isn't it incongruous?

working on a tangent during my tutoring session today, i was struggling to explain irony to my student. as in the case of flight dynamics*, i opted to take the easy way out and focus on irony of fate, the figure of speech popularized by alanis morissette's similarly-named ballad, which, ironically, contains no true irony.

taking the textbook definition, irony of fate is simply an incongruity, with neither double audience** nor lesson on human vanity or folly. i eneumerated the more obvious examples from the song: the wedding, the ten-thousand spoons, and the geriatric lottery-winner. he seemed satisfied after that.

not two hours later, i found myself at ayala station somewhat concerned at an apparent lack of sucat-bicutan buses. venturing off the platform, i made my way to a crowd of people, thinking that if they'd cornered the appropriate vehicle, i'd beat them to the punch. imagine my surprise at discovering that they were surrounding two sucat-bicutan buses that had crashed into each other.

the greater irony incongruity is that it would have made a perfect example, had it occured prior to our discussion.

don't you think?

sige ingat.ü

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flight dynamics: contrary to popular belief, bernoulli's principle [greater air speed equals less air pressure] isn't responsible for lift; newton's third law [every action has an equal and opposite reaction] is. a rather lengthy yet informative explanation can be found here.

double audience: true irony is characterized by the speaker tricking the object of his statement into interpreting it positively, while others nearby, who are privy to his or her true intent, are able to infer both the false compliment or tolerance, and the true insult or sarcasm. wikipedia provides a comprehensive discussion. 
posted by stani at 11:17 PM