9 Comments

My sarcasm detector seems to be broken.

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In classical rhetoric, sarcasm is when you say something that you and your listener both know is wrong; irony is when you say something that you know is wrong but your listener doesn't know is wrong. At least, sarcasm is more polite than irony.

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The Eskimos have 500 words for "really."

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Interesting, I have long observed that further north you go the more sarcasm people seem to use. I had a friend from Canada and he used sarcasm constantly.

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@Matt - Oh dear, maybe the Japanese have gone the route of your sarcastic disrecpect for certain behaviours and think it is unoptimal for the group to behave like that and actually think that one day some social disaster will happen to you, but don't feel the urge to help a rude person like you to understand the social environment of the islands, instead they will milk you as long as possible for your other skills. In the best case they don't know how to express in the Western sarcastic way of argument that they rule there and you can put your American multicultural tollerance status quo in the toilet.

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An algorithm that recognizes sarcasm in written texts (product reviews, twitter) is number 14 in the top 50 inventions of 2010 by Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/sp...

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I find it interesting that you say higher status cultures and IQ cultures tend to use sarcasm more. Do you think that extends to non-western cultures?

I moved to Japan about 6 months ago for a job, and work in a professional environment for a large western company with many Japanese coworkers. A bit of common knowledge in the expat community here is that the Japanese don't get sarcasm. In my experience I've generally found this to be true, even Japanese who I would consider to be fluent in English, have studied/lived abroad, and work with westerners tend to not only not pick up on the sarcasm but not even understand the point after several minutes of explanation.

I believe that lack of sarcasm recognition is one reason Japanese often seem very naive to us westerners.

I have only the most superficial knowledge of Japanese culture and language, but I can't imagine another culture where saying things indirectly and picking up on subtle social cues and body language is more ingrained and necessary. There are several different concepts in Japanese, which I don't think translate very well, regarding the differences between the face that's presented and more inner truth, I think "tatemae" or kind of public face is the most well known. Unlike sarcasm, the explicit purpose for many of these concepts is to facilitate social cohesion.

However, as far as I know none of these really reflect sarcasm as we know it. There's an element of rudeness to sarcasm that doesn't really seem to have a place in Japanese society.

Again I've only been here 6months and never formally studied Japan, but sometimes I get the feeling that the Japanese sometimes think we are the naive ones missing all kinds of social cues and such. My interactions with my real estate agent in particular gave me this feeling. I think South Park may have done an episode on this actually.

It would be nice to hear the opinion of someone who is really knowledgeable on the differences between the cultures.

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"Northerners also were more likely to think sarcasm was funny. …"

Hah! I knew it wasn't just thought sarcasm isn't actually inherently funny.

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