Beyond strategy: a reader‐centered analysis of irony's dual persuasive uses

Abstract

Ironic texts offer pleasure both as what Burke called “ordinary” and “pure persuasion.” Readers may engage these symbolic dimensions simultaneously, but in different relative proportions. Using the coincidence of the 1986 sentencing of sanctuary movement members and the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, we offer four possible interpretive positions on two ironic political cartoons: optimistic readers interested primarily in the correctives of ordinary persuasion, some of whom politically side with the establishment and others who side with sanctuary; cynical readers interested primarily in the intrinsic symbolic pleasures of pure persuasion; and skeptics who appreciate the appeals of ordinary and pure persuasion in a single text.