The limits of irony

Alanis Morissette is well known for a song that brought millions of pedants out of the woodwork (or should this be 'wordwork'?!) on account of the misuse of one word: irony. 'Isn't it ironic', the phrase goes, many times during the same song, and without, as those semantic jobsworths claim, actually offering any examples of irony. Some of Morissette's examples are ironic, though, because they offer a juxtaposition of two things not normally compared, and which consequently challenges our assumptions about comparability and similarity.

Now irony is being abused by one of this country's putative bastions of everything standard English. The BBC, currently mired in a number of controversies due to the use or abuse of irony by a number of its high-ranking, top-paid entertainers, certainly thinks it can deliver the ethical status quo when it comes to the pernicious, bullying, playground coinage, 'gay'. According to the BBC's defense of Chris Moyles, one of its Radio 1 DJs, using the word 'gay' to denote something which you hold in contempt and low regard is all very much par for the course. It acknowledges, does it not, the evolution of language, and the way in which a word enters into a new phase of its semantic history.

But can you defend the use of any potentially offensive word on the basis of the fact that it is being correctly used according to new stages in its semantic development? Supposing a racially abusive word (you know which ones) received a new coinage and was thus used to such an extent that made the BBC felt its use on air contravened standards of linguistic decency. Because that is - rightly - what would happen; the BBC could never condone the use of a once racially abusive word on the basis of evolving etymology.

The fact of the matter is that the contemporary coinage of the word 'gay' is linked to hateful - sometimes fatal - contempt for gay people, but is now applied to an entire world of objects which we think are lowly, contemptuous, useless, disposable, closest to refuse - that of which we would rather dispose. Having been used positively by the gay community to reclaim dignity and self-worth, it has been seized by a supposedly non-offensive community of users who have insidiously refashioned the word to reflect their long-held hate for gays.

Not very ironic, then, really. I wonder what giddy heights the BBC will take their lowly hypocrisy to next?