Irony and indeterminacy in two ghost worlds

This chapter applies ideas from Paul Simpson’s (2011, 2019, 2024) model of irony in analysing examples from the graphic novel Ghost World and its film adaptation. There are indeterminacies in each of the examples, including about whether they can be categorised as irony and which categories of irony they involve if so. These examples support Simpson’s view of irony as complex and hard to define, with the nature of what utterances communicate and how being more important than whether or how they can be categorised.