(29^th September 2015)

Ok the other thing that is pissing me off is people not knowing the difference between sarcasm and irony.

I realise I live in a country where English is not their native language, and of course the culture is completely different so it’s likely that people can’t really distinguish the difference between the 2 because unlike the Australian’s and the English, they haven’t had decades of humour based on these 2 concepts.

So in my view, the Chinese more or less get a pass here.

In fact they do actually have sarcasm AND irony …and they are 2 separate things, but you have to seriously look around to find someone that uses it properly.

Which in fact, brings me to my real point here.

Americans.

Most of the time I love being able to speak to Americans because of the one simple fact that I don’t have to dumb down my English to be understood.  I can talk about common culturally related stuff, because Australian’s are pretty much that link between the differences between Britain and America. We understand them more…plus all those American TV shows certainly help too.

And for the most part, even though I don’t agree with it, I can understand that even though some people would say they’ve butchered the English language by changing the spelling of certain words to make it easier for pre-school kids to learn, or dim-witted people….  Hey, yes they’ve changed some words, they’ve added their own spin on it, they’ve of course got all their own colloquialisms and slang. But it’s still English. It’s not British English anymore, its instead justifiably American English.

However at the end of the day, words do have meanings.

Ok so on ‘Sarcasm’ and ‘Irony’

Yes, they are in fact different and somehow a lot of Americans don’t seem to get this, nor do all the other countries that America influences.

The definition from the dictionary app that I have in my phone (with apparently all definitions coming from wikitionary.org) says:
ironic- 1.) Characterized by or constituting irony. ‘it was ironic I forgot my textbook on human memory’

2.) Given to the use of irony; sarcastic

Which when you click on ‘sarcastic’ it takes you to ‘sarcasm’ or which one of the definitions is: A sharp form of humor intended to hurt, that is marked my mocking with irony, sometimes conveyed in speech with vocal over-emphasis.  Insincerely saying something which is the opposite of one’s intended meaning, often to emphasize how unbelievable or unlikely it sounds if taken literally, thereby illustrating the obvious nature of one’s intended meaning.

Ah hah!  That’s more like it. But if you’ve noticed the word humour is spelt ‘humor’ which designates that this is American English, and therefore this is THEIR understanding….which as explained above, has transgressed away from British English somewhat.
And ‘intended to hurt’? …mmm I wouldn’t necessarily say so, intended to emphasize how ‘unbelievable or unlikely it sounds if taken literally, thereby illustrating the obvious nature of one’s intended meaning’   , yes, but only hurting someone if they themselves take offense.   It isn’t necessarily meant to be hurtful.

So it’s understandable how American people can be confused that sarcasm and ironic is different, knowing that for one point their dictionary gives a fantastic example of ‘sarcasm’ , and another more or less reasonable definition of ‘ironic’ , but then confuses the student by just casually throwing in ‘sarcastic’ as a directly related synonym.

And so why does the rest of the world seem to not know the difference either?

Why, because America culture has permeated around the world with its lovely TV shows and movies, spreading its values, understanding… or in this case sometimes lack of understanding to all those that want to escape from their monotonous lives and watch reliably captivating TV/ Movies.

Let me give you a quick example.

I was in a taxi once going to my ‘Chinese family’s’ place and as soon as I got in the taxi I could tell he was a bit crazy.

So we started off and there was a lady driving in front.. she was going really slowing and the reason was was that she kept looking in the rear-view mirror putting on her make-up. (she clearly didn’t want to crash which is why she was going slowly but she also wanted to keep driving, because she evidently thought she could do both at the same time – she couldn’t. )

Before some butt-munch squeals out that I’m choosing to rip on women, this lady was not an example of all women, but simply an example of an idiot. She should have either stopped by the side of the road to do it, or done it later.

But anyway, she was weaving from one side of the road to the other going very slowly because clearly she couldn’t concentrate on the road and her makeup at the same time. But it meant it was impossible for my crazy, angry taxi driver to overtake. And despite the fact that he was rhythmically beeping, she couldn’t hear him because concentrating on 2 things as she was, meant that she couldn’t hear the beeping.  Oh and there were other cars behind us seemingly beeping at us, which was making my driver more crazy.
Anyway, my taxi driver finally overtook her only to bestuck behind yet another idiot that couldn’t figure out where he was meant to turn left.  So this guy was now driving slowly down the middle of the street, with his left indicator on sometimes stopping abruptly trying to figure out if THIS was the place he was meant to turn or not.

Again he finally got the chance to over-take this idiot, which evidently decided he didn’t want to turn left after all. And then what did my taxi driver do?

That’s right, he proceeded to drive slowly in front of these 2 cars.

From swearing his arse off at these 2 cars, to now driving slowly himself thereby holding them up…. You have to ask yourself was this ironic or sarcastic? Or… as per apparently many people’s definitions, did it not matter because these are pretty much the same thing?

Irony can be seen as something (an event, something that is said..whatever) that is contrary to expectations that usually happens in a way that is bad to the person involved/ affected. And can be seen as possibly humourous because of this.

Sarcastic is pretty much the definition from the dictionary meaning above.

So it would make sense if the taxi driver drove ironically, or that the situation was ironic, because of the context of the event you would expect  that as he was so angry from being stuck behind 2 aggravatingly slow drivers… he would speed up and drive away in a fast and erratic way, but instead he continued to drive slowly.  The person being affected in a ‘bad’ way.. was me. Getting stuck behind 2 slow arses, and then my own enraged taxi driver proceeding to drive slow himself… not so good if I was in a rush.

Could it be said that the taxi driver was driving sarcastically?

Yes. Although of course you would have to define the context as it was above.

And that would be that he intentionally decided to drive slowly so as to press a point that the 2 people now following him (the man once wanting to turn left, and the spatially unaware make up lady) were in fact driving slowly beforehand and holding everyone up.

So you see there IS a difference.

I drive sarcastically sometimes just to point out the idiocy in how other people drive. For example beeping at people even though it’s evident that they can’t move forward because the gap is not big enough, and when they are in the same position, I do the same.

By the way don’t worry, I realise that I’m coming across as a pedantic word Nazi….. but then again, at the same time, I don’t want people to continue being stupid… so there we go.