词汇学 Paradox Oxymoron Irony 举例1

Paradox
Definition: A statement that seems impossible at first but actually makes
sense.
Examples
Dark knows daylight
"Dark knows daylight" is an example of paradox because dark and daylight are opposites, and yet here they have something in common.
Hot understands Cold
"Hot understands cold" is an example of paradox because hot and cold are opposites, but yet the stanza says that they understand each other. This is a paradox because the stanza doesn't seem to make sense. However, a paradox poem will explain how two opposite or very unlike things can be related in some way.
Dark and light
Dark remembers light,
The day they separated,
They try to be friends, but
can't.
Dark doesn't like light
Their friendship no longer exists.
By Alex
NIGHT REMEMBERS LIGHT
Night remembers the light of a
newborn
star.
Night remembers how he held
the little
star,
And now you can see
the star,
Much bigger now
for now it is
the sun.
By Rachel
For example: "I know that I know nothing." Knowing "know nothing" is knowing something thus cannot be "know nothing". This logic is self-contradictory, but one can know that they know nothing.
Irony
To say something that is the opposite of the truth. In a scary movie when the audience knows that a killer is in the house, but the owners in the house don't know it.
At a restaurant there is a fly floating in a customer's soup and the customer says, "Mmmmm. Insect soup, my favorite!"
When watching a talk show, the audience knows why a person has been brought on the show. However, the person sitting in the chair does not know that he is going to be reunited with a former lover.
You break a date with your girlfriend so you can go to the ball game with the guys. When you go out to the concession stand, you run into your date who is there with another guy.
You stay up all night studying for a test. When you go to class, you discover the test is not until the next day.
You are arguing with your mother, who reprimands you for being "smart." Your reply is sarcastic, "If you think I am smart, then why won't you let me make some smart decisions?"
Your boyfriend shows up in ripped jeans and a stained t-shirt. With a smirk, you say, "Oh!
I see you dressed up for our date. We must be going to a nice restaurant!"
The average cost of rehabilitating a seal after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later, they were both eaten by a killer whale.
A boy and his friends are talking trash about the principal, and the principal is standing right around the corner listening.
Terrorist Khay Rahnajet didn't pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with "return with sender" stamped on it. Forgetting it was the bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits.
Two animal rights activists were protecting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protestors to death.
Irony: a leading part of humor. Irony is using words to express something
completely different from the literal meaning. Usually, someone says the opposite of what they mean and the listener believes the opposite of what they said.
Verbal irony, including sarcasm
Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers. For instance, if a speaker exclaims, “I‟m not upset!” but reveals an upset emotional state through her voice while truly trying to claim she's not upset, it would not be verbal irony by virtue of its verbal manifestation (it would, however, be situational irony). But if the same speaker said the same words and intended to communicate that she was upset by claiming she was not, the utterance would be verbal irony. This distinction gets at an important aspect of verbal irony: speakers communicate implied propositions that are intentionally contradictory to the propositions contained in the words themselves. There are examples of verbal irony that do not rely on saying the opposite of what one means, and there are cases where all the traditional criteria of irony exist and the utterance is not ironic.
Ironic similes are a form of verbal irony where a speaker does intend to communicate the opposite of what they mean. For instance, the following explicit similes have the form of a statement that means P but which conveys the meaning not P:
as hard as putty
as funny as cancer
as clear as mud
as pleasant as root canal treatment
as sharp as a marble
as straight as a circle
The irony is recognizable in each case only by using stereotypical knowledge of the source concepts (e.g., mud, root-canals) to detect an incongruity.
A fair amount of confusion has surrounded the issue regarding the relationship between verbal irony and sarcasm, and psychology researchers have addressed the issue directly (e.g,
Lee & Katz, 1998). For example, ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not verbal irony in general. By this account, sarcasm is a particular kind of personal criticism leveled against a person or group of persons that incorporates verbal irony. For example, a person reports to her friend that rather than going to a medical doctor to treat her ovarian cancer, she has decided to see a spiritual healer instead. In response her friend says sarcastically, "Great idea! I hear they do fine work!" The friend could have also replied with any number of ironic expressions that should not be labeled as sarcasm exactly, but still have many shared elements with sarcasm.
Most instances of verbal irony employ sarcasm, suggesting that the term sarcasm is more widely used than its technical definition suggests it should be (Bryant & Fox Tree, 2002; Gibbs, 2000). Some psycholinguistic theorists suggest that sarcasm ("Great idea!", "I hear they do fine work."), hyperbole ("That's the best idea I have heard in years!"), understatement ("Sure, what the hell, it's only cancer..."), rhetorical questions ("What, does your spirit have cancer?"), double entendre ("I'll bet if you do that, you'll be communing with spirits in no time...") and jocularity ("Get them to fix your bad back while you're at it.") should all be considered forms of verbal irony (Gibbs, 2000). The differences between these tropes can be quite subtle, and relate to typical emotional reactions of listeners, and the rhetorical goals of the speakers. Regardless of the various ways theorists categorize figurative language types, people in conversation are attempting to decode speaker intentions and discourse goals, and are not generally identifying, by name, the kinds of tropes used.
[edit] Dramatic irony
In drama, the device of giving the spectator an item of information that at least one of the characters in the narrative is unaware of (at least consciously), thus of placing the spectator a step ahead of at least one of the characters. Dramatic irony has three stages - installation, exploitation and resolution (sometimes called preparation, suspension and resolution) - producing dramatic conflict is produced in what one character relies or appears to rely upon a fact, the contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience; sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true.
For example:
In City Lights, we know that Charlie Chaplin's character is not a millionaire, but the blind flower girl (Virginia Cherill) does not.
In Cyrano de Bergerac, we know that Cyrano loves Roxane and that he is the real author of the letters that Christian is writing to the young woman; Roxane is unaware of this.
In North by Northwest, we know that Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is not Kaplan; Vandamm (James Mason) and his acolytes do not. We also know that Kaplan is a fictitious agent invented by the CIA; Roger and Vandamm do not.
In Oedipus the King, we know that Oedipus himself is the murderer that he is seeking; Oedipus, Creon and Jocasta do not.
In Othello, we know that Desdemona has been faithful to Othello, but he doesn't. We also know that Iago is pulling the strings, a fact hidden from Othello, Desdemona, Cassio and Roderigo.
In Pygmalion, we know that Eliza is a woman of the street; Higgins's family does not.
[edit] Tragic irony
Tragic irony is a special category of dramatic irony. In tragic irony, the words and actions of the characters belie the real situation, which the spectators fully realize.
Ancient Greek drama was especially characterized by tragic irony because the audiences were so familiar the legends that most of the plays dramatized. Sophocles' Oedipus the King provides a classic example of tragic irony at its fullest.
Irony threatens authoritative models of discourse by "removing the semantic security of …one signifier: one signified‟";[2] irony has some of its foundation in the onlooker‟s perception of paradox which arises from insoluble problems.
For example:
In the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo finds Juliet in a drugged death-like sleep, he assumes her to be dead and kills himself. Upon awakening to find her dead lover beside her, Juliet kills herself with his knife.
[edit] Situational irony
This is a relatively modern use of the term, and describes a discrepancy between the expected result and actual results when enlivened by 'perverse appropriateness'.
For example:
When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, all of his shots initially missed the President; however a bullet ricocheted off the bullet-proof windows of the Presidential limousine and struck Reagan in the chest. Thus, the windows made to protect the President from gunfire were partially responsible for his being shot.[3]
Monty Python's last comedy album The Hastily Cobbled Together for a Fast Buck Album was continuously delayed from release for various reasons, having yet to see an official release, and has since been made available online for free by the group, thus making the album neither hasty nor earning the group any income.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a story whose plot revolves around irony. Dorothy travels to a wizard and fulfills his challenging demands to go home, before discovering she had the ability to go back home all the time. The Scarecrow longs for intelligence, only to discover he is already a genius, and the Tin Woodsman longs to be capable of love, only to discover he already has a heart. The Lion, who at first appears to be a whimpering coward turns out to be bold and fearless, The people in Emerald City believe the Wizard to have been a powerful deity, only to discover he was a bumbling eccentric old man.
In "The Three Apples", a medieval Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Ja'far ibn Yahya is ordered by Harun al-Rashid to find the culprit behind a murder mystery within three days or else be executed. It is only after the deadline has past, and as he prepares to be executed, that he discovers that the culprit was his own slave all along.[4][5]
After astronaut Gus Grissom's first flight into space, the hatch on his spacecraft accidentally blew off while Grissom was waiting for a rescue helicopter to fish the capsule out of the ocean, causing the capsule to fill with water and sink and Grissom to nearly drown. The hatch system was re-designed in later spacecraft to prevent similar accidents, and, while training for his third spaceflight, a fire broke out inside Grissom's spacecraft, causing Grissom and two other astronauts to suffocate. The hatch redesign triggered by the accident with Grissom's first spacecraft, meant to help save astronaut's lives, prevented Grissom from being rescued in the subsequent accident.
[edit] Irony of fate (cosmic irony)
The expression “irony of fate” stems from the notion that the gods (or the Fates) are amusing themselves by toying with the minds of mortals, with deliberate ironic intent. Closely connected with situational irony, it arises from sharp contrasts between reality and human ideals, or between human intentions and actual results.
For example
In art:
In O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, a young couple are too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The man finally pawns his heirloom pocket watch to buy his wife a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair. She, meanwhile, cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a watch-chain.
In the ancient Indian story of Krishna, King Kamsa is told in a prophecy that a child of his sister Devaki would kill him. In order to prevent it, he imprisons both Devaki and her husband Vasudeva, allowing them to live only if they hand over their children as soon as they are born. He murders nearly all of them one by one, but the eighth child, Krishna, is saved and raised by a cowherd couple, Nanda and Yasoda. After growing up and returning to his kingdom, Kamsa is eventually killed by Krishna, as was originally predicted by the self-fulfilling prophecy. It was Kamsa's attempt to prevent the prophecy that led to it becoming a reality.
Rakesh Roshan's 2006 Indian film Krrish is a modern take on the story of Krishna.
In history:
In 1974 the Consumer Product Safety Commission had to recall 80,000 of its own lapel buttons promoting "toy safety", because the buttons had sharp edges, used lead paint, and had small clips that could be broken off and subsequently swallowed. [6]
Importing Cane Toads to Australia to protect the environment only to create worse environmental problems for Australia.
Jim Fixx, who did much to popularize jogging as a form of healthy exercise in his 1977 book The Complete Book of Running, died at the age of 52 of a heart attack (a death associated with sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles) while out jogging.
[edit] Historical irony (cosmic irony through time)
When history is seen through modern eyes, it sometimes happens that there is an especially sharp contrast between the way historical figures see their world and the probable future of their world, and what actually transpired. For example, during the 1920s The New York Times repeatedly heaped scorn on crossword puzzles. In 1924 it lamented "the sinful waste in the utterly futile finding of words the letters of which will fit into a prearranged pattern;" in 1925 said "the question of whether the puzzles are beneficial or harmful is in no urgent need of an answer. The craze evidently is dying out fast;" and in 1929 judged that "The cross-word puzzle, it seems, has gone the way of all fads." Today, no U.S. newspaper is more closely identified with the crossword than The New York Times.[citation needed] In a more tragic example of historical irony, what people now refer to as "World War I" was originally called "The War to End All Wars" or "The Great War". Historical irony is therefore a subset of cosmic irony, but one in which the element of time is bound up.
Other examples:
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance." Nearly the last words of American Civil War General John Sedgwick before being shot through the eye by a Confederate sniper.[7] In Dallas, in response to Mrs. Connolly's comment, "Mr. President, you can't say that Dallas doesn't love you," John F. Kennedy said, "That's very obvious." He was assassinated immediately afterwards.[8]
Further examples of irony in history:
Alfred Nobel invented the relatively stable explosive dynamite essentially to prevent deaths (such as in mining work which relied on the unstable explosives gunpowder and nitroglycerin), but his invention was soon taken up as a weapon in the Franco-Prussian War, among others, causing many deaths.
Fritz Haber was the patriotic German Jewish creator of Zyklon B. Initially used as a pesticide, it was later used in the Holocaust.
In the Kalgoorlie (Australia) gold rush of the 1890s, large amounts of the little-known mineral calaverite (gold telluride) were identified as fool's gold, and were (foolishly, as it later turned out) discarded. The mineral deposits were used as a building material, and for the filling of potholes and ruts. (Several years later, the nature of the mineral was identified, leading to a minor gold rush to excavate the streets).
Ibn al-Haytham of Basra invented the modern camera obscura, as described in his Book of Optics in 1021. Nearly a thousand years later, his hometown of Basra was attacked using camera-guided missiles during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[9]
Several inventors were killed by their own creations, including Haman, Ismail ibn Hammad al-Javhari,[10] William Nelson,[11] Alexander Bogdanov, William Bullock, Marie Curie, Otto Lilienthal, and others.
Oxymorons!
An oxymoron is a phrase consisting of two contradicting words, that make sense when put together.
Here are a few of our favorite oxymorons. Do you think you've got a better one?
Airline Food
Alone Together
Civil War
Friendly Argument
Jumbo Shrimp
Medium Large
Minor Disaster
Old News
Pretty Ugly
Student Teacher。