Sarcasm

A sarcastic response written on a table that reads: Wow, you are SO deep!

Sarcasm is the caustic use of words, often in a humorous way, to mock someone or something.[1] Sarcasm may employ ambivalence,[2] although it is not necessarily ironic.[3] Most noticeable in spoken word, sarcasm is mainly distinguished by the inflection with which it is spoken[4] or, with an undercurrent of irony, by the extreme disproportion of the comment to the situation, and is largely context-dependent.[5]

  1. ^ "Definition of SARCASM". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  2. ^ Rockwell, P. A. (2006). Sarcasm and Other Mixed Messages: The Ambiguous Ways People Use Language. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 978-0-7734-5917-5.
  3. ^ Partridge, Eric (1969). Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English. Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-393-31709-1. Irony must not be confused with sarcasm, which is direct: sarcasm means precisely what it says, but in a sharp, bitter, cutting, caustic, or acerbic manner: it is the instrument of indignation, a weapon of offence, whereas irony is one of the vehicles of wit. In Locke's 'If ideas were innate, it would save much trouble to many worthy persons', worthy is ironical; the principal clause as a whole is sarcastic as also is the complete sentence. Both are instruments of satire and vituperation.
  4. ^ "Irony". Dictionary.com. The distinctive quality of sarcasm is present in the spoken word and manifested chiefly by vocal inflection, whereas satire and irony arising originally as literary and rhetorical forms, are exhibited in the organization or structuring of either language or literary material.
  5. ^ Campbell, JD. (2012). Investigating Components of Sarcastic Context. Archived from the original on April 24, 2021. The findings ... show that the target sentences, when presented in isolation, were not seen as being conventionally sarcastic in nature. These same target sentences, however, when surrounded by contextual information provided by the participants asked to create a sarcastic context, were later coded as being sarcastic by a naïve rater.