I recall >=3 levels of linguistic ironic detachment in High School. First: basic humorous incongruity between literal speech and intended meaning. 2nd level: doing this defensively where you mean what you say but "have an out". 3rd: Pretending to need an out as a status move.
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Indeed. Empiricism could falsify the claim. It FEELS like irony ebbs and flows. I remember it being high for me in the 90s, then low, and rising again lately. Casual googling gave no rigorous historical data... but TvTropes on "Irony" also remembers the 90s as high in irony.
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I lived for a few years in the Netherlands and Germany. I was surrounded by fluent English speakers, but I could never be sure how subtle shades of diction would come across. I spent three years basically not being funny.
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