the chronicle, a space for irony

Abstract

This article examines irony in two columns by KamelDaoud that appeared «  Le Quotidiend'Oran  » on 10 March 2012 (Le nez d'un clown peut-ilêtre vert?) and 21 January 2016 (La solution par les clowns) and were included (along with 180 others) in his collection «  Mesindépendances », chronicles 2010-2016, published by ActesSud in 2017.

Admittedly, irony is a tricky thing to handle, but the fact remains that the legitimacy that the column gives it lends it a certain effectiveness and credibility. The allusions, the unusual and the absurd encourage connivance and the activation of knowledge and recognition. Their persuasiveness urges the reader to adhere to the speaker's idea.

In the extracts analysed, irony is palpable in the way socio-political reality is represented in two forms of inconsistency: the absurd and the unusual.

It should also be noted that figures of speech are recurrent in expressing irony, notably hyperbole, lexical syllepsis and axiology, in order to denounce certain societal values. 

Behind a playful stance, we found that both the themes and the targets reveal a field of confrontation leading to the production of a series of statements that are critical and even destructive of a certain established order.