Abstract
Despite valuable studies into the uses/functions of sarcasm, no previous investigation has focused on the semantics of âsarcasmâ as an emic metapragmatic category. We provide a contrastive lexical study of English and Danish using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach. We find that the English noun sarcasm has been undergoing semantic innovation and is now polysemous, as is its corresponding adjective. Roughly, older sarcasm1 expresses a positive message with an obvious negative intention, while newer sarcasm2 expresses a negative message with the aim of being amusing. For Danish, sarkasme is shown to closely align with sarcasm1, but semantic innovation has been happening in Danish too. A new expression sarkastisk humor overlaps with sarcasm2 but is tailored to fit into Danish humor discourses. The study sheds light on insider understandings and metapragmatic discourses in Anglo and Danish linguacultures. There are cautionary implications for the use of âsarcasmâ as a second-order concept.
1 Contrastive Metapragmatics and âSarcasmâ
By contrastive metapragmatics, we understand the contrastive study of the emics of metapragmatic words and phrases; that is, the study of the words people use in different linguacultures to capture, comment, and contest their own discourse practices and linguistic realities. We here provide a contrastive lexical study of the metapragmatics of âsarcasmâ in English and Danish. Our primary focus is on the English noun sarcasm and its adjective counterpart sarcastic, and the apparently corresponding noun and adjective in Danish, sarkasme and sarkastisk, as well as the uniquely Danish word dumsmart. Danish is a language which is widely known in the intercultural communication literature for its âsarcasticâ humour style (Lundquist 2014, 2021). Our method of lexical-semantic description will be the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach, which uses explanatory paraphrase in simple, translatable words as a way of representing hypotheses about meaning.
There have been a number of valuable studies into sarcasm conducted in the intersection zone of linguistic pragmatics and the philosophy of language, e.g., Taylor (2015, 2017), Dynel (2016a, 2016b). One common focus of interest has been to clarify the relationship between sarcasm and the traditional rhetorical figure of irony. Another has been to clarify the relationship between so-called first-order and second-order uses of the terms âsarcasmâ and âironyâ, corresponding, respectively, to their everyday emic meanings and to their use as specialist analytical categories.1 Our study differs in several ways. The first and most obvious is that we are bringing a lexical-semantic lens to âsarcasmâ, and, as far as we know, ours is the first such study to do so. Taylor, Dynel and others have clearly recognised that first-order understandings of âsarcasmâ and related words are an important topic of research interest and have made a number of highly pertinent observations, but they have not deployed a systematic method of lexical-semantic analysis. We believe that our study allows a higher level of semantic granularity and detail and can thus bring to light facts that would not otherwise be clearly visible. Second, in the descriptive-analytical sections of the paper (sections 2â4), we will not concern ourselves with âironyâ or with second-order terminology at all. We will focus solely on the emics of words in everyday English and everyday Danish. We have a story to tell about the ânew polysemyâ of the everyday English words sarcasm and sarcastic, a story about semantic change and innovation in progress, and we have a story to tell about semantic innovation in Danish too, which somewhat parallels developments in English but which in broader perspective connects with Danish cultural discourses on humour and is, thereby, distinctively Danish.
This is not to say that our findings and proposals have no relevance to the broader disciplinary concerns of linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language and humour studies. We would, however, prefer to postpone comment on these points of relevance and dialogue until the discussion section (section 5) and begin instead with a semantic-lexicographical starting point.
We will start then by sampling what some leading scholars and dictionaries have had to say about the meaning of the English word sarcasm. The entries in Table 1 are representative. Haiman (1998) and Attardo (2000) are well known scholars in the field.2 The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Websterâs Dictionary, Longman, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary are major dictionaries.
A sample of scholarly and dictionary definitions of sarcasm
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Examining the definitions given in Table 1, one may see that they display many of the usual failings of non-systematic lexicography, such as complex defining vocabulary (âironyâ, âaggressionâ, âmockeryâ, etc.) and the frequent use of disjunction and hedges (âorâ, âoftenâ, âespeciallyâ) (Wierzbicka, 1996: Ch 9; Goddard, 2017a). Disregarding these issues for the moment, we would note that the sources in Table 1 emphasise two things: first, that sarcasm is negative (âaggressiveâ, âharshâ, âunkindâ, âdesigned to cut or give painâ, etc.); and second, that it is or can be obvious (âovertâ, âwith clearer markersâ, âto show that you are annoyedâ, etc.).
Looking ahead, we are going to argue that in ordinary usage this tells only half the story. The English words sarcasm/sarcastic, we will argue, now each have two distinct meanings: in addition to the traditional âaggressive+obviousâ meaning (sarcasm1/sarcastic1), there is a more recent meaning (sarcasm2/ sarcastic2) which is not aggressive in intent and is not necessarily obvious.3 In Danish, we can observe something similar: there is a traditional meaning sarkasme/sarkastisk âsarcasm1/sarcastic1â and a humorous expansion sarkastisk humor âsarcastic humourâ. We aim to explicate these meanings to a higher standard of accuracy and clarity than that offered by conventional definitions, such as those given in Table 1.
To this end we will employ a highly systematic method of lexical semantic description, known as the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach (Wierzbicka, 1996; Goddard and Wierzbicka, 2014; Goddard, 2018a).4 It is not necessary here to give a full account of the NSM theory. The key point is that it depicts meanings using explanatory paraphrases (termed, explications) composed of simple, cross-translatable words. These can be either universal semantic primes or universal or near-universal semantic molecules. Semantic primes are words which can be regarded as representing elementary meanings: words which are so simple and clear that they cannot be explained (without circularity) by means of other words. Evidence suggests that semantic primes have equivalents in all or most languages. Semantic primes are listed in Table 2, in their English versions. Comparable tables are available for about 30 languages, including Danish; see [nsm-approach.net/resources].
Semantic molecules are other relatively basic words, themselves definable in terms of semantic primes, which function alongside primes as basic building blocks of meaning. Examples include âsunâ, âwaterâ, âheadâ, âeyesâ and âchildrenâ. Some semantic molecules may be universal or near-universal, but many are not. In the explications presented in this study, only two semantic molecules are employed: âvoiceâ and âlaughâ. They are marked with [m] to distinguish them from semantic primes.
The small size of the defining language forces a very fine-grained resolution of meaning, and because NSM explications are cross-translatable they are able to make language-specific meanings accessible to speakers of other languages.5
Semantic primes, English exponents (after Goddard and Wierzbicka 2014)
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
2 English Sarcasm1 and Sarcastic1
We now proceed to make the case that there are two distinct meanings of the English words sarcasm and sarcastic, starting with the older and better established meaning.
Examples (1a) - (1c) can serve, in our opinion, as stereotypical exemplars of everyday interpersonal sarcasm1 in Anglo English. Even in written form, without prosody, their most plausible interpretations are sarcastic1.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
The examples in (2a) â (2d) show four kinds of sarcasm1-related phraseology, based primarily on data from WordBanks Online. In the phrases in (2a), the adjective sarcastic is used to modify a noun denoting an act of speaking, while in (2b) and (2c) it modifies the speakerâs voice or facial expression. The expressions in (2d) are common collocations with the noun sarcasm1.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
On the evidence reviewed so far, including the definitions listed in Table 1, four observations can be made. (i) Sarcastic1 comments are ostensibly positive, often extremely so. (Note, for instance, the use of love in (1a), and intensifier so combined with positive evaluators in (1b) and (1c).) (ii) Although a sarcastic1 utterance need not be literally about the addressee, there is an apparent intention to âwoundâ, âstingâ or âcutâ the addressee. (iii) All this is, or, at least, can be, obvious from the speakerâs tone of voice. (iv) Less obvious on collocational evidence, but clear enough, we believe, from an intuitive point of view, the sarcastic1 speaker seems able to get some gratification out of it.
These observations can be captured in the semantic explication presented in [A]. This depicts what one may term the âsarcasm1 scenarioâ.6 For convenience, it is broken into four sections, labelled (a) â (d). Section (a) depicts the apparently positive nature of the speakerâs dictum. Section (b) spells out that it is obvious from the speakerâs voice that the speaker does not truly think positively about the person or topic in question, but actually âthinks something bad about itâ. Section (c) sets out the prototypical illocutionary intention, namely the intention to express, non-verbally, a certain, rather complex, message whose content is portrayed in the four indented subcomponents. Notice that the final line of this section is overtly âhostileâ; i.e., part of the implied message is âI want you to feel something bad when I say this to youâ. Section (d) states that âwhen someone says something in this way, they can feel something good because of itâ, i.e., a sarcastic remark can be potentially gratifying to the speaker.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Readers may be surprised at the length of explication [A], but it is a natural consequence of the requirement that the whole thing be stated using only simple, cross-translatable words.
3 English Sarcasm2 and Sarcastic2
As anticipated above, there is clear evidence, from a lexicographic point of view, that the English words sarcastic and sarcasm also have a second meaning, which presumably is more recent than the âtraditionalâ sarcastic1 meaning explicated in section 2. Briefly and informally, the differences include the following: (i) A sarcastic2 statement is usually ostensibly negative (not positive as with sarcastic1). (ii) It is not said with the intention to hurt anyoneâs feelings but with the intention of being âamusingâ. (iii) It is not associated with any audible âtone of voiceâ. Remarkably, it seems that most dictionaries of English, with the exception of the Britannica Dictionary, have not yet detected this meaning. Among scholarly studies, Dress et al. (2008: 81â82) may have come closest, albeit they interpret the difference as one of usage rather than meaning (cf. Taylor, 2017: 212).
The existence of the sarcastic2 meaning is particularly obvious in the expression just being sarcastic (179,000 google search hits, 20â05â2023), which would not make much sense on the traditional sarcastic1 meaning, firstly, on account of the âminimisingâ word just, and also because the expression clearly implies that the speaker âdoesnât mean itâ.
Here are some helpful textual examples of this use of sarcastic2, selected from online sources.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
The most salient feature of being sarcastic2 is not that one is being negative, as with sarcastic1, but rather that one is ânot seriousâ or âjust kiddingâ7; that is, sarcastic2 is often associated with humour or with attempted humour. The apparent or ostensive intention may be to get a laugh or to raise a smile, to impress the listener with oneâs irreverence, or merely to be facetious. Sarcastic2 is found in the following collocations, which would be incompatible with the traditional sarcastic1.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Example (7) gives another example of sarcastic2 being used as a metalinguistic comment. The speaker is a magazine feature writer (Safran, 2015: 20), who is reporting on his interview with Musa, a young Muslim radical. The interviewer has asked Musa whether he thinks adulterers should be stoned to death.8
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
The meaning of âbeing sarcastic2â can be stated as in [B], using the same format as [A] above. Sections (a) and (b) say that the utterance is overtly negative about something, but that this does not reflect the speakerâs true attitude. The components in section (c) depict the speakerâs apparent or purported motivation, which, roughly speaking, amounts to the desire to say something unexpected which will momentarily puzzle the addressee in order to get a brief âamusedâ reaction, i.e., so that someone can âfeel something good for a short time like people often feel when they want to laughâ (Goddard 2017b).9 Unlike as in the âsarcasm1 scenarioâ, there is no implied message. Finally, as with sarcasm1, the speaker him or herself can potentially extract some good feeling from speaking in this fashion, section (d).
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
It is worth noting a fine detail of the second component of section (c): âwhen I say this, this someone wonât know why I say it, a moment later they can know itâ (emphasis added). The phrasing (with âcanâ) allows for the possibility of misunderstanding and the evident risk that the overtly negative statement will incur a bad feeling. This is consistent with online discourse about the danger of sarcasm2 being misunderstood.
Insight into the sarcastic2 meaning is provided by online discussions in which people debate how best to signal that they are just being sarcastic2 using emojis or emoticons. There is ambivalence in the iconography of the emojis, but it is notable that some of them use a smile, such as the ð Upside Down Face, which consists of yellow smiley turned upside down, and the ð Smirking Face. One may presume that, iconically, the smile stands for the implied good feelings. The text-based emoticons :S and /S, said to be popular on Reddit, are sometimes explained as representing a âjoking smileâ. One online source (from 2013) explained as follows: âThe âSâ represents a joking smile and may also be short for âsarcasticâ. It is used to express sarcasm and may be used after a sarcastic or joking comment that should not be taken seriouslyâ [https://pc.net/emoticons/smiley/sarcastic].
How the new meaning sarcastic2 arose must await further study, but we conjecture that the locus of the semantic innovation was the adjective sarcastic, rather than the noun sarcasm. It is known that agnate words from different parts of speech may be differently susceptible to semantic change. Wierzbicka (2011, 2014) shows that the noun happiness is more semantically conservative than its corresponding adjective happy. Similarly, the abstract noun friendship is more semantically conservative than the social category noun friend (cf. Wierzbicka, 1997: 35â55). Our hypothesis is that the semantic shift started with the adjective, i.e., that sarcastic developed a distinct meaning (sarcastic2) and that the noun then followed suit. It also seems likely to us that the innovation originated in America (perhaps, specifically, in the Northern dialects, cf. Dress et al. 2008), and then spread via mass media and internet.
In any case, there are indications that in the USA, sarcastic2 and sarcasm2 are now the âtrendingâ meanings in ordinary, non-scholarly discourse. For example, Dynelâs (2016a) study of the US TV series House found that of 16 metapragmatic evaluations based on the label âsarcasmâ, only 7 âshow any indication of ⦠being aimed to cause verbal harm or be offensive towards chosen hearerâ (p. 81). She comments: âEssentially, the emic label âsarcasmâ denotes even perfectly benign forms of the figure of irony, which carries no (intended or perceived) aggressionâ. (p. 84)
We return to the broader implications of our analysis in Section 5. To pave the way, we now provide a contrastive perspective with Danish, a language which is widely known for its âsarcasmâ (Lundquist, 2014, 2021).
4 Danish Sarkastisk Humor âSarcastic Humourâ
As in English, the Danish metapragmatic terms sarkasme âsarcasmâ and sarkastisk âsarcasticâ traditionally stand for an âaggressive+obviousâ category, but at the same time there are new developments which partly run parallel to those of English. In the following we first review the traditional category of sarkasme, before focusing on the âhumorousâ turn and the development of the metacategory sarkastisk humor âsarcastic humourâ.
In Danish pragmatics, sarkasme is dealt with as an âaggressiveâ category. The Danish pragmaticist Ole Togeby explains the distinction between ironi âironyâ and sarkasme âsarcasmâ as follows:
Forskellen paÌ ironi og sarkasme synes blot at være dette at ironien gaÌr efter bolden, mens sarkasmen gaÌr efter spilleren. Ved ironien er det tanken der udstilles og dementeres, mens det ved sarkasme er tankens ophav der kritiseres og haÌnes.
The difference between ironi and sarkasme is, seemingly just that ironi plays the ball, while sarkasme plays the man. In ironi it is the thought that is being exposed and refuted, while in sarkasme it is the source of the thought that is being criticized and mocked. (Togeby, 2013: 482)
In Togebyâs analyses, sarkasme is en hÃ¥n af adressaten âa mockery of the addresseeâ. What he says is fully in accord with the traditional sense, i.e., section (c), of our explication of English sarcasm1. Togebyâs second-order understanding appears to be in agreement with the first-order Danish concept. Consider, for instance, Danish interjections and speech routines. Something like âsarcastic empathyâ and âsarcastic admirationâ have special, dedicated interjections: NÃ¥aeeeh! sarcastically mimics the verbal consolation that a small child with a grazed knee would attract. Nøjjjj or navra can serve as tools for âsarcastic admirationâ. A range of other secondary interjections, especially flot! âbeautiful, excellentâ, dejligt! âlovely, niceâ, and lækkert! âdelicious, yummyâ are also common.
In terms of collocations, the Danish examples in (8a) â (8c), from the daTenTen20 corpus, are similar to those of English sarcastic1.10
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
So how does Danish compare to the newer developments in English? Danish does not seem to provide a match for the English sarcastic2 â at least not in absolute terms. For instance, there is no conventional phraselogical Danish equivalent of the English expression just being sarcastic11, and most of the other collocational patterns of English sarcastic2, given in (6a) and (6b), are either unavailable or infrequent in Danish. There is one striking exception, however: the expression sarkastisk humor, and the related phrase sarkastiske jokes âsarcastic jokes, quipsâ.
In terms of semantic innovations, then, the relevant comparison would seem to be between English sarcastic2 and the Danish sarkastisk humor concept. The fact that sarcastic2 is a lexical innovation (a new polysemic meaning) and sarkastisk humor is a phraseological innovation is interesting from a historical perspective, but synchronically the most significant point is that sarkastisk humor has a more transparent semantics: this concept is a fusion of the benign, pro-social concept of humor and the aggressive interpersonal concept of sarkasme.
Also significant is that the phraseme does not designate a type of sarcasm, but rather a type of humor (the fusion is sarkastisk humor âsarcastic humorâ, not *humoristisk sarkasme âhumoristic sarcasmâ). Sarkastisk humor suggests a new emic category in which sarkastisk speech is interpreted by default as being humorous by intent, and whereby sarkasme has become a flavour of humor. As with semantic fusions generally, however, the result is not simply the sum of the constituent parts, and this means that a separate semantic explication of sarkastisk humor is needed.
Understanding sarkastisk humor in its wider ethnopragmatic context, one has to take into account the general landscape of humour elaborations in Danish (Levisen 2018, 2019a). A large class of locally named humor types exist in the language, e.g., sort humor âblack humourâ (roughly, murky humour), plat humor âflat humourâ, fed humor âfat humourâ, skæv humor âcrooked humourâ, mørk humor âdark humourâ, tør humor âdry humourâ, syg humor âsick humourâ, more than a dozen others.12 These categories typify different local ways of laughing, and the integrated category of sarkastisk humor has developed within this general structuration. The many phraseological elaborations of humor bear witness to the keyness of humor âhumourâ in Danish linguaculture.
Let us take a look at the main features of sarkasktisk humor as an emic metapragmatic category, and as meaning-in-use. According to Danish phraseology, sarkastisk humor is something a person can âhaveâ, as in examples (9)-(10). This is similar to how humor is construed in general, cf. at have humor âhaving humorâ.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Those who have it can use this kind of humor to maintain pre-established socialities and relationships. Sarkastisk humor allows for playfully toying with aggressive themes but when packaged in âbenignâ humorous speech, this can create a positive sense of togetherness. Consider (11), an observed example. After a conflict with his students, a teacher uses sarkastisk humor with the overall intent of easing things up. Applying the key Danish sociality term hygge âpleasant togethernessâ to describe an unpleasant situation (Levisen, 2012: ch3), his sarkastisk humor intervention inserts a benign frame into the situation.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
The speech routines shown in (12a) and (12b) are clichéd interaction rituals between older male friends. (12a) is a sarkastisk humor greeting between friends who have not seen each other for a long time. (12b) is a sarkastisk humor question asked at a party where copious amounts of alcohol are being consumed. Playing with the potentially taboo themes of sudden death and alcoholism, the interactants assert the friendly bonds between them.
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
In the literature on humour in intercultural communication, examples of Danish sarkastisk humor often fall under the headline of âfailed humourâ. Consider a case from Lundquist (2014). It concerns a Frenchman who had moved to Denmark with his family in order to take up a new job but was having trouble learning Danish. A Danish colleague gave him the following advice:
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Not recognising the humorous intent, the French learner described the incident as âvery hurtfulâ. He elaborated that âit came up very coldly in a discussionâ, and âat a moment when I was trying desperately to learn Danishâ.
Another instructive example concerns the imbroglio over film director Lars von Trierâs âsympathy for Hitlerâ remarks in Cannes in 2011. We will discuss this in section 5, but for moment we just note that while most Danish commentators distanced themselves from his comments, there was often some side remark to the effect that this kind of âsarcastic humourâ would not be such an issue in Denmark.
Based on these observations, we explicate sarkastisk humor as in [C]. This explication has many components in common with explication [B] for English being sarcastic2, but it is not exactly the same. The main difference, as foreshadowed above, is that in sarkastisk humor the speakerâs negative utterance is framed from the onset in terms of the intention to elicit laughter, in accordance with the meaning of the Danish noun humor (Levisen, 2018a).
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
There are indications that sarkastisk humor is not as ingrained in the verbal culture of young Danish speakers as it is in that of the older generation. In a Danish comedy award show (Guldtuben, Sept. 2017), an established stand-up comedy artist Anders Matthesen was introducing the prizes given to young youtubers and social media stars. He was later accused of mobning âbullyingâ, and an (inter)generational crisis over sarkastisk humor broke out in Danish public discourse. Given its canonical status, it would be premature to claim that sarkastisk humor is under threat in the discourse of Danish teenagers, but there are other ethnopragmatic constraints working against it, which seek to minimise the potential problems with sarkastisk humor.
Emic evidence for this claim comes in the form of the concept dumsmart âstupid-smartâ, to which we now turn.
5 Danish Dumsmart âStupid-Smartâ
The word dumsmart âstupid-smartâ was coined by Queen Margrethe II in her New Yearâs speech to the nation in 1984. This was one of the most memorable and controversial of the speeches ever given by the monarch, and its message still resonates, along with the dumsmart concept. Examining critically the interaction between âold Danesâ (âus, the Danesâ) and ânew Danesâ (âthem, the migrantsâ), Queen Margrethe II chastised Danish verbal culture. This is what she said:
Så kommer vi med vores danske humor og små dumsmarte bemærkninger. Så møder vi dem med kølighed, og så er der ikke langt til chikane og grovere metoder. Det kan vi ikke være bekendt. Hvis vi ønsker, at de nye år skal blive bedre end det gamle, er her et godt sted at begynde.
Then we approach them with our Danish humour and small dumsmart remarks. And then we give them a chilly reception, and then there is not a long way to harassment and abusive methods. Thatâs not okay. If we wish for the new year to be better than the old one, this is the right place to begin.
The phrase smÃ¥ dumsmarte bemærkninger âsmall stupid-smart remarksâ and the word dumsmart âstupid-smartâ were quickly adopted into Danish discourses of humour; and especially in critiques of sarkastisk humor in the context of intercultural communication where, according to the Queen, the breakdown of the positive intent and culture of inclusivity turns into an excluding sociality of Danes against non-Danes. Dumsmart is an oxymoron, combining dum âstupid, dumb, sillyâ with smart âsmart, clever, shrewdâ. It was likely modelled in part on the pre-existing negative adjective dumstædig âstupid-stubbornâ. While we cannot know for sure whether the Queen intended to mainly criticize (failed) sarkastisk humor only, as opposed to other âstupidâ humor practices, it is worth noting that both dumsmart and sarkastisk co-occur with bemærkninger âremarksâ: sarkastiske bemærkninger âsarcastic remarksâ, dumsmarte bemærkninger âstupid-smart remarksâ.
Now let us go back to Lars von Trierâs notorious âI understand Hitlerâ comment, mentioned in section 4.13 While the international media tended to interpret the remarks as either downright âanti-Semiticâ, or alternatively as âfailed sarcasmâ, in Denmark the term dumsmart was applied. Below is a quiz from The Tabloid paper Ekstrabladet published after the incident, with the question and response options shown in (14).
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
On the one hand, dumsmart offers a critical take on von Trier. It judges him as somebody who was trying to say something clever, but failed and instead came across as arrogant and stupid because he neglected to carefully think through the context in which he was speaking. At the same time, it clearly places von Trierâs remark in a would-be humorous frame. By judging his remarks as dumsmart, the Danish newspaper offers its readers a âhumour critiqueâ, rather than a critique based on alleged racism or anti-Semitism.
[D] is a semantic explication for dumsmarte bemærkninger âstupid-smart remarksâ. Notice that the opening components position the concept against the backdrop of sarkastisk humor, as explicated in [C].
Citation: Contrastive Pragmatics 6, 2 (2025) ; 10.1163/26660393-bja10107
Explication [D] models the oxymoron between dum and smart in the contrast between (b) and (c). The smart âsmart, cleverâ part is in the mind of the speaker, as represented in (b). He or she wants to cause someone else to laugh and is confident in his or her own verbal cleverness (âI can think well, I say something like this wellâ). The reality, however, the speakerâs performance is dum, as set out in (c), because it induces bad feeling, fails to get a laugh and is disapproved of. Section (d) links the bad outcome with the speakerâs thoughtlessness.
6 Discussion and Concluding Remarks
The NSM technique of explanatory paraphrase into simple, cross-translatable words allows for different components of closely related meanings to be teased apart, both within a single language and across different languages, and this makes it a very servicable tool for contrastive metapragmatics. To briefly re-cap, we have seen that though most dictionaries and scholarly studies have not yet clearly recognised this fact, the English words sarcasm and sarcastic now each have two distinct meanings. Co-existing with the older âtraditionalâ meaning sarcasm1, which designates an ostensibly positive message delivered with an intended-to-be-obvious aggressive intent, there is a newer meaning sarcasm2, which designates an ostensibly negative message delivered non-seriously, with an implied humorous intent. Danish sarkasme and sarkastisk are closely aligned with English sarcasm1. Danish has innovated a new phrase sarkastisk humor, whose meaning overlaps with sarcasm2, but which explicitly belongs to the highly elaborated Danish domain of âhumour discourseâ. We now turn the wider implications these findings.
We first note the cautionary implications for linguistic pragmatics and for humour studies. In these fields, the word sarcasm is often used not only as a first-order term (i.e., as a word in ordinary non-technical English), but also as a second-order term (i.e., as a technical term), without clear recognition of the lexical polysemy of sarcasm (and sarcastic) in contemporary English. This lack of clarity, in our opinion, means that scholars often end up talking at cross-purposes with one another, and it also complicates the already fraught relationship between so-called first-order and second-order meanings; cf. Goddard (2018b).
Several scholars in pragmatics have called attention to these problems, most notably Taylor (2015, 2017). Critiquing Culpeperâs (1996, 2011) proposed equation âsarcasm = mock politenessâ (where âpolitenessâ is here the second-order sense), Taylor (2015: 127) comments:
[T]he equation of mock politeness with sarcasm/irony is problematic because the label of sarcasm is simultaneously too broad, because behaviors labelled as sarcastic do not always perform mock politeness, and too narrow because there are mock polite behaviours which would not be labelled as sarcastic in either the lay or academic/theoretic senses.
In the light of the present study, it seems apparent that one source of the mismatches to which Taylor refers is the fact that the word sarcastic actually has two distinct-but-related meanings in ordinary English (so-called âlay Englishâ). Likewise, when interpreting corpus evidence about the kinds of situated utterances which ordinary speakers describe as being sarcastic or as displaying sarcasm, one needs to be mindful that these words can be used with different lexical meanings, which may be unevenly distributed across geographical and sociolinguistic speech communities.
The problem is further multiplied if cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparisons are being attempted. The present study has detected small but significant differences even between two linguacultures as close to one another (so far as âsarcasmâ is concerned) as English and Danish. It is only to be expected that similar or greater differences will exist between English sarcasm and its cognates or dictionary equivalents in other languages; and indeed, this is the picture that emerges clearly from Taylorâs (2016, 2017) corpus-based investigations of the uses of first-order âsarcasmâ and âironyâ in British English and their translation equivalents (sarcastico, ironico) in Italian. We believe that lexical-semantic analysis, as demonstrated in the present paper, can make a highly constructive contribution to scholarly discourse about sarcasm and related phenomena in linguistic pragmatics.
This contribution can also be helpful, we would argue, to intersecting discourses in the philosophy of language, in which the nature of âironyâ and its relation to âsarcasmâ is a recurring theme. In our opinion, Dynelâs position (2016b) that the term âironyâ deserves to be preserved as a time-honoured technical concept â âa rhetorical figure known since ancient timesâ â has much to recommend it, notwithstanding that even technical understandings of the term can be clarified using paraphrase into simpler, cross-translatable terms. There seems to be little point, however, in trying to establish âsarcasmâ as a technical (second-order, theoretic) term. It seems far preferable to recognise it as a folk concept (Dynel, 2016b: 229) and at the same time to subject it, and its counterparts and nearest equivalents (if any) in other languages, to detailed lexical-semantic analysis. As Taylor (2017: 212) remarks, âit [sarcasm] is something which belongs to a community, and so it becomes crucial to know whose folk concept is being discussed in any studyâ.
Similar concerns apply to humour studies (Attardo, 2014; Bell, 2015; Ruiz-Gurillo, 2016), a vibrant interdisciplinary field which is already labouring under the burden of the Anglo origins of its constitutive term âhumourâ and the danger of slippage between first-order and second-order concepts that go by the same name. If there is to be any prospect of âde-Anglicisingâ humour studies, the research field needs to be re-framed in terms of, roughly speaking, âsocial laughterâ or âlaughing with other peopleâ (Goddard, 2018b, 2020; Goddard and Mullan, 2020), while at the same time paying renewed attention to local metapragmatic words and categories (Levisen, 2018, 2019a, 2019b; Arab, 2020).
To end on a positive note, we would like to commend lexical-semantic analysis as a crucial source of insight into emic metapragmatics and ethnopragmatics generally (Goddard, 2006; Goddard and Ye, 2015; Levisen and Waters, 2017). With appropriate methods of lexical-semantic analysis at hand, differences and shifts in meaning across different languages and within single languages cease to be problems to be overcome or hindrances to be worked around, but rather become windows into culturally-shaped assumptions and ways of thinking about speaking.
Acknowledgments
We thank two reviewers for their helpful comments on the manuscript. We are also grateful to Maite Taboada for helpful observations on sarcasm in English.
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Biographical Notes
Cliff Goddard is Professor of Linguistics at Griffith University, Australia. With Anna Wierzbicka, he is one of the leading proponents of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach. He has published widely in semantic theory and description, ethnopragmatics and language typology. His most recent book is the edited volume Minimal Languages in Action (2021, Palgrave Macmillan). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities.
Carsten Levisen is an Associate Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark, where he teaches Danish Studies and Global Humanities. His research is in sociocultural linguistics, broadly conceived, with semantics and pragmatics as areas of special interest. He is a co-p1 in the research projects âDanish in the Makingâ and âSustainable Linguisticsâ and an editor of two journals: Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies in Language.
We use the word âemicâ in what may be considered its ordinary meaning in contemporary English, as it appears in dictionaries such as Cambridge Dictionary or Merriam-Webster Dictionary, e.g. âstudying or describing a language or culture from the point of view of the people who use the language or live in the cultureâ. As such, it closely aligns with the concept of âinsider perspectiveâ. For a review of the history of âemicâ in linguistics and anthropology, see Mostowlansky and Rota (2020/2023).
Taylor (2016) provides a survey of over 50 scholarly papers on irony and sarcasm.
We have found one standard dictionary, the Britannica Dictionary, which mentions that sarcasm can be used not only to insult or show irritation, but âin order ⦠to be funnyâ. The Britannica also stands out in not mentioning anything about obviousness. https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/sarcasm [accessed 20-05-2023].
The bibliography of NSM publications is extensive. For a searchable database of publications, along with other information and resources, see [nsm-approach.net].
For ease of reading, portmanteau expressions are also allowed in explications, e.g., âoftenâ for âat many timesâ, âthey (pl)â for âthese peopleâ, âthey (sg)â for âthis someoneâ, âlaterâ for âafter thisâ.
This explication is partial in that it does not include the top-level components connected with the status of sarcasm as an âabstract nounâ. Essentially, these components capture the role of abstract nouns as reified discourse topics, cf. Goddard and Wierzbicka (2014: 205â222).
It would take us too far afield to delve into the exact semantics of the English word serious and the expression just kidding, but see Goddard (2009, 2017b).
Later re-printed in Safranâs (2018) book Depends What You Mean by Extremist.
Goddard (2017a) argues that this is a key semantic component of the English word amusing, as opposed to funny, which is hinged around a more direct reference to laughing (essentially, wanting to laugh, while feeling something good at the same time). We cannot pursue this matter further here, except to note that both words (amusing, funny) are semantically complex and lack precise equivalents across languages.
An interesting feature is that sarkastisk more often co-occurs with male names (e.g., Brian, John, Jesper, Lars, Søren, Peter) than with female names; and as well, the mentioned male names are typical of 40â60 year-olds.
There are only 217 occurrences of the sentence Jeg var bare sarkastisk âI was just being sarcasticâ on google.dk (May 2023), and some of these are from material translated from English.
English too has such expressions, e.g., dry humour, black humour, slapstick humour, gallows humour, but they are far fewer in number.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpUqpLh0iRw for the press conference, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Hp3qB2F9Q for follow-up interview and explanation.
