Situational irony: A concept of events gone awry.

Abstract

An event can be classified as situationally ironic when it deviates from routine in certain ways. In Study 1, a taxonomy of situational ironic event kinds was developed and features of these events were identified. Features included unexpectedness, human frailty, opposition, and outcome (the experience of loss or win). Study 2, category production, and Study 3, goodness-of-exemplar ratings, showed that individuals have a situational irony concept, consisting of representations of event kinds. These events exhibit typifying features, giving the concept graded structure. On this basis, knowledge of ironic events is claimed to be a form of event knowledge, along with but distinct from the event schema or script