Sarcasm is “a sharp, bitter, or cutting expression or remark; a bitter jibe or taunt.” [1] Some authorities sharply distinguish sarcasm from irony Irony is a situation, literary technique, or rhetorical device, in which there is an incongruity or discordance that goes strikingly beyond the most simple and evident meaning of words or actions. Verbal and situational irony is often intentionally used as emphasis in an assertion of a truth. The ironic form of simile, irony used in sarcasm, and,[2] however others argue that sarcasm may or often does involve irony.[3]
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Origin of the term
It is first recorded in English in The Shepheardes Calender The Shepheardes Calender was Edmund Spenser's first major poetic work, published in 1579. In emulation of Virgil's first work, the Eclogues, Spenser wrote this series of pastorals to begin his career. However, Spenser's models were rather the Renaissance eclogues of Mantuanus. The title, like the entire work, is written using deliberately archaic in 1579:
Tom piper) An Ironical [Sarcasmus], spoken in derision of these rude wits, which make more account of a rhyming Rimbaud, then of skill grounded upon learning and judgment. —Edmund Spenser Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English language[1]
It comes from the ancient Greek σαρκάζω (sarkazo) meaning 'to tear flesh' but the ancient Greek word for the rhetorical concept of taunting was instead χλευασμός (chleyasmόs) Sarcasm appears several times in the Old Testament The Old Testament is the collection of books that forms the first of the two-part Christian Biblical canon. The contents of the Old Testament canon vary from church to church, with the Orthodox communion having 51 books: the shared books are those of the shortest canon, that of the major Protestant communions, with 39 books, for example:
Lo, you see the man is mad; why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? —Achish, king of Gath, I Sam 21:10-15[4]
Usage
Dictionary.com Reference.com is an online encyclopedia, thesaurus, and dictionary. The site also provides machine translation and web search describes the use of sarcasm thus:
In sarcasm, ridicule or mockery is used harshly, often crudely and contemptuously, for destructive purposes. It may be used in an indirect manner, and have the form of irony, as in “What a fine musician you turned out to be!” or it may be used in the form of a direct statement, “You couldn't play one piece correctly if you had two assistants.” The distinctive quality of sarcasm is present in the spoken word and manifested chiefly by vocal inflection ...[5]
Hostile, critical comments may be expressed in an ironic way, such as saying "don't work too hard" to a lazy worker. The use of irony introduces an element of humour which may make the criticism seem more polite and less aggressive.
Understanding
Understanding the subtlety of this usage requires second-order interpretation of the speaker's intentions. This sophisticated understanding is lacking in some people with brain damage, dementia and autism,[6] and this perception has been located by MRI Magnetic resonance imaging , or nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI), is primarily a noninvasive medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structure and limited function of the body. MRI provides much greater contrast between the different soft tissues of the body than computed tomography (CT) does, making it in the right parahippocampal gyrus The parahippocampal gyrus is a grey matter cortical region of the brain that surrounds the hippocampus. This region plays an important role in memory encoding and retrieval.[7][8]
Vocal indication
In English, sarcasm in actors is often distinguished from sincere speech by speaking more slowly and with a lower pitch, or fundamental frequency The fundamental tone, often referred to simply as the fundamental and abbreviated f0 or F0, is the lowest frequency in a harmonic series. But other research shows that there are many ways that real speakers signal sarcastic intentions. One study found that in Cantonese Cantonese or Standard Cantonese is a language spoken in and around the city of Canton in Southern China, by the majority population of Hong Kong and Macau, and as a lingua franca of Guangdong province, eastern Guangxi province, and some neighbouring areas. It is used in Hong Kong and Macau as the de facto official spoken language of government and sarcasm is indicated by raising the fundamental frequency of one's voice.[9]
Sarcasm punctuation
Main article: Irony punctuationThough in the English language there is no standard accepted method to denote irony or sarcasm in written conversation, several forms of punctuation have been proposed. Among the oldest and frequently attested are the percontation point--furthered by Henry Denham in the 1580s--and the irony mark The irony mark or irony point (French: point d’ironie; also called a snark or hook) is a proposed punctuation mark that was suggested to be used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level (e.g. irony, sarcasm, etc.). It is illustrated by a small, elevated, backward-facing question mark. The irony mark has never been used--furthered by Alcanter de Brahm in the 19th century. Both of these marks were represented visually by a backwards question mark (unicode U+2E2E). A more recent example is the snark mark. Each of these punctuation marks are primarily used to indicate that a sentence should be understood at a second level. A bracketed exclamation point and/or question mark as well as scare quotes Scare quotes is a term for a particular use of quotation marks. In this application, quotation marks are placed around a single word or phrase to indicate that the word or phrase does not signify its literal or conventional meaning. In contrast to the nominal typographic purpose of quotation marks, the enclosed word are not necessarily quoted from are also sometimes used to express irony or sarcasm.
In certain Ethiopic languages, sarcasm and unreal phrases are indicated at the end of a sentence with a sarcasm mark called temherte slaq, a character that looks like an inverted exclamation point ¡.
References
- ^ a b Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2008, http://www.oed.com
- ^ Eric Partridge, Usage and Abusage, Penguin, 1969. “Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, caustic, ... manner."
- ^ H.W. Fowler, Modern English Usage, OUP, 1950. “sarcasm does not necessarily involve irony. But irony, or the use of expressions conveying different things according as they are interpreted, is so often made the vehicle of sarcasm…”; and “The essence of sarcasm is the intention of giving pain by (ironical or other) bitter words.”
- ^ Leland Ryken, Jim Wilhoit, James C. Wilhoit, Tremper Longman, Colin Duriez, Douglas Penney, Daniel G. Reid,= (1998), Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, pp. 409, ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 9780830814510, http://books.google.com/books?id=qjEYEjVVEosC
- ^ http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irony
- ^ S. G. Shamay-Tsoory, R. Tomer, J. Aharon-Peretz (2005), "The Neuroanatomical Basis of Understanding Sarcasm and Its Relationship to Social Cognition", Neuropsychology 19 (3): 288–300, doi A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an electronic document or other object. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata:10.1037/0894-4105.19.3.288, PMID A PMID is a unique number assigned to each PubMed citation of life sciences and biomedical scientific journal articles. The related Pubmed Central archive may additionally assign a separate number, a PMCID (PubMed Central Identifier), normally written with a PMC prefix 15910115, http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/neu193288.pdf
- ^ Dan Hurley (June 3, 2008), The Science of Sarcasm (Not That You Care), New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/research/03sarc.html?em&ex=1213848000&en=79518c9f61e51946&ei=5087%0A
- ^ J.W.Slap (1966), "On Sarcasm", The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 35: 98–107, http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=paq.035.0098a
- ^ Cheang HS, Pell MD. (2009). Acoustic markers of sarcasm in Cantonese and English. J Acoust Soc Am. 126(3):1394-405. PMID 19739753
See also
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Categories: Humor Categories: Human skills | Entertainment | Communication of falsehoods | Aesthetics | Figures of speech Categories: Rhetorical techniques | Literary terms | Vocabulary | Rhetoric Categories: Humanities | Linguistics | Narratology | Debating | Critical thinking | Irony Categories: Human communication | Psychological attitude
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