humor (was Re: SPUD acroetymythology (1927))

[Jonathan Lighter]

We also depend on previous experience with the speaker/ writer.  My cronies rightly expect that a high proportion of my utterances will be ruefully or satirically ironic.

FWIW, I've found that a great many - perhaps most - college freshmen find it extremely difficult to identify verbal irony, especially in writing. They can catch on to the much more straightforward "dramatic irony" with little difficulty.

This leads me to believe that humorous irony (as distinct form "sarcasm") is not a widespread mode of communication in America.  "Tall tales," where the irony often laps over into hyperbole, are an obvious exception, but an easily recognized one.

If I'm right about the recognition of humorous irony being a late-acquired skill for a great many people, a question arises about its psychological relationship to outright sarcasm. The rhetorical relationship, of course, is well known.

Maybe they're not the same individuals, but it's striking to me that while irony recognition is often a problem in the classroom, student letters to the campus paper are often highly sarcastic. And we all know that when students do identify irony before being introduced to the term, the word they invariably use is "sarcasm."

Sarcasm seems to be one of the most natural rhetorical methods that the students possess. If a student letter disputes the opinion of a columnist, or a decision of the administration, or just about anything, sarcasm is likely to be the first order of the day.

Just thinking out loud here.

Well, not exactly "out loud," but....

JL

"Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
Subject: Re: humor (was Re: SPUD acroetymythology (1927))
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On Sep 8, 2005, at 8:36 AM, Peter A. McGraw wrote:

> Such incidents are not unknown to ADS-L, either. After a couple of
> experiences of my own, I usually remember to add ":)" when I'm
> TRYING TO BE
> FUNNY DAMMIT, no matter how obvious the irony seems to me, and even
> though
> I see it as the e-mail equivalent of the elbow jab to the ribs of the
> listener to indicate a joke.

yeah. i hope to avoid doing that.

> Apparently we depend more than we realize on
> tone of voice, facial expression and body language to convey and
> comprehend
> irony.

so the common wisdom goes. to what extent do we know this is so?
(this is a *very* hard question to examine systematically.)

arnold

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