{"id":3506,"date":"2010-09-21T05:21:53","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T09:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3506"},"modified":"2010-09-21T05:21:53","modified_gmt":"2010-09-21T09:21:53","slug":"the-language-of-sarcasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/the-language-of-sarcasm\/","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Sarcasm"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarcasm (n): harsh or bitter derision or irony; a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark. For the English, the national language- <\/em><\/strong>my addition.<\/p>\n

It says something interesting about a nation when strangers make sarcastic remarks to you to indicate that they are trying to be friendly. In fact, the first time I truly felt welcome in London was when an older English gentleman made a silly, sarcastic remark to me at the Discover Greenwich museum. Another interesting thing is that the English seem to think that they have cornered the market on sarcasm.<\/p>\n

Jesse was taking a picture of me wearing a replica of a jousting helmet- the tag said \u201ctry me on!\u201d and you don\u2019t need to tell me twice- when the man apparently said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s an improvement!\u201d As there was essentially a snug metal bucket on my head, I couldn\u2019t exactly hear him, so Rachel repeated it to me after I took the helmet off. When I smiled at the man and said, \u201cYou\u2019re probably right about that,\u201d he grinned back and explained that he was \u201conly joking.\u201d This event made me ecstatic and I bounced around to all my friends, telling them that I was starting to fit in in England.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is an improvement...<\/p><\/div>\n

Shortly after, when we needed directions to the tunnel that runs under the Thames, we asked the docents at the museum. They seemed eager to direct us toward the tunnel and added that \u201cthe tunnel doesn\u2019t usually<\/em> flood and people rarely ever die in it.\u201d We laughed along with them, but they continued to act as if we must have no idea that they were joking. We\u2019re Americans and therefore must not understand sarcasm. Because our country is entirely full of earnest people, right? (Wink wink, nudge nudge\u2026<\/em>)<\/p>\n

I find it very interesting that- and this is a huge generalization- for a nation of overly standoffish people, the English sure love their sarcasm. It seems odd to me that no one makes eye contact on the street or on the tube, but it is totally acceptable to poke fun at a stranger at a museum.<\/p>\n

Even though this probably sounds like a criticism, don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m totally fluent in sarcasm, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarcasm (n): harsh or bitter derision or irony; a sharply ironical taunt; sneering or cutting remark. For the English, the national language- my addition. It says something interesting about a nation when strangers make sarcastic remarks to you to indicate that they are trying to be friendly. In fact, the first time I truly felt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":379,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6683],"tags":[15162],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-jessica","tag-sarcasm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}