irony
Irony derives ultimately from Greek eiron meaning ‘dissemble’. The term is
applied to a figure of speech which is characterised by being interpretable on
at least two levels. For irony to function, both meanings must be understood.
The simplest form of irony is the use of words to imply the opposite of
what is actually said. This is also known as sarcasm, and its implication is
usually derogatory. For example, to say:
You’re a real
friend.
to someone who
has just let you down is an ironic way of stressing your disapproval of the
behaviour. Intonation plays a significant role in sarcasm. Related to this form
of irony are excessively polite forms of address (as a put-down):
Well, Mr Brian Jones, I
believe you have a complaint.
and mock heroic
types of verse, where a trivial subject is discussed in inflated language.
Alexander Pope’s Dunciad, for
example, parodies the title of the Iliad and
the technique of Milton’s Paradise Lost in
such lines as:
High on a gorgeous seat, that far outshone Henley’s gilt tub, or
Flecknoe’s Irish throne.
Dramatic irony occurs when a character
in literature says something which is meaningful at one level to the character
and at another level to the reader/audience. In Kenjo Jumbam’s novel The White Man of God, for example, the
events are narrated by a boy who does not fully understand the implications of
the adult conversations that he recounts to the reader.
Related to dramatic irony is tragic
irony or irony of fate. This
literary convention was popular in Greek tragedy and involves a cruel reversal
of fortunes at the very moment when the hero’s expectations seem likely to be
fulfilled. Such a tragic reversal occurs in Oedipus
Rex when Oedipus, at the moment of his greatest achievement, discovers that
he has unknowingly murdered his father and married his mother.
Socratic irony is often
involved in philosophical discussions. It is a method of argument which
pretends ignorance in order to question an opponent closely and so reveal his
inconsistencies and false assumptions.
Irony need not always be serious or shocking. Nevertheless, because of
the power of irony to present an idea from an unusual viewpoint, its most
memorable examples tend to make ethical or moral comments.
See: figurative
language, innuendo, parody, problem words, satire.
irregular verb
Most verbs in English are regular in that they form their past tense by
adding -ed in the written medium, in
the spoken:
 |
and their marked non-past by adding -s in the written medium, in the spoken:
All verbs which do not follow these rules are irregular. Some like BE and HAVE are very irregular; others like
SAY only slightly irregular.
All new verbs coined since the seventeenth century have been regular
and many, such as CLIMB, MELT, SWELL, WREAK, and, more recently, STRIVE have
been regularised. Only three verbs have become irregular since the seventeenth
century: DIG, SPIT and STICK.
A number of
verbs are treated differently (in terms of form) in the UK and the USA, the
most widely used of which are:
UK and
UK-influenced US and US-influenced dive/dived/dived dive/dove and dived/dived fit/fitted/fitted fit/fit/fit
get/got/got get/got/gotten and got quit/quitted/quitted quit/quit/quit
wake/woke/woken wake/waked/waked
and two have markedly different
pronunciations:
UK and
UK-influenced US and US-influenced ate rhymes with get ate
rhymes with gate shone with gone shone with bone
See: -ed, -t forms, -en forms, GET, verb.
-ise, -ize
The practice of adding -ise/-ize to a noun or adjective to form
a verb is well established:
brutalise
hospitalise legalise transistorise
The -ise/-ize ending is Greek in
origin but it is not restricted to words of Greek origin:
computerise<Latin computare (count) idolise<Greek eidolon (phantom) mesmerise<Dr
F.A.Mesmer
A number of purists have objected to some -ise/-ize
verbs because they duplicate the meanings of other verbs:
finalise=conclude, end, settle
or because they are associated
with jargon:
politicise
The form -ise is widely used in
the UK whereas -ize is preferred in the USA, but there is a growing tendency to
prefer the -ize ending even in the UK, except for such verbs as:
Advertise advise arise
Chastise circumcise compromise Despise devise disguise Excise exercise improvise
merchandise promise revise Supervise surmise surprise
See: spelling.
italics
Italics are indicated in manuscripts and typescripts by single underlining. Italics should be used
sparingly, but convention suggests that the following should be italicised:
1 Titles of published books (but not the Bible, books of the Bible or
the Koran), journals, magazines, plays, motion pictures, long poems, operas,
ballets and long musical compositions. Quotation marks and not italics are used
for the titles of radio and television programmes, articles, chapters and short stories:
Jane Austen’s Emma
the journal Abbia
Tennyson’s In Memoriam Handel’s Messiah
Chapter 4, ‘Whatever happened to Mesopotamia?’ 2 The names of ships,
aircraft and some spacecraft:
HMS Endurance
SS Nimitz
When an
apostrophe s occurs with such a name it is not in italics:
Columbia’s home base
3
Foreign words and phrases that have not been
assimilated into English. These are not always easy to identify although a
non-English pronunciation is a good guide and most dictionaries indicate
whether or not italics are needed. Examples are:
billet doux sine die
Roman script
should, however, be used for proper names and for quotations from other
languages:
He insisted
that the discussions were terminated sine
die and added that the striking workers would soon learn the force of the
French proverb ‘Tout s’avise a qui pain faut’.
4
In course papers, academic articles, dissertations and theses, italics
should be used sparingly. In botanical and zoological studies italics are
conventionally used for the names of genera, species and varieties, but roman
script for higher ranks (phyla, classes, orders).
See: punctuation.
Jamaican English
English is the
official language of Jamaica, which has a population of approximately 2.3
million and which was under British rule for just over 300 years when it
achieved independence in 1962. The term Jamaican
English comprehends a continuum of Englishes from Standard English to
Creole English. Most varieties of Jamaican English show some influence from
West African languages in terms of borrowed words:
ackee okro (food) loan
translations:
corn stick (corn cob)
suck teeth (disparage)
and proverbial wisdom:
When the chicken is merry,
the hawk is near.
See: Caribbean
English, pidgins and creoles, West Indian English.
Japanese English
Japan is composed of several islands in
the North Pacific. The population of over 118 million is homogeneous in culture
and language and Japanese is spoken without significant differences throughout
the country. English is not an important means of communication within Japan
but it is used when dealing with foreigners, irrespective of their place of
origin.
English is regarded as the most useful foreign language, and most
children from the age of twelve attend English classes for at least six years.
The classes are oriented towards written examinations and so oral skills tend
to be neglected. Similar statements can be made about universities. English
literature is well taught and frequently studied but most university students
would find it easier to discuss Hamlet’s soliloquies than to direct one to the
nearest post office.
The business world is somewhat different. Nearly all Japan’s
considerable overseas trade is conducted through English. Most firms of any
consequence need personnel able to communicate efficiently in English and many
send future executives to anglophone countries to acquire the necessary skills.
English is occasionally used in written advertisements, especially for
imported goods such as whiskey, and pop music in English is played and sung. It
is the music and the rhythms, however, rather than the meanings that are
enjoyed.
As English is not widely used in Japan, it would be misleading to
describe a specifically Japanese phonology, vocabulary and grammar. The
influences from the mother tongue are considerable, however. Most Japanese
students find it hard to differentiate between /l/ and /r/ or /f/ and /v/; /t/
and /d/ or /s/ and /z/ often replace /ฮธ/ and
/รฐ/; intrusive vowels are introduced into consonant clusters at both the beginning and the end of words; and
the vowel contrasts in English are considerably reduced.
English words associated with technology (e.g. computer) and imports (e.g. jeans)
are occasionally adopted into Japanese and some Japanese words have found their
way into international English. Among such words are:
rickshaw<riki (power)+sha (vehicle)
saki<sake (fermented
rice)
satsuma<Satsuma (province famous for mandarin trees) sushi<sushi (rice
garnished with raw fish) tycoon<taikun (great prince)
The greatest
problems experienced by Japanese students acquiring English grammar are article
usage and the distinction between singulars and plurals (neither of which exist
in Japanese). They also tend to omit if from
conditional clauses, again due to the influence of Japanese, where condition is
indicated not by a conjunction but by an inflection in the verb.
jargon
The term jargon has been used so loosely and with
so many meanings, nearly all of which have been pejorative, that it may be
useful to indicate the five overlapping senses currently covered by the word:
1 a confused, confusing,
unintelligible form of language 2 a strange, outlandish language or dialect
3
a simplified, hybrid language
4 the
specialised, technical language of a particular group
5
pretentious language involving circumlocutions, polysyllabic words and
vague expressions
Common to all of these applications is the assumption that jargon is
unintelligible to an outsider, but the fact that we cannot understand a variety
does not mean that it is either gibberish or debased. Technical vocabularies,
whether used by linguists, plasterers, seafarers or cricket enthusiasts, may
permit very precise communication exchanges and in so far as they perform
such a role they are of value. Technical terminology such as
archiphonemes (linguists), hawks (plasterers), fathoms (seafarers), silly
mid-on
(cricketers) are, however, out of place in everyday English.
See: argot, cant, circumlocution, clichรฉ, gobbledygook, slang.
jejune
Jejune, pronounced derives from Latin jejunus (fasting) and it usually implies ‘scanty’, ‘lacking in
substance’, ‘devoid of interest’. Recently, possibly because users have been
influenced by French jeune meaning
‘young’, it has also been used as a synonym for ‘naive’, ‘unsophisticated’.
Many purists object to the ‘slide’
of meaning but such mobility is natural in language and not necessarily a sign
of ‘decay’.
See: ‘chestnuts’,
problem words, purist, semantic change.
journalese
Journalese was originally a term applied
to the language of newspapers but it has been extended to cover the
journalistic traits which can be found in some radio and television programmes.
The word has strongly derogatory connotations and cannot be accurately applied
to all newspaper language. It refers to characteristics of style which arise
from the necessity to attract and retain readers and by limitations of time and
space. The commonest features of journalese are:
1 use of abbreviations, initials
and acronyms:
Aussies KO
Poms [Australians
beat English at cricket]
SAM-busters [surface-to-air missiles] shield Royal jet
2
alliteration. This device is used mainly
in headlines as a means of attracting attention:
Sad Sister’s Story
Pitt and the
Pendulum
3 ambiguity. This may be intentional:
Martina, shaken not stirred
or
accidental:
The Cockney millionaire, the bionic racer with legs pinned together
with screws and plates, was a magnificent third on the treacherously flooded
Kyalami circuit.
4
language intended to play on a reader’s emotions:
The Pittsburg team has given new life and new hope to one two-year-old
child but what about the thousands of other children for whom there will be no
life-saving transplants?
5 first
names, nicknames and titles:
Fritz fights back as Gary loses heart Newlywed rock superstar Elton
John…
6 compression
of ideas often found in pre-nominal modification:
Runaway mother-of-five Marion Leadbetter hugged her 11-year-old son
Jason yesterday and vowed: ‘I’ll never leave you again.’
7 omission
of articles and auxiliary verbs:
Police appalled by savagery of attack
8
puns. Punning is perhaps the
most popular word game in journalese. It occurs in headlines:
Bitter suite
and also within stories:
Mystic [an eagle owl], owned by
rare-bird keepers Liz and Eddie Hare, from Chilham, Kent, was invited to show
off his educational talons by local headmaster Brian Robinson.
9 rhyming
is most likely to occur in headlines, especially
those relating to sport:
Ray lets his play have the final say
10 stock
words and phrases: Police tend to hunt/quiz/track
criminals who are hardened rapists/mass
murderers/sex fiends whose victims are often runaway boys/girls/teenagers. The story may be a drama/ mystery/riddle/shock/tragedy.
Favourite words are: ace, axe, bid,
clash, cut, fury, glory, grass roots, hit, jinx, live-in lover, outrage, quit,
rap, slam, stampede, storm, threat, walk free/tall, wed and frequently-used
phrases include:
marathon bargaining session narrowly averted walkout
ruggedly handsome
See: headlines, telegraphese.
just
In the spoken
medium, the adverb just has relatively little constant
semantic content but is used with different intonation patterns to indicate different attitudes. For example:
She was just beautiful.
can, depending on intonation, mean: She
was extremely beautiful.
She was beautiful (but not talented).
She could be described as
beautiful but only just.
Just can occur in several positions in a
sentence with the position affecting its meaning, as is clear from the words
that can substitute for just in the
different examples:
Just wait till your father comes home! (only)
Hey! Just a
minute! (wait)
They just don’t know any better. (simply)
She knows just
what to say. (exactly)
It’s just enough.
(barely)
They’ve just arrived. (very recently)
He passed his
exams—just! (with nothing to spare)
The use of a modifier with an absolute such as perfect, sublime or unique is unacceptable, since there cannot be degrees of absolutes.
However, the colloquial use of just with
an absolute implies emphasis rather than modification:
It’s just perfect!
In the UK just occurs with inversion in
class-marked rejoinders:
She jumped
magnificently.
Didn’t she just!
and seems to be an
upper-middle-class equivalent of the equally unorthodox working- class
emphatic:
Would you like
some tea?
I wouldn’t half! (i.e. Yes indeed.)
In UK usage when just means ‘a moment ago’ it tends to
co-occur with the present perfect:
I have just seen him.
John has just left.
whereas in US English it
frequently co-occurs with the simple past:
We just heard the news. Mary
just called by.
