Online Sarcasm

One of the problems of writing online – email, twitter, facebook, etc. – actually a problem in all of writing, though any problem with writing these days seems to be focused on the online variety – is (to finally get to the object of this sentence) sarcasm. Sarcasm is a tricky rhetorical device, best left to professionals. But the great bulk of writing online is not committed by professionals, and hence many of the attempts at sarcasm online are misconstrued as earnest thoughts. Someone might email a friend, “That guy you were with last night sure was hot!,” meaning that he was a loser, but taken as literal, resulting in a second date that might ruin several lives. It’s happened. So there are movements afoot to resolve this supposed problem by pushing for a sarcasm font or punctuation to indicate that the writing is being sarcastic in a particular passage.

This actually dates back to the 16^th century, when Henry Denham proposed using a backward question mark, or “percontation point” (؟), to denote a rhetorical question (“That’s really good ؟”). In the 19^th century, the French poet Alcanter de Brahm extended this mark to represent irony, and that use has been revived recently for use in online communication. A less radical idea (in that it wouldn’t involve a punctuation mark that isn’t on most keyboards) is the “scare quote,” which indicates that a particular word or phrase is not intended literally (“That’s really ‘good.’”). (In the previous sentence, “scare quote” is not an example of a scare quote.) Another proposal is the Ethiopic temherte slaqî, an inverted exclamation mark (¡),though like the percontation point it involves a punctuation mark not on most non-Ethiopian keyboards. One way over the keyboard hurdle is the question mark in brackets (“That’s really good [?]”) or an exclamation point in brackets (“That guy you were with last night sure was hot [!]”).

A more recent proposal, particularly for online, is to use pseudo html code to alert readers of sarcasm: (“˂sarcasm>You’re wearing that?</sarcasm>”). This is absurd on its face. Why stop with sarcasm? Why not signal all rhetorical effects with html code:

<humor>One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I’ll never know.</humor>

<simile>My love is like a red, red corpuscle.</simile>

<metaphor>He’s an asshole.</metaphor>

<personification>The sky grew dark and then pissed all over the town.</personification>

<oxymoron>He’s a conservative intellectual.</oxymoron>

<hyperbole>I’m so hungry I could eat a conservative intellectual.</hyperbole>

Of course the real problem is not with finding some punctuation mark or other typographical accoutrement to indicate sarcasm or any other figurative language. The problem is the people who want to use the language in these elastic ways learning how to do so, and those who read such messages learning how to recognize such use. Punctuation should indicate the syntactic relationship between words and phrases and sentences, not signposts for the rhetorical intent of a writer who can’t express that intent in writing, in words and in style. But then, <sarcasm>writing-by-the-numbers must certainly be much easier than writing from ability.</sarcasm>