I feel like you can easily find counterexamples that aren’t ironic, so this argument doesn’t make sense.
“It’s like rain on your wedding day” - This is not irony. Weddings are planned months, sometimes years in advance. There wouldn’t be an expectation that it couldn’t rain on your wedding day, that’s an understood possibility.
Because it’s an understood possibility that it can rain on your wedding day, it’s not ironic if it does happen, it’s just unfortunate.
An example that would be ironic, is if you are planning a hiking trip and you specifically go on Saturday because the weather forecasted it to be sunny, but it ended up raining anyway. That’s ironic because expectation does not meet reality.
For everyone I know, rain on one’s wedding day would indeed be cruelly, humorously, and strangely at odds with expectations.
Yeah I think you’re right. I strongly disagree with the authors use of “expectations” here.
You don’t want it to rain during a wedding, But nobody has any expectations that it won’t. Catering companies and venues have tents for this purpose because it is expected to happen occasionally.
I think the second example also falls under “unfortunate”, I would call it ironic if you had planned the trip for Sunday, but moved it to Saturday because of the weather forecast, then it ended up being rainy on Saturday and sunny on Sunday. Although specifically where I’m from I would still put that chain of events within the range of “likely to happen” (unpredictable weather is a bitch).
Irony is e.g. writing a song about irony, and then filling it with events that aren’t ironic.
IT’S LIKE RAAAAAAAAAaAAAAAAAAaaaAaaiiiin
For the last time all of the events in ironic were by definition ironic.
I feel like you can easily find counterexamples that aren’t ironic, so this argument doesn’t make sense.
“It’s like rain on your wedding day” - This is not irony. Weddings are planned months, sometimes years in advance. There wouldn’t be an expectation that it couldn’t rain on your wedding day, that’s an understood possibility.
Because it’s an understood possibility that it can rain on your wedding day, it’s not ironic if it does happen, it’s just unfortunate.
An example that would be ironic, is if you are planning a hiking trip and you specifically go on Saturday because the weather forecasted it to be sunny, but it ended up raining anyway. That’s ironic because expectation does not meet reality.
FTA
Yeah I think you’re right. I strongly disagree with the authors use of “expectations” here.
You don’t want it to rain during a wedding, But nobody has any expectations that it won’t. Catering companies and venues have tents for this purpose because it is expected to happen occasionally.
I think the second example also falls under “unfortunate”, I would call it ironic if you had planned the trip for Sunday, but moved it to Saturday because of the weather forecast, then it ended up being rainy on Saturday and sunny on Sunday. Although specifically where I’m from I would still put that chain of events within the range of “likely to happen” (unpredictable weather is a bitch).