1. Irony and Saracasm are very different (and both equally important).
2. More importantly, i think that study missed a key element in mis/communication - the relationship between the people communicating. For example, when I commented on your original post on this idea and said that "I agree with all of your political beliefs," you and all the readers who know both of us probably knew i was being sarcastic. The readers that only know you are much more likely to have interpreted that as a serious comment.
In the article, the head of the search committee should have known that in his/her position, it is inappropriate to be sarcastic ("Don't embarass us") especially because those of us in academia take ourselves too seriously and can be easily offended by the idea that we might be embarassing to others. Plus we are whiny.
1: Good Point! Irony is certainly a bigger concept, while sarcasm is uniquely tied to language.
(Philadelphia Weekly, one of our local alternative papers, suggests that the next hipster hobby will be Gardening. Yet again I'm ahead of the curve.)
2: I think you're right about the relationship being more important (and frequently determinative) of whether the intended communication takes place.
The mystery is, why would very intelligent people make systematic errors in estimating the clarity of their own communication?
This may be a question an editor could answer from personal experience. Do writers of professional communications use sarcastic comments all the time, but editors have to yank them out to prevent miscommunication?
I write stuff all the time. Even when composing email I'm cautious about how I sound since I'm sensitive to the problem, but that frequenly means I pay a lot of attention to niggling details in mundane communcations. It also means that I frequently reject techniques that might improve reader interest that rely upon emotional or humorous effects.
Is the real problem that emails are frequently sent out without any review or revision--the second pair of eyes that say, "sorry, your sarcasm just doesn't work on the page. Rephrase."
Your joke worked last time because everyone in my vast audience knows I'm Eleanor Roosevelt in a greasy tie-die, while you wear a top hat and monocle.
(Just to be clear, "vast audience" in this context may also be written as "all six people who read this blog.")
I will agree that the relationship between communicator and communicatee is vital in distinguishing things like sarcasm within written text. Anyone who has met me for more than a casual 5 minutes will automatically assume sarcasm in my written word. I'm not sure why, but it happens.
3 comments:
OK... 2 rebuttals here:
1. Irony and Saracasm are very different (and both equally important).
2. More importantly, i think that study missed a key element in mis/communication - the relationship between the people communicating. For example, when I commented on your original post on this idea and said that "I agree with all of your political beliefs," you and all the readers who know both of us probably knew i was being sarcastic. The readers that only know you are much more likely to have interpreted that as a serious comment.
In the article, the head of the search committee should have known that in his/her position, it is inappropriate to be sarcastic ("Don't embarass us") especially because those of us in academia take ourselves too seriously and can be easily offended by the idea that we might be embarassing to others. Plus we are whiny.
1: Good Point! Irony is certainly a bigger concept, while sarcasm is uniquely tied to language.
(Philadelphia Weekly, one of our local alternative papers, suggests that the next hipster hobby will be Gardening. Yet again I'm ahead of the curve.)
2: I think you're right about the relationship being more important (and frequently determinative) of whether the intended communication takes place.
The mystery is, why would very intelligent people make systematic errors in estimating the clarity of their own communication?
This may be a question an editor could answer from personal experience. Do writers of professional communications use sarcastic comments all the time, but editors have to yank them out to prevent miscommunication?
I write stuff all the time. Even when composing email I'm cautious about how I sound since I'm sensitive to the problem, but that frequenly means I pay a lot of attention to niggling details in mundane communcations. It also means that I frequently reject techniques that might improve reader interest that rely upon emotional or humorous effects.
Is the real problem that emails are frequently sent out without any review or revision--the second pair of eyes that say, "sorry, your sarcasm just doesn't work on the page. Rephrase."
Your joke worked last time because everyone in my vast audience knows I'm Eleanor Roosevelt in a greasy tie-die, while you wear a top hat and monocle.
(Just to be clear, "vast audience" in this context may also be written as "all six people who read this blog.")
I will agree that the relationship between communicator and communicatee is vital in distinguishing things like sarcasm within written text. Anyone who has met me for more than a casual 5 minutes will automatically assume sarcasm in my written word. I'm not sure why, but it happens.
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