This volume brings together two studies which are meant to highlight the complexities of irony as a form of communication. Both studies offer an overview of the major contemporary theoretical approaches to irony. Bertuccelli's paper further focuses on the relationship between irony and satire, arguing that the two notions should not be conflated even though they exhibit areas of overlapping, among which the crucial property of expressing a set of attitudes revolving around the notion of "criticism". Aru's paper explores the uses of irony in a corpus of over 600 tweets of socio-political communication, showing how ironic English and Italian expressions do not seem to differ essentially in their forms and functions.