ON SATIRE AND PARODY - THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IRONIC

The purpose of this article is to discriminate between the concepts of irony, satire, and parody. We argue that satire and parody are litera ry genres, whereas irony is not; it is a complex rhetorical device som etimes used by these genres. The concept of irony must be understood i n terms of four distinct subtypes: Socratic irony, dramatic irony, iro ny of fate, and verbal irony. Both parody and satire can be described in terms of three features of irony: pretense, echoic mention, and the maintenance of multiple mental representations. We suggest that prete nse is an important part of satire and that echoic mention is an impor tant part of parody. Such discriminations are useful because distincti ons among text genres appear to have psychological significance.