Well, of course you haven’t, but in case some turns up, here’s a great way to spend it.
It’s is a video of a management training workshop by Marshall Goldsmith. He demonstrates an activity for developing skills in giving (and receiving) feedback – useful skills for work and for life in general. It lasts a little over an hour, but seems well worth the time investment if you can then integrate the activities into your classes. Plus, he’s pretty entertaining.
I’ve been arguing that ‘sarcasm’ means different things in BrE and AmE, so is it the same with ‘irony’? I’ll try to be systematic about this because there are different kinds of irony.
‘But what about Alanis Morissette?’, you ask. ’Did she misunderstand the word when she wrote her song ‘Ironic’?’
Yes, I think she misunderstood meaning No. 3. The events she describes wouldn’t normally be described as ironic in AmE. (You’d agree, wouldn’t you, American readers?) As the Irish comedian Ed Byrne puts it:
“The only ironic thing about that song is it’s called ‘Ironic’ and it’s written by a woman who doesn’t know what irony is. That’s quite ironic.”
Here’s Ed in action. (Thanks very much for the link, Shaun!)
So I reckon:
‘sarcasm’ – different meanings in the UK and US
‘irony’ – same meanings
Mind you, I read something that gave me pause for thought at this site ( I’m guessing it’s AmE.)
Well, this was news to me because I found that fire station example pretty ironic and the soap dish example very un-ironic. So maybe it’s another individual’s misguided take on things, or perhaps I’m missing something here. Any thoughts?
Here’s the rest of this series: part one, part two, part three
There are times when I really wish I could put on a good American accent here. Like at the Philadelphia Parking Authority the other day – I’m pretty sure the woman could have understood what I wanted if she’d just been a little more patient. But some kind of invisible wall descended between us when she heard my accent.
When my son was a toddler, he used to enjoy singing ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ from the show Oklahoma. And the weird thing was, although he was British, he sang it with an American accent. How come? So I was fascinated to read here that an ‘merican accent might be the default setting for singing.
Ha! Well who’d have thought! The next time I need guest parking permits, perhaps I just need to burst into song!
For an accent story that always makes me giggle, see Chris’ comment on buying paint in the US that he posted here.
I’ve noticed that it seems to be fine to make a lot of requests when you’re ordering food in the US. Sally (Meg Ryan) provides a demonstration of how to do it here (starts at 8 mins 17 seconds in – ends at 8 mins 51).
Ha! Well, being a picky customer is not totally OK here of course, but it does seem to be more acceptable than it might be in the UK.
Nevertheless, when I’m playing host, I’ll want to offer my guests say eggs for breakfast – so it’s ‘Boiled, scrambled, easy over, or sunny side up?’ And once those choices have been made, would they like soft or hard, dry or runny? Then we start on how they’d like their toast and bacon. There are a lot of decisions to be made, and the day hasn’t started yet.
Compare this with Japan where, as I understand it, it’s the host’s task to consider what’s most likely to please their particular guest, and place it before them. The guest will exercise ‘enryo’ (restraint, reserve) about expressing their individual preferences, which has some attractive benefits. With life’s small decisions lifted from their shoulders, their only responsibility is to settle back and enjoy.
Sheena Iyengar has done research into differing cultural attitudes to making choices. In this delightful TED talk she presents some interesting angles on the pros and cons of living life a la carte, along with some entertaining anecdotes.
First a question:
Remember Bob Geldof, Boomtown Rats singer and oh so earnest political activist of Live Aid fame? He’s sometimes referred to in the UK press as ‘Saint Bob’. Would you say British newspapers are being sarcastic when they do that?
OK, done that? Remember your answer and read on.
So where were we?
Well, in part one I said that in BrE, we describe remarks as ‘sarcastic’ when we’re saying the opposite of what we mean. Meanwhile in AmE, ‘sarcastic’ seems to cover a wider range of remarks, such as those you’d find here or here. They mostly wouldn’t qualify as sarcastic in the BrE sense, but I think AmE readers seemed to agree that they would in AmE. However, reading comments from fellow Brits, I’m still wondering if I’m defining BrE sarcasm too narrowly.
So now I need to tell you that someone very knowledgeable has come to the exact opposite conclusions to mine. Ha! You can read more about it over at Lynneguist’s excellent ‘Separated by a common language’ blog. Solo was one of Lynne’s students, and she wrote:
Solo gives an interesting example:
So Brits and Americans (and everyone else) how did you answer that question earlier?
I’m sure Solo’s right that ‘sarcastic’ means different things in BrE and AmE. But I wonder if we’ve both been going up the wrong garden path here. We’ve both tried to apply that ‘saying-the-opposite-of-what’s-meant’ definition to one variety or the other. But it’s very limiting and probably only works in part in both varieties. And we’ve both presumed that one variety encompasses a broader set of meanings for sarcasm than the other. But a more helpful way to think about it might be something like this:
Click here to read part one of this series and here for part two.
An overt nod and a wink seems to be used a good deal to signal sarcasm in the US. I ran searches on my personal emails and I can tell you that only my ‘merican correspondents ever say ‘just kidding’. And (interestingly for this Brit) this extends to ‘mericans who are really close to me – folks who I feel sure must know that I know when they’re making fun. They don’t flinch when I mock or tease them and they give as good as they get. But when we’re trading friendly, intimate insults, they add a ’just kidding’. So what different politeness rules are operating here?
Big, big thanks to the perceptive commenters who highlighted this when I was trying to tease out the differences between the US and UK meanings of sarcasm in part one of this series.
Inspired by Evan Frendo’s really interesting post on impression management (IM), I went hunting for research papers in the University of Pennsylvania’s online libraries. Unfortunately there aren’t many linguistics papers to be found on IM, but there are stacks of social psychology ones. As I browsed through them, I came across this. (I kid you not!):
So in other words, talking to pretty girls impairs men’s ability to think. Well, fancy that! Do you have any favourite pieces of research?
When we turn on the news in the morning, we see upbeat, perky news commentators who greet us with happy smiles and cheerful laughter. This is despite the economic meltdown, the vast numbers of unemployed, the BP oil spill, hurricane season starting etc, etc. It seems the sentiment of this old song is still flourishing in the US.
A positive attitude is generally valued on both sides of the Atlantic, but I think it’s more prevalent and deemed more important here. I sometimes hear Americans self-monitoring and saying, ‘Now how can I say that more positively?’ And something similar often goes on in my head when I’m trying to translate my British thoughts into ‘merican. Eliminating the negative, or at least toning it down, is often a big part of the restructuring.
There’s a book called Brit-think, Ameri-think by Jane Walmsley in which she entertainingly maintains:
Well, daft as it sounds, maybe there’s some sense in thinking that way. After all, positive thinking can have some surprising benefits, as some researchers at the University of Cologne recently discovered. They took a group of golfers and told half of them that they were going to use a lucky ball. The other half were told nothing. Can you guess which group performed better on the putting green? Yep – the ones who thought they had luck on their side. It’s not first time this sort of effect has been observed and it’s led psychologists to suggest that optimists might approach life with a positive frame that makes them more open to spotting opportunities, and hence they really do become ‘more lucky’.
So how far should we engage in positive thinking? Should we all start pretending that death is optional, for instance? Jane Walmsley maintains it’s the secret of America’s fundamental optimism, but she also goes on to point out the downside:
There’s a terrific video below in which Barbara Ehrenreich also explores the downside of positive thinking and argues instead for a hefty dose of realism. Very interestingly, she points out that a requirement to ‘think positive’ can operate as a form of social control. When cheerful optimism is mandatory, people who foresee problems get told to shut up or get fired. And if we imagine that problems like extreme inequality, discrimination or poverty can simply be fixed by individual victims ‘thinking positive’, it removes the pressure to solve them.
Barbara is American, and she’s talking about the dangers of positive thinking in the US. But I think a lot of what she’s saying relates to the UK and elsewhere as well. Any thoughts?
(Many thanks to Karenne Sylvester for sending me that great video link)
Just a quick note to say:
1. OUP have kindly posted something I wrote on problem solving activities for technical English here.
2. Macmillan have allowed me to describe my key struggles with ‘merican (in their wonderful ‘merican English month) here.
3. I’m regularly blown away by the comments on this blog, which are way better than my posts.
So if you have questions or thoughts about British and American English or an anecdote that you’d be willing to share, please do contact me. Heck, I’d be tickled pink.
Some guest posts on this site by very illustrious guests:
Karenne Sylvester on the way Brits undersell themselves
Sabrina Gerland on our penchant for dressing scampily in chilly weather and how we don't know how to say goodbye.
I’ve just read here that researchers have devised an algorithm that can detect irony in long texts. Wow! Robots can detect sarcasm!
Apparently they ‘trained’ the algorithm by giving it a long list of sarcastic phrases from Amazon product reviews. Now were they detecting British or US sarcasm, I wonder?
‘Sarcasm’ is a tricky concept for a Brit in the US. Popular wisdom amongst Brits is Americans don’t get it, and popular wisdom amongst Americans is it’s ‘bad’. Yet I seem to find myself surrounded by it here. So I thought I’d stick my neck out and have a stab at describing what I think it might mean in the two varieties. I’m still learning, so Brits and Americans, please put me right if you think I’m off target.
In BrE, I think we generally describe remarks as ‘sarcastic’ when we’re saying the opposite of what we mean e.g. ‘Wow, that’s a surprise’ when something was very predictable, or ‘Nice weather, eh?’ when it’s pouring with rain, or ‘Punctual, as always.’ when someone who always comes late finally arrives. So sarcasm can be either nice (a funny joke) or nasty (an unkind remark) but some element of ‘saying the opposite of what you mean’ needs to be involved for something to be labeled sarcastic.
Take a tour round some American websites like this one or this one and you’ll find remarks that wouldn’t qualify as sarcastic in this BrE sense. Nevertheless they’ve been labeled ‘sarcastic’ by American writers. So ‘sarcastic’ seems to be used to describe a wider variety of remarks in AmE– some saying the opposite of what’s meant, but many not. Depending on context, sarcastic seems to mean something closer to ‘unkind’, ‘insulting’ or simply ‘funny or amusing’ here.
Now fellow Brits, I need your help with this – am I defining British ‘sarcasm’ too tightly above? Are there BrE ‘sarcastic’ remarks that don’t fit the ‘saying the opposite of what’s meant’ rule? And consider this example:
Bill Bryson tells a story of a return to the US after he’d been living in the UK for many years. I can’t remember it exactly, but as I recall the agriculture police guy asked ‘Any fruit or vegetables, sir?’ and he quipped back something like ‘OK, I’ll have half a pound of carrots and a couple of pounds of potatoes.’
Could you describe Bill’s quip as sarcastic there? And Americans, what do you think?
Learning to speak ‘merican