The Use Of Irony In Miner's 'Nacirema'

Miner created a story concerning a tribe called Nacirema, it sounded so unfamiliar, but once it spelled backward it became familiar. People can recognize right away once Nacirema spelled backward and became ‘American’. In Miner’s essay, Nacirema sounds so far away and mysterious, they have many strange customs and traditions that hard to comprehend, but when ‘Nacirema’ were actually American, all those actions of Nacirema tribe, are much easier to understand. Miner incorporates double speak skill in the article ‘Nacirema’ he takes many regular situation or things and use double speak skill to cause those things like bathroom, tooth fillings, tooth paste, and tooth-brush seem rather unusual. Miner uses the art of double speak through his writing.

Writer implied Nacirema as a tribe lives between Canada and Mexico, so reader got an idea that it could be America. When Miner wrote Nacirema is a rich natural habitat, he was trying to express Americans enjoy to spend money and live in a capitalistic society. He wrote Nacirema in heading so folks who read it can denote it as American. Miner mentioned about American’s daily hygiene routine when he wrote verbal irony about the holy-mouth-man and secretive mouth-rite of Nacirema tribe. Moreover, he stated that Nacirema’s founding father as Notgnihsaw, which are the backward alphabets of Washington. As readers go through these verbal ironies in his writings, readers can laugh about it along the way. Verbal irony had made me enjoy Miner’s story more; his uses of verbal irony to describe Nacirema had made me feel some of my every day behaviors are kind of ridiculous. Miner uses situation irony several times in his texts. For instance, when mothers pass practice of secret body rituals to their kids. Author use situational irony and depicted the traditional transfer from mother to kids of the body ritual as masochistic and mystic. In Nacirema, people use their shrines to do secret rituals, it sounds like people of Nacirema are superstitious, but actually he’s describing American use bathroom daily like rituals. Effect of author’s usage of situational irony on me is that sometimes we do things, as culture

Shrines that Nacirema use for their secret ceremonials are bathrooms. Group of vestal maidens work in temple to heal the sick were actually nurses or medical workers in hospital, and bundle of hog hairs are toothbrush. Miner depicts daily routine like brushing our teeth in uncanny way like using bundle of hog hairs into mouth as daily private mouth-rite ceremony. Breast augmentation was a unique ritual to make women’s breasts big in Miner’s article. Miner manipulates language by describe regular human behaviors into something odd, many things Nacirema act created allusions as Nacirema is from an exotic tribe from ancient time. Reader can get Minor’s sense of humor when he portrayed American as Nacirema, and when he referred a dentist as Holy-mouth-men. I saw the humor of Miner’s story. Miner’s use of ironic humor on regular daily routine, made reader to feel what those activities were something bad we did toward our body. His manipulation of language made regular activities of human beings seem uncivilized. His way of ironic humor made me know that sometimes what we do daily and considered as a natural things to do, might be rather odd for people from a different culture to