This document defines key terms and techniques used in satire including: satire, parody, lampoon, targets of satire, audience of satire, and techniques such as exaggeration, understatement, incongruity, reversal, irony, and improbability. It explains that satire aims to amuse the audience while poking fun at a target to promote positive change through creative and ridiculing techniques that make the target look absurd.

1. Important
Terms
Be sure to record
information onto your
vocabulary self-assessment
sheet

2. Satire (n)
 Literaryart of diminishing a subject by
making it ridiculous and evoking toward it
attitudes of amusement, contempt, scorn
or indignation
 Takes form from genre it spoofs
 Horation Satire playful in tone
 Juvenalian harsh in tone

3. Parody
 Used as noun and verb (a parody or to
parody)
 To imitate the techniques and/or style of
some person, place, or thing in order to
ridicule the original.
 to be successful, audience must know the
original text that is being ridiculed
 less scornful than satire

4. Lampoon
 artisticform of satire and parody, usually
a picture, drawing, comic or other form of
visual expression
 purpose is to amuse the audience while
pointing out flaws

5. Purpose of Satire
 Allsatire has a purpose
 to use creative techniques to:
 amuse the audience
 poke fun at a target in order to promote
some kind of positive change
 not simply insulting or making fun of
something or someone

6. Targets of Satire
 Allsatire has a target
 the person, issue, group or situation that is
being held up for ridicule in the satire

7. Audience of Satire
 the general public
 individuals who can make the kind of
change suggested by the satire

8. Techniques of Satire
 generally used to make a comment or
criticism about a particular subject or
character
 Include:
 Exaggeration
 Understatement
 Incongruity
 Reversal

9. Exaggeration
 Enlarge, increase, or represent something
beyond normal bounds so that it becomes
ridiculous and its faults can be seen
 Caricature is the exaggeration of a physical
feature or trait.
 Cartoons, especially political cartoons, provide
extensive examples of caricature
 Burlesque is the ridiculous exaggeration of
language.
 For instance, when a character who should use
formal, intelligent language speaks like a fool or
a character who is portrayed as uneducated
uses highly sophisticated, intelligent language.

10. Understatement
 todiminish or downplay something to a
ridiculously low level in order to make a
very important issue seem unimportant
and to therefore emphasize it

11. Incongruity
 To present things that are out of place or
are absurd in relation to its surroundings.
 Particular techniques include:
 oxymoron
 metaphor
 irony

12. Reversal
 To present the opposite of the normal order
 can focus on the order of events, such as
serving dessert before the main dish or having
breakfast for dinner
 can focus on hierarchical order—for instance,
when a young child makes all the decisions
for a family or when an administrative
assistant dictates what the company
president decides and does

13. Irony
 discrepancy between what one expects to
hear or see and what one actually does hear
or see
 Three types:
 verbal irony – saying one thing and meaning
another
 situational irony – doing something that is
opposite of what one expects
 dramatic irony – occurs when the audience
knows something that the characters do not
(frequent in novels and plays)

14. Improbability
 Topresent things that are highly unlikely to
happen or even be
 Examples:
 events
 conversations
 character types