Irony: American, British, Irish

Yesterday afternoon we had our annual English Dept. end of year party. This year was pretty low-key. We usually wait until the very end of the year and go to someone’s house, preferably with a pool, for a long, usually funny evening.

Yesterday we went to a local restaurant: Napper Tandy’s. Yes, another Irish bar in the Boston area. But hey, they had curry fries. And, oh yes, Smithwicks.

I couldn’t stay too long, for fear of driving with one too many in me, and also because I had to hustle over to the Blackthorne and see Amy in her first-ever solo concert. (Where that one over the eight caught up with me.)

I spent most of the time at the party speaking with Jim, a new addition to the department who teaches ESL and frosh classes. Jim is from Birmingham, of Irish parents. He was still smarting from England’s debacle against France this weekend (harharhar.)


I brought up my interest in bicultural people, and Jim certainly fits the bill. Irish in England. And now English in America. AND he just adopted a Chinese baby. I was trying to explain my ideas about Irish culture to see if he would agree. Specifically, the Irish are black-humored, ironic, self-effacing, and especially: slaggers. He agreed but didn’t get my larger point,that slagging isn’t just an admirable, not-taking-yourself-or-others-too-seriously trait, but rather is also an expression of a genuine hostility: the usual old hostility of begrudgery, or making sure one is not getting ahead of himself or herself. And that this trait fits in with other cultural issues that stem from a reaction to British colonial rule, although I’d be willing to consider that they are also in the long-term, historical “Irish character”. I don’t really want to say Celtic.

Slagging and irony are ways of ripping down, whatever face you put on it. Irony of course is also subversive, sly and distancing. The oft-made insight in Ireland that Americans “have no sense of irony” isn’t really accurate. Americans have an acute sense of irony, and lots of them don’t like it.

Irony distances, irony undermines, irony is perhaps, sneaky. Slyness is not valued in the American character, and I think it is valued in some way, at least historically, in the Irish. Verbal slyness, a delight in putting one over on someone, playing up and playing upon the expectations of others, are all means of resistance and subversion.

Sarcasm, what most people mean when discussing this issue of irony appreciation, is of course a harsh attack on someone or something. It tends, in the guise of irony, to be lionized in the Irish and British cultures I think as a means to modesty.

Ultimately, Americans don’t like it because self-deprecation isn’t that far from self-defeatism, and Americans, however naïve, giddy, or wankerish, are optimistic. Irony/sarcasm really is a last defense of the weak (historically and culturally speaking). Americans may not consciously verbalize this, but they get it.

Jim told me a story:

He was with a group of friends, English and American, at a buffet-style restaurant. His American friend, Chris, finished his meal, stood up, and said, “That was delicious. I’m going for another plate.”

Without thinking, Jim said, “You fat bastard.” And instantly knew he had made a mistake. This was in the first instance ironic because Chris was not a heavy person. Chris, a long-term friend and good one, confronted him on what he meant. According to Jim, there was no subtext of any kind in his comment. It was a playful dig. His actual words to me were “an expression of endearment.” Completely understood by his British friends, and immediately suspected by his American.

Was Jim honest? Was there no “cultural stereotype” dig at the American going for seconds?

If there wasn’t, is there something wrong with British/Irish sense of humor? Is the valuing of sarcasm immature or problematical?

Also, since Jim expressed this as part of British character, it doesn’t exactly fit in with the take that colonial and post-colonial experience is responsible for its manifestation.