| Sumario: | This article presents a systematic approach to characterizing dramatic irony using features drawn from the literature in conjunction with the analytical framework provided by Possible Worlds Theory (PWT). Checklists concerning the relative knowledge of participants, discourse levels and participant roles, the generation of tension, and resulting dramatic irony effects were formulated and applied to examples of dramatic irony from two episodes of the British sit-com Fawlty Towers. A PWT analysis of dramatic irony draws attention to points of conflict among participants' private worlds, such as their K-world (knowledge) and W-world (wishes), and the Text Actual World, thereby enabling an account of its central characteristics, including the knowledge, motivations, desires, and obligations of individual participants. Moreover, use of PWT points up discrepancies and similarities among different dramatic ironies in terms of knowledge deficit, dramatic irony effect, and tension, and strengthens the case for recasting "dramatic irony," addressing the unhelpful blurring with the figure of irony by drawing attention to differences in their characteristics, including the role of context and speaker intention. Recommendations for further research on the distinctive features of dramatic irony are suggested, including the types of knowledge gap that characterize comic and tragic dramatic irony, and their concomitant effects.
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