Sarcasm thesis

So sarcasm is often sardonic – when a character uses sarcasm to mock someone else, it’s a sardonic comment. However, the key difference is that a sardonic comment is not necessarily ironic. It may say exactly what the speaker means, just in a mocking tone.

Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony that mocks, ridicules, or expresses contempt. It’s really more a tone of voice than a rhetorical device. You’re saying the opposite of what you mean (verbal irony) and doing it in a particularly hostile tone. Sarcasm comes from the Greek words “sark” meaning “flesh,”...

Think, for example, of Dr. Cox from Scrubs – he often uses verbal irony to mock other characters in the show, especially the protagonist, J.D. However, like many sarcastic characters, Dr. Cox is more often brutally honest than sarcastic. That is, he doesn’t employ verbal irony at all – he says exactly what he means, which is the opposite of irony.

§1: Semanticism. The semantic analysis of sarcasm begins from a general methodological bias in favor of semantic analyses. A significant group of linguists and philosophers believe that semantics should provide the most systematic, encompassing account possible of utterances’ intuitive truth-conditions.