Non-Ironic Turning Ironic Contextually

This article defines and discusses a type of irony that has eluded existing classifications, namely, “context-determined irony.” Although existing types of irony – whether called “verbal” or “situational” or modified by some other terms – are in varying degrees related to context, none of them is really context-determined. Compared with verbal or situational irony, “context-determined irony” generates more textual tension and semantic density due to the co-existence of the conventionally positive meaning and the contextually determined ironic meaning. It is revealed that such irony implicitly permeates Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (1894), a textual analysis that is backed up by intertextual and extratextual considerations.