Regional Variation in the Use of Sarcasm

Abstract

College students in New York and Tennessee participated in tasks designed to measure their use of sarcasm. They also provided definitions for the terms irony and sarcasm and completed part of a Sarcasm Self-Report Scale. Northern participants generated more sarcastic completions and chose more direct ironic statements than their Southern counterparts did. Regional differences accounted for a unique amount of variance when other demographic factors were controlled for. Northern and male participants self-reported using sarcasm more than Southern and female participants, respectively. Northern participants defined sarcasm as involving more humor than Southern participants. Correlations of the participants' use of sarcasm and the self-report measure revealed a moderate degree of metapragmatic awareness. This study is the first to demonstrate regional differences in the use of sarcasm, and possible reasons for these differences are discussed.

Social and paralinguistic cues to sarcasm

“…In fact, there has been research that demonstrates people do distinguish between sarcasm and irony in definition (Dress et al, 2008;Kreuz and Glucksberg 1989). We make this distinction here in order to dispute past attempts to use these terms interchangeably, as well as to clarify that the focus here is the study of sarcasm.…”

Sarcasm Detection on Twitter

“…For measuring user's familiarity with sarcasm, we include the number of past occurrences of #not or #sarcasm hashtags as a feature (1 feature). Further, it has been shown that people in different regions perceive and use sarcasm differently (see Dress et al's study [5]). Thus, we try to infer the location of the user.…”

“…The first tweet may or may not be sarcastic purely de- 5 The dataset can be obtained by contacting the first author.…”

Virgin soil in irony research: Personality, humor, and the “sense of irony”.

“…First, focusing on individual differences in irony performance is a prerequisite to study who is able (and inclined) to produce and experience the humor in irony (also in the disparaging part). Second, in the face of first evidence for regional differences in self-reported use of sarcasm (Dress, Kreuz, Link, & Caucci, 2008), new standardized tests can fuel cross-cultural research on irony. Third, correlates and mechanisms of irony performance can be studied in a more targeted (and more VIRGIN SOIL IN IRONY RESEARCH -17 -controlled) fashion if we develop tests tapping into interindividual variance in irony performance among healthy adults instead of resorting to subjects with disorders.…”