Irony, nuance and ad absurdum

If you’ve come to this page, it’s probably because you are a member of a socialist organisation or felt a need to brush up on the basic strategies of the English Language to say one thing and mean something else.  Welcome, thank you for grasping the opportunity to better yourself.

First of all, most of the articles on this site are one of three things:

  • Exaggeration to falsify an argument
  • Completely fake
  • An ironic alternative take on something in the news

Each of these will have a tag, displayed at the bottom of the article, to identify what type of article it is.  This safety feature of the site was specially designed for mouth-breathing simpletons, to prevent them from injuring themselves while writing furious response emails.

Irony.

i·ro·ny

1 [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]

–noun, plural -nies.

  1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to show Ed Balls round the school.
  2. Literature .
    a.
    a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or stated “Ed Balls detailed how, if he won the election, he would not make cuts to front line services”.
    b.
    (especially in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., especially as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme or emotion. “There was a manifesto from the Conservatives, and the Labour Party also launched a document”

nu·ance

[noo-ahns, nyoo-, noo-ahns, nyoo-; Fr. ny-ahns]

–noun, plural -anc·es  [-ahn-siz, -ahn-siz; Fr. -ahns]

  1. a subtle difference or distinction in expression, meaning, response, etc.
  2. a very slight difference or variation in color or tone.

Reductio ad absurdum

(Latin: “reduction to the absurd”) is a form of argument in which a proposition is disproven by following its implications logically to an absurd consequence.

A common species of reductio ad absurdum is proof by contradiction (also called indirect proof) where a proposition is proved true by proving that it is impossible for it to be false. For example, if A is false, then B is also false; but B is true, therefore A cannot be false and therefore A is true. In practice (outside of mathematics) such arguments are frequently premised on a false dichotomy making the ostensible proof a logical fallacy.

News Analysis

Some articles are absolutely straight-down-the-middle opinion or news.  These will be easy to spot, since they won’t be funny.  (Your mileage may vary)