Verbal Irony: A question for NTs

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As a recently self-diagnosed 54 year old, I have come upon the upsetting knowledge of verbal irony as a communication style common to NTs. In case you are an Aspie who doesn't know, this means saying the exact opposite of what you mean, but unlike sarcasm which uses changes in inflection to indicate that the speaker is being sarcastic, and means the opposite of the literal words, verbal irony is said straight-faced, so to speak. Just like the person was really saying what they meant. The listener is supposed to understand that the statement is the opposite of the spoken words by reading the speakers mind, I guess.

That's my question to NTs out there: How do you understand when someone is being ironic?? If you have AS children, friends, relatives - which I would guess you do if you are visiting this site - can you imagine how impossible it is for us to fathom this?

Now that I have come to an intellectual understanding of this form of communication - that it exists (and this was a shock) I wonder how many times in my undiagnosed life my meaning was taken as ironic and the person thought I was saying the exact opposite of what I meant!

Another question: How does this differ from lying? How do YOU know when it's irony and not a lie? Do other Aspies out there have experience with this? From what I have read, verbal irony is particularly common in the US.

All comments welcome.

NTs just know. They have the intuition we don't.

I'm an NT and have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Care to give an example?

Dunbots your avatar is so hot.

Verbal irony is often predicated upon knowledge. The examples you can see on Wikipedia are like that: "soft as concrete," "clear as mud," these are ironic because the described substance is not (it seems like a rather silly idea, though, as you can still put concrete on a softness scale...it's just a reverse hardness scale). Quite frankly, it's not how I'd define irony either, but we'll have to live with it.

Try to figure out if something is illogical. If it is, it might be irony.

I understand by context. I also assume other people understand by context unless I have a reason to believe they won't understand (such as prior knowledge they are autistic). Artros gave examples such as "clear as mud". The context is knowing that mud is not clear. If you have missed ironic comments in the past or did not realize that other people had mistaken your serious comment for irony, it is likely because the context was social rather than physical- such as the physical properties of mud.




By now I can, althoug it took me awhile because it is not consistent across posters. I use irony a lot more than a lot of NTs and have since I discovered it as a child so it was a hard habit to corrall. I use it very sparingly with my autistic daughter because I know she takes things literally. But I do use it sometimes because understandiong irony will help her in adult interactions. When I do this, I explain that what I just said wasn't meant to be taken literally and is actually a type of joke. I don't do this unless we both have the time for the explanation and unless she is in a happy mood where she would be open to it.

Example;

Me: I think I will dye my hair green.

Her Why?!?!?

Me: So that it will match my green skin

Her: Your skin isn't green

Me: It will be after I dye it green

Then follows my explanation of how it was all a joke, the context of how ridiculous it all is, how to spot this sort of ironic, deadpan humour by how it is the opposite of anything possible etc. There are probably posters who think my teaching method is gratuitously weird or mean, but she is learning.

Example:

Her: I'm going to jump so high my head will touch the ceiling.

Me: That's impossible. Nobody can jump that high.

(she jumps a few inches off the floor)

Me:That was pretty high but your head didn't touch the ceiling.

Her: It did. But it was so fast you didn't notice.

That recent exchange tells me that as an adult she may very well be able to spot irony in others and do it herself sometimes too. After all, there are posters here who can. So when I'm here I modulate my irony very much and only use it when replying to a poster who has shown through previous posts that they are quite familiar with ironic conventions.

Irony differs from lying because it assumes the listener can figure out the truth quite easily from context and won't believe the ironic statement. Lying assumes the opposite, that the listener has no means of knowing the truth and therefore will believe the lie.

Even if someone is straight faced, it still can be sarcastic. I'm a very sarcastic person and I use it for jokes, to make fun of something or to express frustration. The differences in my voice inflection tells you which one of those I'm doing. The straight face sarcasm could also be dry humor and meant as a joke but still sarcastic. NT's too have to interpret that, so sometimes it takes a second to get it because we too get confused when things are said so seriously. Sometimes that's what's funny about it. It helps a lot to know the person. I would pick up dry humor sarcasm from someone I know MUCH more easily than someone I don't. You also have to have that kind of sense of humor, and not everyone does.

My husband took a long time to learn and get used to my sarcasm. Now he is becoming more sarcastic himself

I try not to do that with my son because he just doesn't get it, or on here because I know it drives people crazy, and I understand that.

Your kid is awesome. That was great.

Here's an example: a specialty wine shop opened up in our county and shortly thereafter a second one way across town. But there are only these two and they have differing nitch markets. I went to one, right after the second one opened and said to the shopkeeper, "You must be happy to have another shop open in the county." I was totally sincere as I saw it as evidence that there was a growing market for these products. His response was, "No, no! I AM very happy they have opened." In other words, HE took MY meaning to be ironic and the opposite of the literal words I had used.

Since I know I meant my comment sincerely and that it contained no hint of sarcastic intonation, I got a jolting insight into how this verbal devise works. He had assumed that I would see the other shop as competition and thus undesirable.

Concrete irony like "clear as mud" would never confuse me. But this subtler form kind of seems impossible to me to detect and upsetting to discover so late in life. I hope you Aspie loving NTs out there will clue in your Aspies so they don't go through life without this understanding as I have. I had to learn about it intellectually before I could understand what it is.

I'm very proud of her.

Either you actually did sound sarcastic when you said it and you didn't know it, or he misunderstood you, but I don't see how that has anything to do with being NT. I misunderstand sarcasm and stuff all the time, although I'm not the stereotypical mindless and social NT that most people here think of.


If that were my mom saying that to me, for example, I'd look at her like she's crazy, or stupid.

Either you actually did sound sarcastic when you said it and you didn't know it, or he misunderstood you, but I don't see how that has anything to do with being NT. I misunderstand sarcasm and stuff all the time, although I'm not the stereotypical mindless and social NT that most people here think of.

You might want to read up on verbal irony or ask some friends about it. I think you are also missing something.

I looked up the definition and still don't get it. And I have no friends to ask.

The shopkeeper did misunderstand emteyeye but that seems to be emteyeye's point. Emteyeye made what the shopkeeper mistook for an ironic comment. What I got from this anecdote was that emteyeye got an epiphany about irony when he reverse-engineered the comment in order to make sense of it. Where the NT part presumably comes in is that the shopkeeper assumed that emteyeye was working inside standard ironic conventions- something that is not frequent in autistic people (although I've seen it some on this board).

Are you sure you are neurotypical? Or are you being ironic with me...

Well, it depends on your definition of neurotypical. I do not have AS nor any autistic spectrum disorder, but I do have a lot of other things, so I'm not anywhere near "normal".