Irony in the Pedestrian Zone: When 'Of Course' Means the Opposite
In a reading comprehension unit, a Year 12 class works on a 700-word comment piece from a British online newspaper about a city's car-free centre. The relevant sentences are: 'Of course, the shopkeepers who predicted economic ruin were right. The pedestrian zone is now a ghost town - if you count 40,000 shoppers a week as ghosts.' The item asks: 'What is the author's attitude towards the shopkeepers' prediction? Support your answer with two linguistic signals.' Student Mira answers: 'The author agrees with the shopkeepers. The zone has failed because there are no shoppers. The phrase of course shows the author is certain.' The mark scheme awards five points for attitude plus two signals with explanation; Mira receives one. In the follow-up discussion, Mira says the sentence 'looks positive' and that she ignored the dash because it seemed like extra information.
1. Explain precisely why Mira's answer earns only one point. Identify the attitude, the two signals, and the function of the dash.
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Mira has extracted propositional content but missed the evaluative layer. The author does not agree with the shopkeepers; the sentence is ironic. Three signals do the work:
- 'Of course' is a concessive marker that presents the shopkeepers' claim as predictable, not as the author's endorsement. It sets up a reversal that arrives as a dash.
- 'if you count 40,000 shoppers a week as ghosts' is a hypothetical condition plus an absurd category. The conditional signals that the 'ghost town' label only holds under a definition no reasonable reader accepts.
- The dash is a pivot, not 'extra information'. It suspends the literal claim and drops the deflating punchline.
Mira's one point is likely for quoting 'of course'; she did not explain its concessive function. The mark scheme's five points require attitude plus two signals plus explanation of how each signal produces the irony. Her reading also contradicts the number 40,000, which she ignored rather than reconciled.
2. Rewrite Mira's answer as a full-mark response and explain the reading strategy that produces it.
Read the worked answer
Full-mark answer: 'The author's attitude is ironic and dismissive of the shopkeepers' prediction. Although the sentence begins with of course the shopkeepers were right, the concessive of course signals that the author is about to undermine the claim rather than endorse it. The dash then delivers the deflation: if you count 40,000 shoppers a week as ghosts uses a hypothetical condition and an absurd category to show that the ghost town exists only if one refuses to count the people actually there. The author therefore treats the prediction as self-refuting rather than correct.'
Strategy: I treated the sentence as an argument with a concession and a reversal, not as a report. I asked, 'What does the author want me to believe after the dash?' and checked the number against the label. The dash is where the attitude becomes explicit, so ignoring it removes the evidence.