Adapted from "Irony and Sarcasm" by Roger Kreuz (MIT Press, 2020). Reprinted with permission from MIT Press. In February 1996, Alanis Morissette released the fourth single from “Jagged Little Pill,” ...

Some days, you can’t help but believe in the idea that irony is a living, breathing, cosmic force with a very unusual sense ...

Have you ever found yourself about to say “that’s ironic,” only to stop yourself – unsure whether you were using the word correctly? If you’re like most people, you probably know irony when you see it ...

Alanis Morissette was about as big as any artist has ever been in the ’90s. Her cutting lyricism earned her many ears, thanks to the era’s affinity for punchy realism. She released one of her ...

Since I started contributing to Psychology Today three years ago, I’ve been periodically exploring how laughter and humor are related to other terms often associated with them. They include concepts ...

Rachael and Eliza Hurwitz are 24-year-old sisters from Connecticut who really like good grammar. After Eliza, a stand-up comic, wrote a post for the website Hello Giggles about how to update the ...

Alanis Morissette isn't particularly concerned about the fact that plenty of people have a problem with the lyrics in her 1995 hit "Ironic," which describe several scenarios - none of which is a pure ...

Song parodies on YouTube are often tedious things to be avoided. Not to single any of them out as being worse than the rest, but the recent Daft Punk/Marvel’s The Avengers mashup, Get Loki, for ...