Satire Terminology Part 2

Sarcasm vs. Satire: • Sarcasm is praise which is really an insult; sarcasm generally involves malice, the desire to put someone down, e.g., "This is my brilliant son, who failed out of college." • Satire is the exposure of the vices or follies of an individual, a group, an institution, an idea, a society, etc., usually with a view to correcting it. Satirists frequently use irony. -Sarcasm is not commonly found in Satire.

Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand, or two or more incompatible objects, actions, persons juxtaposed. Sometimes irony is classified into types: • situational irony - expectations aroused by a situation are reversed • cosmic irony or the irony of fate - misfortune is the result of fate, chance or God • dramatic irony - the audience knows more than the characters, so that words and action have additional meaning • Socratic irony – (named after Socrates' teaching method) whereby he assumes ignorance and openness to opposing points of view which turn out to be foolish. • verbal irony - what is said is actually the opposite of what is meant/intended. Verbal irony occurs when a narrator or character says one thing and means something else.

Direct satire - a first-person speaker addresses either the reader or a character within the work whose conversation helps further the speaker's purposes Menippean satire - is a term employed broadly to refer to prose (textual) satires that are complex in nature, combining many different targets of ridicule into a fragmented satiric narrative. Double Entendre - is a literary device that can be defined as a phrase or a figure of speech that might have multiple senses, interpretations or two different meanings or that could be understood in two different ways. Mock - to laugh at or make fun of (someone or something) especially by copying an action or a way of behaving or speaking.

Innuendo - is an insinuation or allusion about a person or thing, especially of a disparaging or a derogatory nature. Ambiguity - occurs when something is open to more than one interpretation. Ex. “I read the book” = the sentence could refer to a past or present tense as there is no clear time frame of when the book was read. Paradox - means to be contrary to expectations, existing belief or perceived opinion. It is a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or silly but may include a latent truth. It is also used to illustrate an opinion or statement contrary to accepted traditional ideas. A paradox is often used to make a reader think over an idea in innovative way

Understatement - is a figure of speech employed by writers or speakers to intentionally make a situation seem less important than it really is. Simile - is a comparison between two things using “like” or “as.” Metaphor - is a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things or objects that are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them.