ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the expression of musical irony beyond the typical boundaries of composers and performers, as well the associated functionalities of such communication. It provides evidence suggesting that listener-senders are capable of expressing irony through music. Sharing technology has been one of the main facilitators for researching listener-senders. Although there are many websites and file-sharing servers that could be used to investigate the creative activity of listener-senders, the chapter focuses on one particular avenue: user-posted YouTube videos. Structural incongruities within user-posted YouTube videos may be used to detect listener-sender implicit displays of ironic musical environments. Akira Utsumis unified theory of irony offers three necessary qualifications for distinguishing spoken irony from non-irony. Verbal irony exists in an ironic environment to which it is bound; presumes an implicit display of the ironic environment; and has a certain degree of prototypicality, providing typical conditions under which verbal irony may be manifested.
