Interesting post on sarcasm and brain structure. Sarcasm is also socially constructed, I'm sure. When I lived in west Africa, the Ghanaians, Nigerians, etc., I met there didn't get sarcasm at all. If one explained a sarcastic remark to them, they would say, "Ah, irony!"--but only as if they were putting a label on something they didn't really get. Sometimes a fed-up American would lash out at a local person, telling him (sarcastically) what a wonderful person he was, etc. This relieved the American's feelings and often did no visible harm because the African person didn't realize what was going on.I'm curious: has anyone else had the experience of discovering that sarcasm was not recognized in some cultures? Or is it perhaps that sarcasm exists in other cultures, but the methods of recognizing a remark as sarcastic are so culturally specific that a west African couldn't recognize it from an American, but could recognize it from another west African?
UPDATE: The reader who sent the above about west Africans confirmed that it is a cultural recognition problem. They have sarcasm as a mode, but use it less, and don't recognize the manner by which we signal it. Another reader who lived in Japan for many years observed:
Japanese are another group that has great difficulty with sarcasm. They do have it and use it on occasion, but in a very obvious and heavy form. One politician going on and on about how great and wonderful a rival is, for example.UPDATE 2: Yet another reader responds:
In my experience in normal conversation Japanese are unable to detect it or understand it when explained. So a lot of American humor is unintelligible. At the movies, Japanese always laugh at different places than Americans do.
One simple example, Americans will often say something like 'hot enough for you?' on a very cold day. Japanese NEVER can figure that one out, unless they have lived a long while in the US. In 15 years there I may have met a half-dozen Japanese who could use sarcasm.
My experience in Central America was very different, Latins seem to love sarcasm, use it a lot and can be very cutting with it. I was the one who was slow figuring it out there.
I'll second the comment about the Japanese and add the Koreans, and largely, most other East Asians as well. I spent over 5 years in Korean and speak the language fluently, and it is very difficult to tell subtle jokes or use sarcasm in that tongue without being offensive. Sarcasm is not a mildly humorous way of relating to people there, it is insulting. Only the most blatant use will even be picked up on, unless you are already on hostile terms.
In my experience on 3 continents now, I find that sarcasm and irony are very anglo-centric, or at least very Western European (including our derivitave North American culture). Perhaps this is largely due to the unique structure of English and the diverse elements of culture and language that have been absorbed into it. (I wrote a little bit about language and how it may affect communication modes here: http://thebastidge.blogspot.com/2007/01/semi-random-thoughts-on-language.html)
Here in Iraq, I find that some of the better educated and more cosmopolitan people 'get' sarcasm, but most other Arabs I have dealt with don't, and neither do the less educated Iraqis. Gallows humour abounds, of course. I think that just as city dwellers are more appreciative of and apt to use intellectual, subtle humour and country people are more apt to coarser, earthier, more direct humour, the more industrialized nations have a broader range of humour.
Asians tend to appreciate slaptick, vaudevillian comedies on TV more than ironic, self-deprecating intellectual comedy like you'd see on "Friends" or "Seinfeld". These shows were popular enough in subtitled or dubbed form, but a large portion of them went over the audience's heads, or just didn't make it into the translation. Drama translates better. Most Korean jokes, when translated into English seem simplistically childish.
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