I recently wrote an email to someone close to me suggesting that we chat. I wrote the letter in a playful way, teasing the person and suggesting that they were selfish for not speaking to me sooner. However, my sarcasm was not properly conveyed and this person's feelings were hurt. We were able to hash things out and I explained that I was joking and that I meant no offense (there was a winking emoticon, after all) and they accepted my apology and we agreed that I should not use sarcasm in emails.
This is just another example of the limitations of the written word. Tone, facial expression, body language, and even cadence convey so much information that's lost when everything is written down. I remember reading script after script while on my high school's speech team, looking for something funny to perform in the Humorous Interpretation (HI) category. I was frustrated that so many comedies just weren't that funny. One of the other members on my team chose one of the scripts that I had passed over and won the State finals. So much of the humor came from how he performed the piece and he really did deserve the State title (one of the local newspapers even said that he was California's funniest high schooler). When I wrote the email, I thought that the joke would be obvious because of how blatantly I praised myself, but it came across as me being obnoxious.
I have thought before that English needs a symbol to convey sarcasm (and I'm not the only one) but still we lack one. Perhaps this is because writing is more formal than speaking. We don't have to worry about punctuation or spelling while speaking and we don't even have to pay attention to where one sentence ends and another begins. Due to this formality, maybe allowing sarcasm (or at least making it easier to use) in writing would add a crassness that it's better to not have. Maybe it forces the author to be more creative when joking, since sarcasm is a very basic form of humor. Or maybe future generations will find a way to more easily convey sarcasm and employ it. Punctuation is a fairly new invention, after all.
2 comments:
I learned the hard way many years ago that barbed humor (including sarcasm) is dangerous to relationships. That's when I stopped using it.
As for the written word, it need not be more formal than the spoken. Punctuation is not a formality; it is an attempt to provide some of the missing cadence, expression, and other non-verbal signs that are missing in written language. As you pointed out, it does not do the whole job.
It is true, however, that humor in writing is whole different skill.
Sarcasm is defined as a remark made usually to hurt someone's feelings or show scorn. I don’t see the point in causing pain to make someone laugh. Sarcasm is a two edged sword. I think kindness is more Christ like.
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