nasalization, slow speaking rate) and writing (e.g., italics, boldface).
Research shows, however, that speakers and listeners sometimes rely on nonverbal information when using verbal irony,
but not in such a systematic fashion as once thought (e.g., Eisterhold et al., 2006; Bryant and Fox Tree, 2002, 2005; Rockwell,
2000). In fact, the tone of voice assumed to be associated with irony is similar to that used when people simply speak angrily,
or are inquisitive (Bryant and Fox Tree, 2005). There is, therefore, no specific tone of voice cue that uniquely identifies some
utterance as conveying irony. A different possibility is that instead of using some particular ‘‘ironic tone of voice’’ to help
listeners derive proper inferences, speakers tend to contrast prosodic features of ironic utterances with speech immediately
preceding them (Bryant, 2010). These vocal features not only contrast from baseline speaking patterns in the current
conversation, but also sound over-the-top for ordinary speech.
Consider the following exchange between two housemates discussing past roommate experiences (Bryant, 2010):

Kristen: ‘‘My side of the room would always be messy.’’

Shayna: ‘‘You the messy one? Ha.’’
Kristen: ‘‘Hah ha ha, I know, can you believe it?’’

Kristen explains that in a past living situation, her side of the room would be messy, and this comes as no surprise to
Shayna, her current roommate. Shayna responds with an ironic rhetorical question that elicits ironic jocularity, and in it she
exaggerates particular prosodic features associated with interrogatives. Kristen responds with exaggerated surprise
signaling her participation in the irony, especially with shared laughter following Shayna’s laugh. Functionally, these vocal
signals serve to mark play, and make this part of the interaction distinct from other talk in the immediate communicative
context. But marking one’s speech, or some nonverbal ironic act, as playful (a cognitive effect) is not the same as signaling
that one has deliberately employed irony, or more specifically sarcasm, jocularity, hyperbole, etc. (type of figurative
language) to being about these effects.
Written texts can also be read with a whole range of possible tones suggesting irony. Devices that signal the possibility of
irony in print involve the rich use of typographical indices, such as quotation marks, footnotes, italics, and special titles and
headings, and heavy-handed disclaimers like/sic/and/?!/The setting of words in ‘‘scare quotes,’’ for example, is a common
device to indicate that the quoting writer does not accept the words as his or her own. But, once more, it is not evident that
devices like gestural quotation marks necessarily indicate a particular type of linguistic meaning (e.g., sarcasm, jocularity,
etc.), as opposed to indicating simply that the speaker is now quoting another person (with different pragmatic reasons for
doing so in varying contexts).
112 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

My claim is that there are no specific linguistic or paralinguistic devices that uniquely, and unambiguously, identify a
linguistic utterance as being deliberately ironic. One could argue, as was the case for metaphor, that even if not all ironic
utterances are uniquely identified by specific cues, at least some ironies are highlighted by various linguistic and
nonlinguistic signals. These signals may not only imply irony, but allow listeners to be open to the possibility that ‘‘This
statement was produced with deliberate ironic intent.’’ Under this view, only some ironic utterances, or even some ironic
acts, are deemed to be deliberate in their production, and the judgment that some act was deliberately ironic is highly
probabilistic with different cues adding up to greater ironic certainty.
But what does this sort of judgment entail for ironic communication? Once again, the identification of some utterances as
belonging to a particular type of language, or a specific type of speech act, does not imply that speakers actually intend to
psychologically accomplish these acts by their words. We may occasionally be uncertain about what another person has said
or done and request clarification by asking ‘‘Are you being ironic?’’ Yet speakers’ responses to such questions do not indicate
that the so-called ‘‘ironic’’ character of these speech acts was part of their previous thoughts to deliberately use this type of
speech in saying what they did. If anything, speakers’ answers to ‘‘Are you being ironic?’’ questions reflect their after-the-fact
reflections about their utterances, not the original motivations for what was articulated.
We typically hold each other responsible for the style and content of what we say and do. Labeling different verbal and
nonlinguistic acts as ‘‘ironic’’ because of the accumulation of different cues often loosely correlated with irony may, at times,
be useful for us in understanding the actions of others. Still, we cannot infer that our use and interpretation of ironic acts
necessarily depends on the categorization of these actions as being specifically ‘‘deliberate’’ or not.
There is one final implication of the work on ironic tone of voice that is worth considering. Many traditional views of irony
assume that people hear an ironic utterance, analyze its literal meaning, determine that the literal meaning is contextually
inappropriate, and then use the vocal cues to infer the pragmatic, ironic interpretation (Grice, 1975; Searle, 1979). But a wide
range of psycholinguistic studies cast doubt on this account, especially given that people can often read and understand
ironic meanings very quickly, and without any accompanying tone of voice cues to help them determine a speaker’s
intended, ironic meaning (Gibbs, 1994, 2002). Quick irony understanding does not demand that people recognize a speaker’s
deliberate intent to use irony because of the possible vocal cues in his or her speech.
This discussion of some circumstances under which ironies may be deliberately composed suggests that judgments about
the deliberateness of ironic acts must, at the very least, depend on establishing criteria for, first, determining what is ironic,
and second whether an irony was consciously produced by speakers and authors, and recognized as such by listeners and
readers. I doubt whether it is possible to create consistent psychologically real criteria, which reflect what people quickly and
typically do, for making either of these judgments. But what does it even mean to say that we deliberately, consciously
perform some act, ironic or otherwise? Answering this question is critical to any claim that ironies are deliberate. Yet a closer
examination of the deliberate mind reveals that many of our common sense intuitions about deliberation in human action
are quite mistaken.

5. Limitations of the deliberate mind

The belief that irony arises from deliberate thought processes is partly rooted in our impression that many human
behaviors are performed because of conscious forethought. We have a thought about what to do, and then perform that
action, such that the original conscious thought is the single causal basis for our acts. But psychological research shows that
people have limited awareness of their habitual behaviors, and more importantly, routine performances of all sorts often
proceed independently from people’s conscious intentions (Aarts and Dijksterhuis, 2000; Anderson, 2004). Most habitual
behaviors, such as speaking and understanding language, emerge given specific contextual cues, are performed with limited
conscious awareness, and proceed in ways that are not dependent on having a particular goal or intention in mind. People
have little introspective access to higher-order cognitive processes and are mostly blind to the underlying mental processing
that produces feelings, judgments, and behaviors (Gibbs, 2006a).
One consequence of this line of psychological research is that people may believe that they have created a irony
deliberately, with their very conscious thought processes being the initial, primary cause for the creation of the irony, yet are,
nonetheless, mistaken about the complex motivations for what is said, written or enacted. Many cognitive unconscious
forces shape the online production and understanding of verbal irony, and have a causal influence on what is produced long
before speakers may be consciously aware of what they may be doing. The sheer speed with which people produce most
ironic acts, such as when speaking sarcastically, demonstrates that conscious reflection cannot be the main generative
source of our ironic messages. Similarly, the speed of verbal irony understanding also highlights the primary role given to
fast-acting cognitive and linguistic processes in our interpretation of ironic acts. We rarely think ‘‘I will now speak ironically’’
or ‘‘The speaker intends his words to be understood as one kind of irony.’’ In this way, our scholarly insights into the logic of
irony must not be mistaken as an accurate model of how irony comes into being and understood in interpersonal interaction.
One reason why certain actions, such as speaking ironically, seem deliberate is because of the perceived effort we put into
these activities, and the important social effects sometimes achieved by ironic actions. On the production side,
deliberateness is closely tied to feelings of effort. Engaging in some aspects of decision making, problem solving, and paying
attention requires deliberate concentration, channeling cognitive resources away from other matters to the task at hand. Yet
the amount of effort required to fulfill a task can lead one to mistakenly assume authorship for some action (Wood et al.,
2002). We can be fooled to believe that some event has occurred, such as our creation of an ironic act, because of our
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 113

deliberate, effortful, thoughts when that is not truly the case. This fact provides another reason why asking people to report
whether they created or chose some irony deliberately, compared to their use of non-ironies, is an inaccurate method for
assessing the thought processes that brought that ironic acts into being. Finally, as discussed earlier, there are cases in which
deliberate attempts to enact certain behaviors may often backfire, and this fact clearly contradicts our common impression
that conscious deliberation is the key to personal achievement.
On the understanding side, we may feel that a speaker has said something deliberately to convey certain social thoughts
and feelings that have high interpersonal value. When your friend forcefully states, ‘‘A fine friend you are!’’ one feels the pain
of this rebuke, and assume that the speaker must have deliberately chose to use sarcasm to express his own outrage, rather
than some direct statement such as ‘‘You are a terrible friend.’’ Thus, our reactions to what was said are strong enough to
make us believe that the speaker must have known what he or she was doing. Yet here too, the personal impact that an ironic
message has neither implies that (a) we explicitly recognize that the act was specifically ‘‘ironic’’ or that (b) we explicitly
assume that the act was performed with deliberate intent. Listeners do not consider that a speaker has said something as a
conscious choice and rejected stating his or her meanings in some other, non-ironic manner.

6. Strategic irony without deliberateness

My arguments against the idea that ironic acts are always deliberate cast a critical look at some common assumptions
about the relationship between human consciousnesses and ironic action. But my critical analysis of deliberate irony, and
whether there are solid empirical methods of identifying what constitutes a deliberate ironic action, by no means dismisses
the idea that people can be thoughtful about the actions they take. But rather than seeing certain human actions as the
product of deliberate thought, meaningful behavior emerges from the complex interaction of many factors, including those
related to brains, bodies, and the physical and cultural world (Gibbs, 2006b). Under this perspective, human actions are the
emergent products of self-organizing processes that operate in highly context-sensitive ways within particular
environmental niches to create the very specific physical patterns and behaviors within each system. Rather than being
the causal starting point for certain human actions, ‘‘intentional actions self-organize as embodied, vertically coupled,
control processes’’ (Van Orden and Holden, 2002:95).
How do we explain, then, the sense that ironic acts are strategic and employed to achieve varying pragmatic purposes?
Ironic acts are skilled activities that we experience within an evolving situation and an attendant flow of action. As an
analogy, consider taking a tennis swing when engaged in a match against another player. If you are a beginner, you may find
yourself making an effort to adequately track the ball, keep your racket perpendicular to the court, hit the ball squarely, etc.
But an expert is absorbed in the game, and experiences something quite different. The expert’s focus is on the opponent and
the oncoming ball. All the expert feels is their arm being drawn to the appropriate position, the racket forming the optimal
angle with the court – an angle that they need not be aware of. The cumulative experience is one of satisfying these different
constraints. Your actions are brought forth by perceived circumstances in which a way as to bring about some satisfactory
result (e.g., hitting the ball so that it is difficult for your opponent to return).
In the same moment, the tennis shot simultaneously satisfies a stack of goals. The same tennis swing keeps you physically
active, furthers your enjoyment of tennis, wins the match, wins the set, breaks an opponent’s serve, wins the rally, and makes
the shot, for example. All these aspects of the swing are intentional, but the intentions are sustained on different time scales
all of which are longer time scales than the motor coordination that make up a swing. Coordinative structures on shorter
time scales, closer to real time, are expressed in your swing at a particular tennis ball, which comes on a specific trajectory,
requiring an exact return force to reach the opponent’s baseline (but not a centimeter further!). The actual swing is never
explicitly ‘‘represented,’’ nor is the goals it satisfies. It is as though the required swing just happened to be available and was
solicited by circumstances to satisfy inherent circumstantial constraints.
Producing an ironic action is some context has many similarities to what happens when one is swinging at a tennis ball.
The words spoken, in the case of verbal irony, are produced to simultaneously achieve a stack of goals, including,
coordinating with others in the moment, making a specific comment in light of what else has just been said or occurred,
relieving a sense of incompatibility between what you expected and what occurred, and perhaps re-establishing some
equilibrium with others in context. These different goals act as constraints on what words are uttered and bodily acts
undertaken, with each of these being sustained on different time scales. Some goals emerge from longer time scales
(e.g., general coordination with others), some on shorter time scales (e.g., relieving the feeling on disequilibrium because of the
felt incompatibility), with others operating along even fast time scales (e.g., saying words to convey one’s emotional state).
The dynamic perspective on human cognition readily acknowledges how all of these different time scales are coupled,
typically in nonlinear ways, and give rise to emergent, soft-assembled coordinative structures which are quite specific to the
situation you face at the moment. Thus, skillful, strategic, coping in the world does not require explicit, deliberate thoughts
which enable us to achieve certain goals. Adaptive behavior requires constraints that circumscribe the possibilities for
action. When we speak, write or act in a specific situation our behavior is, in some sense, a matter of us coping and acting
appropriately. Coping does not originate in explicit causal representations; it originates in stacked possibilities from which
circumstances may select. In other words, skillful coping is purposive without entertaining a purpose. It is in this sense that
ironic acts may be enacted in an intentional way without there being underlying deliberate thoughts driving these actions.
A key principle behind this approach to self-organization for ironic action is that there is no overarching mechanism that
decides the process of formulating or interpreting verbal ironies and acts. Instead, the system as a whole (i.e., our brains,
114 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115

bodies, and world interactions), given its very specific past history and present circumstances, will settle, or relax, into
certain areas of stability, or even instability, that will constitute what is ultimately said, written, or understood. People may
find themselves in situations requiring communication with others, and can just let their recent thought processes,
conscious or otherwise, and the environmental constraints take care of the fine-grained details of how these intentions are
manifested in real-world behavior (i.e., saying something that may be seen as ironic, or also making ironic gesture, head nod,
body posture, etc.) (Gibbs and Van Orden, in press). Thus, people’s ironic behaviors result from their self-organizing
tendencies even before any intention to speak or write in certain ways ever reaches awareness. There may be moments when
we slow, reflective thought processes help us to decide what to do or say. But these processes, which operate along slower
time scales, are by no means the single causal basis for what we do. The lesson, though, is that conscious deliberate thought is
not the driving force behind strategic speech and action. And as pragmatic scholars, we must acknowledge that our conscious
thoughts may only provide after-the-fact, and often inaccurate, narratives for what we do.

7. Conclusion

There are several interrelated conclusions to be drawn from my arguments against deliberate irony. First, our rational
reconstructions of ironic acts are essential for the analysis and scientific study of how people engage in figurative language
and action. But scholars must not be seduced into reifying their theoretical accounts into psychological models of how
people speak, act, and understand in interpersonal interaction. Second, some aspects of ironic meaning are communicated
without any intention to do so on the part of speakers or actors. Third, it is important not to confuse people’s general
intentional desires in communication with more specialized conscious, deliberate thought processes. Fourth, theories of
irony use and understanding need not assume that there is a stage of deliberation that precedes the production or
interpretation of ironic speech and actions. We do not make categorical judgments that ‘‘I am about to produce irony’’ or ‘‘The
speaker has said something ironically’’ in engaging in ironic performance. Finally, the dynamical, self-organizational account
of human performance offers a way of thinking about intentional and strategic behaviors without the need for positing
specific conscious, deliberate modes of thought to bring about those actions.

References

Aarts, Henk, Dijksterhuis, Ap., 2000. Habit as knowledge structures: automaticity in goal directed behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78,
53–68.
Anderson, John, 2001. Cognitive psychology and its implications, 5th edition. Worth Publishers, New York.
Anderson, John, 2004. Cognitive Psychology and Its Implications, 6th edition. Worth, New York.
Booth, Wayne, 1974. The Rhetoric of Irony. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Bryant, Gregory, 2010. Prosodic contrasts in ironic speech. Discourse Processes 47, 545–566.
Bryant, Gregory, Fox Tree, Jean, 2002. Recognizing verbal irony in spontaneous speech. Metaphor and Symbol 17, 99–117.
Bryant, Gregory, Fox Tree, Jean, 2005. Is there an ironic tone of voice? Language and Speech 48, 257–277.
Burgers, Christian, van Mulken, Margot, Jan Schellens, Peter, 2011. Finding irony: an introduction of the verbal irony procedure (VIP). Metaphor and Symbol
26, 186–205.
Colebrook, Claire, 2004. Irony. Routledge, London.
Colston, Herbert, Gibbs, Raymond, 2002. Are irony and metaphor understood differently? Metaphor and Symbol 17, 57–60.
Colston, Herbert, O’Brien, Jennifer, 2000. Contrast of kind vs. contrast of magnitude: the pragmatic accomplishments of irony and hyperbole. Discourse
Processes 30, 179–199.
Dews, Shelley, Winner, Ellen, 1995. Muting the meaning: a social function of irony. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10 (1), 3–19.
Eisterhold, Jodi., Attardo, Salvatore, Boxer, Diana, 2006. Reactions to irony in discourse: evidence for the least disruption principle. Journal of Pragmatics 38,
12391256.
Garamendia, Joana, 2010. Irony is critical. Pragmatics & Cognition 18, 397–421.
Gibbs, Raymond, 1994. The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Gibbs, Raymond, 1999. Intentions in the Experience of Meaning. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2000. Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor and Symbol 15, 5–27.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2002. A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated. Journal of Pragmatics 34, 457–486.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2006a. Introspection and cognitive linguistics: should we trust our intuitions? Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 4, 135–152.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2006b. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press, New York.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2007. Why irony sometimes come to mind: paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Pragmatics & Cognition 15, 229–251.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2011a. Are deliberate metaphors really deliberate? A question of human consciousness and action. Metaphor and the Social World 1, 26–
52.
Gibbs, Raymond, 2011b. Advancing the debate on deliberate metaphor. Metaphor and the Social World 1, 67–69.
Gibbs, Raymond, Colston, Herbert (Eds.), 2007. Irony in Language and Thought: A Cognitive Science Reader. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia.
Gibbs, Raymond, Izett, Christin, 2004. Irony as persuasive communication. In: Herbert, Colston, Albert, Katz (Eds.), Figurative Language Comprehension:
Social and Cultural Factors. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 131–152.
Gibbs, Raymond, O’Brien, Jennifer, Doolittle, Shelley, 1995. Inferring meanings that are not intended: speakers’ intentions and irony comprehension.
Discourse Processes 20, 187–203.
Gigerenzer, Gerd, Todd, Peter, ABC Research Group, 1999. Simple Heuristics that Make Us Smart. Oxford University Press, New York.
Goatly, Andrew, 1997. The Language of Metaphors. Routledge, London.
Grice, H. Paul, 1975. Logic and conversation. In: Cole, P., Morgan, J. (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics: vol. 3. Speech Acts. Academic Press, New York, pp. 41–58.
Haugh, Richard (Ed.), 2008. Special issue on intention in pragmatics. Intercultural Pragmatics, 5, 99–258.
Hutcheon, Linda, 1994. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. Routledge, New York.
Kaufer, David, 1977. Irony and rhetorical strategy. Philosophy and Rhetoric 10, 90–110.
Kothhoff, Helga, 2003. Responding to irony in different contexts. On cognition in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics 35, 1387–1411.
LaMarre, Heather, Landreville, Kristen, Beam, Michael, 2009. The irony of satire: political ideology and the motivation to see what you want to see in The
Colbert Report. The International Journal of Press/Politics 14, 212–231.
Leggitt, John, Gibbs, Raymond, 2000. Emotional reactions to verbal irony. Discourse Processes 29, 1–24.
 R.W. Gibbs Jr. / Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2012) 104–115 115

Lucariello, Joan, 1994. Situational irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 123, 129–145.
Muecke, D.C., 1969. The Compass of Irony. Methuen, London, p. 1969.
O’Connor, Gerard, 1986. Three types of irony in the novels of Joesph Conrad. Ph.D. thesis. University of Cantebury.
Partington, Alan, 2007. Irony and the reversal of evaluation. Journal of Pragmatics 39, 1547–1569.
Rockwell, Patricia, 2000. Lower, slower, louder: vocal cues of sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 29, 483–495.
Searle, John, 1979. Metaphor. In: Andrew, Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 83–111.
Shelley, Cameron, 2001. A bicoherence theory of situational irony. Cognitive Science 25, 775–818.
Steen, Gerard, 2006. The paradox of metaphor: why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol 23, 213–241.
Thibodeau, Paul, Boroditsky, Lera, 2011. Metaphors we think with: the role of metaphor in reasoning. PLoS One 6 (2), e16782, doi:10.1371/journal.
pone.0016782.
Van Orden, G., Holden, J.G., 2002. Intentional contents and self-control. Ecological Psychology 14, 87–109.
Wegner, Daniel, 2002. The Illusion of Conscious Will. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Wilson, Deirdre, Sperber, Dan, 2004. Relevance theory. In: Lawrence, Horn, Gregory, Ward (Eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 607–
632.
Wood, Wendy, Tam, Leona, Guerrerro, Witt, 2002. Changing contexts, disrupting habits. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 88, 918–933.