Partial answer: Sarcasm appears to be a group membership test mechanism. It involves saying something that is obviously untrue according to the speaker’s group’s beliefs as if it’s true, with the expectation that members of that group will understand that the speaker can’t possibly believe that, and nonmembers will show their non-membership by acting as if the speaker does. It overlaps with mockery where it’s done for the express purpose of highlighting the fact that someone isn’t a member of a group, which is usually considered humiliating in and of itself and can also lead to other, more blatant teasing. It’s hard to reliably tell the difference between sarcasm and seriousness without a good working knowledge of the speaker’s beliefs—and even then it can be tricky if they’re not particularly coherent in those beliefs.
(This is all based on my own observations, but I think it’s accurate enough to be useful to others; if anyone has a better model I’d be interested.)
Sarcasm appears to be a group membership test mechanism. It involves saying something that is obviously untrue according to the speaker’s group’s beliefs as if it’s true, with the expectation that members of that group will understand that the speaker can’t possibly believe that, and nonmembers will show their non-membership by acting as if the speaker does.
Sometimes it’s the other way round. The speaker says something with easily-recognised markers of not saying what they actually believe (e.g. call something a “modest proposal”), to cloak the fact that they are saying exactly what they actually believe. Insiders know what is being communicated, while plausible deniability is maintained to outsiders.
Can you give an example of something labled a “modest proposal” that is actually advocated by the speaker? I’ve only seen those words as a way to draw attention to the satire.
Not really, because if you’re pretending to be satirical in order to say exactly what you think, the plausible deniability goes out the window if you own up to it. See also Ha Ha Only Serious.
And this is just too perfect:
Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives a neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” (Proverbs 26:18-19)
Via TVTropes. I had to look it up independently before I believed they hadn’t just made it up.
Hmm, it looks like I thought I was being specific when in fact I was being quite vague in my question. Maybe what I should have asked was: is there a systematic set of nonverbal cues such as tone, body language, and so forth, that I can use to reliably tell when someone is being facetious/mocking/sarcastic, as opposed to when they’re being serious? This would avoid the need to know the ingroup beliefs ahead of time. I believe that this set of cues exists, since most people seem to get it right the majority of the time*
For example, in the show The Big Bang Theory, one of the characters has severe issues detecting sarcasm, and this is played for laughs because in real life virtually no one (except people on the autistic spectrum) has that much trouble.
Just my personal experiences, so take it with a grain of salt:
In the US and Australia, sarcasm generally has a very distinct tone of voice. I can identify sarcasm, jokes, etc. from tone of voice fairly well, even if I don’t know the speaker. In Britain, “dry” humor (where the tone and body language mimic a “serious” statement) is more common, but you can still usually identify it based on Adelene’s comment above if you know the culture well.
In both cases, the choice of words is still fairly distinct—there’s usually an emphasis on unreasonable confidence, and a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. There’s also often more repetition.
I wouldn’t have a clue about body language.
To try and give an example of the word choice differences:
“Woo, the Oxhorns are totally going to win tomorrow!” <-- the “Woo” indicates enthusiasm, and confidence is only emphasized once (“totally”). This is probably a serious statement.
“Yes, the Oxhorns are TOTALLY going to win tomorrow. There’s NO way they could POSSIBLY lose” <-- “Yes” instead of “Woo” indicates more of a factual tone. The second sentence reiterates confidence. Note the emphasis on confidence words. This one is quite probably sarcasm.
That’s brilliant and very Hansonian. I never thought of it that way, but sarcasm is often used that way, especially for groups such as economic class, or clothing or fashion seen as poor style.
That said, sarcasm is often just a joke, used to relieve tension, that doesn’t refer to group membership. Sarcasm is often used in an obviously unpleasant situation such as waiting in line, bad weather, or being stuck in traffic.
nonmembers will show their non-membership by acting as if the speaker does
I don’t think this part is always accurate, because you can sometimes tell when someone is being sarcastic based on the vocabulary they use and tone of voice. It seems like certain words (“wonderful,” for instance) are pretty much only used for sarcasm. I suspect your mockery explanation is closer to what’s going on: nonmembers will know they’re being mocked.
It seems like certain words (“wonderful,” for instance) are pretty much only used for sarcasm
Perhaps that is true in your group, but not in mine. Hence, in your group I would not pick up on that cue (due to being a non-member) though to you it seems obvious.
I suspect that the tension-relief of sarcasm used as a joke is mostly in the reassurance that other people ‘get it’, implying that they’re group members with whom one can be relaxed. (The sarcasm doesn’t even have to be about the unpleasant thing for it to work, though if it is, you get the added bonus of having your annoyance at the thing confirmed as understandable.)
For sarcasm that one would reasonably expect almost anyone to notice, I still think it’s group-membership related, but the group is something very broad, like ‘society’. It can also involve putting the target in a catch-22 situation, where they have to either ignore the sarcasm and let the sarcasm-user treat them as out-group, or acknowledge the sarcasm and acknowledge that they did, or had a hand in, something wrong. This is basically win-win for the sarcasm user. (There are other options, like calling the sarcasm-user on their sarcasm, but those are relatively hard to do on the fly, and they’re usually considered fairly aggressive, so it’s pretty unlikely that someone will try one.)
For sarcasm that one would reasonably expect almost anyone to notice, I still think it’s group-membership related, but the group is something very broad, like ‘society’.
It can be a way of saying “We’re in the same boat together.”, floating in a sea that may or may not be populated by an out-group.
I suspect that the tension-relief of sarcasm used as a joke is mostly in the reassurance that other people ‘get it’, implying that they’re group members with whom one can be relaxed. (The sarcasm doesn’t even have to be about the unpleasant thing for it to work, though if it is, you get the added bonus of having your annoyance at the thing confirmed as understandable.)
If you mean “Isn’t this rain wonderful” is a way of commiserating about the annoyance of bad weather, I think you’re right. I’m not sure what you mean about the sarcasm being about something else. How would that give you reassurance that other people ‘get it’? Get what, if not getting your annoyance confirmed?
It can also involve putting the target in a catch-22 situation, where they have to either ignore the sarcasm and let the sarcasm-user treat them as out-group, or acknowledge the sarcasm and acknowledge that they did, or had a hand in, something wrong.
I’m not really understanding. If I say “Isn’t this traffic wonderful,” and someone says “you know, I actually kinda like traffic because it gives me a chance to listen to a book on tape, or talk to a friend, or listen to music,” I might agree or disagree, but I don’t see how that’s being out-group. I’m not sure what you mean about acknowledging that they did something wrong: could you elaborate?
If you mean “Isn’t this rain wonderful” is a way of commiserating about the annoyance of bad weather, I think you’re right. I’m not sure what you mean about the sarcasm being about something else. How would that give you reassurance that other people ‘get it’? Get what, if not getting your annoyance confirmed?
What I meant was, if you’re annoyed about one thing, you can be jokingly sarcastic about something else entirely and still get part of the benefit that you’d get from being sarcastic about the thing that annoys you: You get the reassurance that you’re interacting with fellow group members. It would be odd to do this about something as un-controversial as rain, but you might see it when the source of annoyance is something that there’s not such a clear consensus on.
I’m not really understanding. If I say “Isn’t this traffic wonderful,” and someone says “you know, I actually kinda like traffic because it gives me a chance to listen to a book on tape, or talk to a friend, or listen to music,” I might agree or disagree, but I don’t see how that’s being out-group. I’m not sure what you mean about acknowledging that they did something wrong: could you elaborate?
Saying “you know, I actually kind of like traffic” contains an implicit acknowledgment that you were being sarcastic and don’t—it’s phrased as a polite disagreement, which requires that the person sees something to disagree with. So it’s not a signifier of out-group-ness; it’s a signifier of a group member who’s aware of the norm and happens to disagree with it. (I’d also expect this only among people who are reasonably close friends; expressing disagreement in response to sarcasm is very nearly countersignaling.)
I was thinking of a situation more like one might encounter when dealing with an employee tasked with enforcing a particularly obnoxious policy of the company that they work for, in a situation where they’re obligated to be polite to keep their job, meaning that they can’t easily use any of those other options I mentioned. If you make a sarcastic comment about the policy, they basically have a choice between ignoring the sarcasm and coming across as dense, or acknowledging the sarcasm and admitting that the policy they’re enforcing is obnoxious, which implies (though not especially strongly; this particular example gives them some extenuating circumstances) that they’re wrong to enforce it. Either way, you get to feel superior to them.
This is a very astute observation but I’m fairly certain what you are describing is normally refferred to as fascetiousness. Sarcasm uses hyperbole and intonation to make the falsity of the statement blindingly obvious, partly for humour but mostly to avoid having to directly refute it, either because it’s so stupid that doing so would be boring (“let the market decide” can’t solve every problem) embarrassing (no I’m not cheating on you), or because the speaker hopes to convince everyone this is so (see previous parentheses)
They do kind of merge together in multi-person arguments though, particularly on the internet where one person sarcastically dismissing a troll will leave everyone flippantly resurrecting their position long afterwards. Under the theory outlined above, this might be considered a kind of warding, like leaving heads on spears round your territory: “look, that argument has been dealt with, don’t bring it up again or we’ll quote you mockingly”
If you don’t know it intuitively (because of Apserger’s Syndrome or the like), about all I can recommend is hard work and effort; the differences can be fairly subtle, and depend on the context of the situation and the relationships between the people involved.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful; I have Asperger’s Syndrome myself even if I’ve learned to fake being normal pretty well as I grew up, so I understand how frustrating a lack of social skills can be.
Is there a systematic way to tell the difference between mockery, sarcasm, facetiousness, and serious? I seem to get it wrong relatively often.
Partial answer: Sarcasm appears to be a group membership test mechanism. It involves saying something that is obviously untrue according to the speaker’s group’s beliefs as if it’s true, with the expectation that members of that group will understand that the speaker can’t possibly believe that, and nonmembers will show their non-membership by acting as if the speaker does. It overlaps with mockery where it’s done for the express purpose of highlighting the fact that someone isn’t a member of a group, which is usually considered humiliating in and of itself and can also lead to other, more blatant teasing. It’s hard to reliably tell the difference between sarcasm and seriousness without a good working knowledge of the speaker’s beliefs—and even then it can be tricky if they’re not particularly coherent in those beliefs.
(This is all based on my own observations, but I think it’s accurate enough to be useful to others; if anyone has a better model I’d be interested.)
Sometimes it’s the other way round. The speaker says something with easily-recognised markers of not saying what they actually believe (e.g. call something a “modest proposal”), to cloak the fact that they are saying exactly what they actually believe. Insiders know what is being communicated, while plausible deniability is maintained to outsiders.
Can you give an example of something labled a “modest proposal” that is actually advocated by the speaker? I’ve only seen those words as a way to draw attention to the satire.
Not really, because if you’re pretending to be satirical in order to say exactly what you think, the plausible deniability goes out the window if you own up to it. See also Ha Ha Only Serious.
And this is just too perfect:
Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death
is one who deceives a neighbor and says, “I was only joking!” (Proverbs 26:18-19)
Via TVTropes. I had to look it up independently before I believed they hadn’t just made it up.
Hmm, it looks like I thought I was being specific when in fact I was being quite vague in my question. Maybe what I should have asked was: is there a systematic set of nonverbal cues such as tone, body language, and so forth, that I can use to reliably tell when someone is being facetious/mocking/sarcastic, as opposed to when they’re being serious? This would avoid the need to know the ingroup beliefs ahead of time. I believe that this set of cues exists, since most people seem to get it right the majority of the time*
For example, in the show The Big Bang Theory, one of the characters has severe issues detecting sarcasm, and this is played for laughs because in real life virtually no one (except people on the autistic spectrum) has that much trouble.
Just my personal experiences, so take it with a grain of salt:
In the US and Australia, sarcasm generally has a very distinct tone of voice. I can identify sarcasm, jokes, etc. from tone of voice fairly well, even if I don’t know the speaker. In Britain, “dry” humor (where the tone and body language mimic a “serious” statement) is more common, but you can still usually identify it based on Adelene’s comment above if you know the culture well.
In both cases, the choice of words is still fairly distinct—there’s usually an emphasis on unreasonable confidence, and a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. There’s also often more repetition.
I wouldn’t have a clue about body language.
To try and give an example of the word choice differences:
“Woo, the Oxhorns are totally going to win tomorrow!” <-- the “Woo” indicates enthusiasm, and confidence is only emphasized once (“totally”). This is probably a serious statement.
“Yes, the Oxhorns are TOTALLY going to win tomorrow. There’s NO way they could POSSIBLY lose” <-- “Yes” instead of “Woo” indicates more of a factual tone. The second sentence reiterates confidence. Note the emphasis on confidence words. This one is quite probably sarcasm.
That’s brilliant and very Hansonian. I never thought of it that way, but sarcasm is often used that way, especially for groups such as economic class, or clothing or fashion seen as poor style.
That said, sarcasm is often just a joke, used to relieve tension, that doesn’t refer to group membership. Sarcasm is often used in an obviously unpleasant situation such as waiting in line, bad weather, or being stuck in traffic.
I don’t think this part is always accurate, because you can sometimes tell when someone is being sarcastic based on the vocabulary they use and tone of voice. It seems like certain words (“wonderful,” for instance) are pretty much only used for sarcasm. I suspect your mockery explanation is closer to what’s going on: nonmembers will know they’re being mocked.
Perhaps that is true in your group, but not in mine. Hence, in your group I would not pick up on that cue (due to being a non-member) though to you it seems obvious.
I suspect that the tension-relief of sarcasm used as a joke is mostly in the reassurance that other people ‘get it’, implying that they’re group members with whom one can be relaxed. (The sarcasm doesn’t even have to be about the unpleasant thing for it to work, though if it is, you get the added bonus of having your annoyance at the thing confirmed as understandable.)
For sarcasm that one would reasonably expect almost anyone to notice, I still think it’s group-membership related, but the group is something very broad, like ‘society’. It can also involve putting the target in a catch-22 situation, where they have to either ignore the sarcasm and let the sarcasm-user treat them as out-group, or acknowledge the sarcasm and acknowledge that they did, or had a hand in, something wrong. This is basically win-win for the sarcasm user. (There are other options, like calling the sarcasm-user on their sarcasm, but those are relatively hard to do on the fly, and they’re usually considered fairly aggressive, so it’s pretty unlikely that someone will try one.)
It can be a way of saying “We’re in the same boat together.”, floating in a sea that may or may not be populated by an out-group.
If you mean “Isn’t this rain wonderful” is a way of commiserating about the annoyance of bad weather, I think you’re right. I’m not sure what you mean about the sarcasm being about something else. How would that give you reassurance that other people ‘get it’? Get what, if not getting your annoyance confirmed?
I’m not really understanding. If I say “Isn’t this traffic wonderful,” and someone says “you know, I actually kinda like traffic because it gives me a chance to listen to a book on tape, or talk to a friend, or listen to music,” I might agree or disagree, but I don’t see how that’s being out-group. I’m not sure what you mean about acknowledging that they did something wrong: could you elaborate?
What I meant was, if you’re annoyed about one thing, you can be jokingly sarcastic about something else entirely and still get part of the benefit that you’d get from being sarcastic about the thing that annoys you: You get the reassurance that you’re interacting with fellow group members. It would be odd to do this about something as un-controversial as rain, but you might see it when the source of annoyance is something that there’s not such a clear consensus on.
Saying “you know, I actually kind of like traffic” contains an implicit acknowledgment that you were being sarcastic and don’t—it’s phrased as a polite disagreement, which requires that the person sees something to disagree with. So it’s not a signifier of out-group-ness; it’s a signifier of a group member who’s aware of the norm and happens to disagree with it. (I’d also expect this only among people who are reasonably close friends; expressing disagreement in response to sarcasm is very nearly countersignaling.)
I was thinking of a situation more like one might encounter when dealing with an employee tasked with enforcing a particularly obnoxious policy of the company that they work for, in a situation where they’re obligated to be polite to keep their job, meaning that they can’t easily use any of those other options I mentioned. If you make a sarcastic comment about the policy, they basically have a choice between ignoring the sarcasm and coming across as dense, or acknowledging the sarcasm and admitting that the policy they’re enforcing is obnoxious, which implies (though not especially strongly; this particular example gives them some extenuating circumstances) that they’re wrong to enforce it. Either way, you get to feel superior to them.
I absolutely use “wonderful” seriously sometimes.
This is a very astute observation but I’m fairly certain what you are describing is normally refferred to as fascetiousness. Sarcasm uses hyperbole and intonation to make the falsity of the statement blindingly obvious, partly for humour but mostly to avoid having to directly refute it, either because it’s so stupid that doing so would be boring (“let the market decide” can’t solve every problem) embarrassing (no I’m not cheating on you), or because the speaker hopes to convince everyone this is so (see previous parentheses)
They do kind of merge together in multi-person arguments though, particularly on the internet where one person sarcastically dismissing a troll will leave everyone flippantly resurrecting their position long afterwards. Under the theory outlined above, this might be considered a kind of warding, like leaving heads on spears round your territory: “look, that argument has been dealt with, don’t bring it up again or we’ll quote you mockingly”
If you don’t know it intuitively (because of Apserger’s Syndrome or the like), about all I can recommend is hard work and effort; the differences can be fairly subtle, and depend on the context of the situation and the relationships between the people involved.
Sorry I can’t be more helpful; I have Asperger’s Syndrome myself even if I’ve learned to fake being normal pretty well as I grew up, so I understand how frustrating a lack of social skills can be.