Creating the Sound of Sarcasm

Peters, Sara A.; Almor, Amit

doi:10.1177/0261927x16653640

Cited by 3 publications

References 20 publications

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The production of verbal irony

Kreuz

Johnson

2020

Figurative Thought and Language

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Although verbal irony has been a topic of interest for researchers studying language comprehension, the production of irony is also of great interest, since it highlights the situational, pragmatic, and even cultural factors that affect language use. Issues of production and interpretation have, if anything, become even more salient with the rise of email, texting, and social media. Even though such mediums are conversationally impoverished, new conventions and nonliteral markers have evolved to allow verbal irony to both survive and flourish online. This chapter will provide a review and an assessment of the current state of the literature on these topics.

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The production of verbal irony

Kreuz

Johnson

2020

Figurative Thought and Language

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Prosodic markers of satirical imitation

Leymann

Lentz

Burgers

2022

Humor

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Satirical imitation is a popular format of late-night comedy shows and can provide political entertainment and education. However, little research has been conducted on how satirists mark their satirical intent to clue audiences in on their intended messaging. This study investigates the prosodic marking of satirical imitation and contrasts it with prosodic marking of irony. We conducted a detailed case study of the prosodic marking in Alec Baldwin’s satirical imitation of Donald Trump in his audiobook You Can’t Spell America Without Me contrasted with both Baldwin’s and Trump’s regular voices. The analyzed corpus contained six hours of audio material across the three sources. Through a combination of automatic and manual coding, we measured average pitch, pitch variation, and speech rate. Our analysis did not reveal marking of satirical imitation by pitch or pitch variation. The satirical imitation was only marked by a faster speech rate than both baseline voices. These findings contrast with previous studies that identified a lower pitch, less pitch variation, and a slower speech rate as markers of verbal irony. Our study provides first evidence that satirical imitation is prosodically marked differently from verbal irony, with a faster speech rate as one potential marker.

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