On Satire and Parody: The Importance of Being Ironic

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to discriminate between the concepts of irony, satire, and parody. We argue that satire and parody are literary genres, whereas irony is not; it is a complex rhetorical device sometimes used by these genres. The concept of irony must be understood in terms of four distinct subtypes: Socratic irony, dramatic irony, irony 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 pretense is an important part of satire and that echoic mention is an important part of parody. Such discriminations are useful because distinctions among text genres appear to have psychological significance.