'Our purebred ethnic compatriots': irony in newspaper journalism

Using examples from Austrian newspaper reports, this article argues that irony can be used as an effective strategy to challenge dominant discourses. In newspaper journalism, irony tends to be clearly signaled, in order to avoid misinterpretation. The more unexpected an ironical perspective is with regard to the genre and/or the political affiliations of a newspaper or journalist, the more obvious this signaling tends to be. Irony is explored in both verbal and visual forms.