Sarcasm is a serious thing… no, really!

First, I apologize for never writing part 2 to my previous post (from August?!?!?!). That topic is now uninteresting to me.

Second, I realize this post is long. I thought about breaking it into two parts, but then figured, if its that big of deal, the reader can just read half of it, then come back two days later and read the other half. I’ll even denote a half-way point for those who desire to take this course of action.

Sarcasm is typically seen as the invocation of mockery or irony as a result of contempt for something. In either case, the intended meaning does not lie in the truth of the stated proposition. The intent of the statement is actually meant to be contrary to the utterance. So if you combine the mockery with possible confusion when hearing sarcasm, you are left with a dangerous rhetorical device.

There are two big dangers: 1) the speaker is taken as serious or 2) the speaker’s intent was correctly diagnosed by the listener as being sarcastic, but then loses authority or reliability in future dialogue.

Sarcasm, like most language, is based on assumption. The speaker assumes the listener knows s/he is being sarcastic and that s/he will not be taken to be serious. Now this assumption is usually not rash. We have intonation, and facial expressions which help assure that the sarcasm is relayed effectively. But with text, the assumption becomes much more precarious. However, outlandish remarks also safely do the job. If the listener (or reader in this case) understands that what is being said is ludicrous, then the irony or contempt is received more fully. Difficulty arises when sarcasm is not ridiculous. The more coherent and/or possible the statement, the less recognizable the intent, when sarcastic.

The second danger is that the speaker loses authority over time. As the listener begins to understand that, less and less, this particular speaker means what s/he is saying, but rather means something else, sincerity heads to the backburner. The more sarcasm is used, the more the speaker is taken in jest. It’s a “boy-who-cries-wolf” story where the boy slowly loses his ability to convince. As a result, when a typically sarcastic person wants to say what they mean, they will go unheard and their speech becomes frustrated.

Half-way! If you’re tired of reading what I have to say right now*, then just leave this page and come back in a day or two! * [and by “now”, I mean “now” as when you read the word “now”, not “now” as in when I typed the word “now”; although it is certainly possible that those days will be the same, if you read it today. And I mean “today” as in the day I typed “today”, not necessarily the day in which you read it.]

So why do we use sarcasm? Why do we *say* what we don’t mean? Why is it beneficial or even useful? Well I’ve already mentioned the primary reason, viz. to show contempt or to mock. At some point, repeating what the other said, maybe in a sneering tone, was signifying that if you take what was just said, and hold it up to the fire, it will wither away like the supposed waste you take it to be. In a sense, it’s a reductio. One is saying, “look, if you take what you said, this is the ridiculousness that results.” And so we use grandiose words to inflate their statement, and then pop it with our sharp tone.

Sarcasm is also funny. I haven’t thought much about this, but it seems to be one of the bigger oddities we have in language. Of course the bigger question is why is anything funny, but in particular, why do American’s find so much comedy in sarcasm?

One final use lies in the possibility for ambiguity. Again, this is a direct function of any rhetorical device or word. Unclear terms leave open possibility, and utility stems directly from possibilities. It is left up to the interlocutor to figure out exactly what is being meant by the word or phrase. The speaker has said it, and knows what they meant; but it now remains to be seen whether or not this meaning will ever be fully grasped by the listener. This can be quite useful and if correctly employed in this fashion, sarcasm is deadly.

Thus, I can say something sarcastically while knowing that most everyone else will think I am being serious, and plant a little seed (of sarcasm) which will wait to explode sometime in the near future. As people begin to understand more and more about who I am, what I’ve been saying, and my intentions, suddenly, the things I’ve said now take a different meaning: they become the meaning I intended, the meaning that now becomes a bit sharper, and this makes those words a bit more real.