Page 22, Questions 1, 2

Page 27. Questions 6, 7, 8.

6. The play on words in "His sins were scarlet, but his books were read" is a play on the dual meaning of "scarlet." It operates on the word's double entendre: "scarlet" signifies both sin and the color, creating a pun. This play on words adds a clever contrast between sinfulness and literary success, giving a wittily balanced characterization.

7. "Furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners, and French novels" plays on the word "furnish," indicating not just the act of decorating a room but also subtly implying the type of items being used. It's a form of wordplay that conveys social commentary about the possessions of women in London, adding a satirical edge.

8. In "Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry," the play on words involves the juxtaposition of "rot" and "poetry," creating a pun where "rot" means decay and "rotten" means of poor quality. This wordplay adds humor and contrasts the essence of decay with the supposed beauty or creativity of poetry.

Page 28. Question 4.

4. The verbal irony in "the lift held two people and rose slowly, groaning with diffidence" involves the opposite evaluation of the situation. The irony lies in the attribution of human emotions and behavior to the non-human entity—the lift. It's ironic because a lift, being an inanimate object, can't express human emotions like "diffidence." The conditions that make this realization of opposite evaluation possible are the attribution of human-like qualities to the lift, achieved through the personification of the lift's movements, adding a layer of figurative language to describe the lift's actions. The irony here is mainly conveyed through the use of personification within the description.

Page 29. Questions 1, 2.

In the previous discussions about different word meanings, such as metaphors, metonymies, puns, and zeugmas, we mainly focused on how words' logical meanings transform to add creativity and expressiveness to describing things. While these transformations often included evaluations of the objects, these judgments were not a required part of these word transformations.

Now, let's talk about irony, which is our next topic. Irony, unlike the other word transformations, centers on evaluating the object mentioned. Irony emphasizes the opposite of what a word typically means. It creates a new perspective by contrasting the context's evaluation with the usual dictionary meaning of a word.

Irony is a stylistic tool that relies on the specific context. It ranges from small contexts, like a phrase, as seen in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator," to more extensive contexts, such as a whole book, like in Charles Dickens' work. In these examples, the words "sweet" and "plain" change from their usual positive meanings to negative ones due to their surrounding context.

In verbal irony, we can point directly to the word whose meaning has reversed. However, there are cases where irony operates over a series of statements, and it's challenging to pinpoint a single word responsible for the reversal. This is known as sustained irony. It works by contradicting the speaker's (or writer's) thoughts with generally accepted moral and ethical standards. Writers like Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and more contemporary authors like Sinclair Lewis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Evelyn Waugh have used sustained irony in their works.