Do You Use Sarcasm in E-mails?

Many of us use sarcasm in everyday communication for a variety of reasons. For example, it can allow one to save face, blunt a rude comment, and many other possibilities (see, for example, Jorgensen, 1996). Whatever the reasons, most of us seem to understand what sarcasm is and some of us use it liberally. However, the point of this post is not to understand why we use sarcasm, but rather to talk about the possible consequences of using sarcasm in e-mail and text messages.

In general, using sarcasm in any situation is risky as we are essentially using contrary words to convey a meaning. For example, someone exclaiming “what a great day for a walk” when faced with going outside in rainy weather is a classic instance of sarcasm. However, when given limited context, someone might actually believe that you mean it if, for example, they like walking in the rain themselves. To better convey our meaning, we have a large number of markers of sarcasm available to us, many of which are documented in Attardo (2000). These include acoustic (e.g., nasalization, intonation, etc.), typographical (e.g., “sic”, “!”, etc.) and kinesic (e.g., winks, nudges, etc.) means to convey sarcasm. However, an interesting point raised by Attardo (2000) is that sarcasm is difficult to convey in written form when compared to the spoken form. This is a puzzling statement when considered from the perspective that much of sarcasm perception research relies on written material (Voyer, Thibodeau, and Delong, 2014). However, research with written material also typically provides a strong context, which would likely contribute to the accuracy of perception in such experiments (Voyer et al., 2014). In contrast, audio or audio-visual studies of sarcasm would have the additional benefit of non-verbal cues such as tone of voice (Rockwell, 2000; Voyer & Techentin, 2010).

Knowing the importance of context, it is not surprising that conveying sarcasm in e-mail poses extra difficulties that can only get worse in a short text sent by phone. Part of these difficulties might arise from what the direct access model of sarcasm perception presents as the need for a common ground or context for clear communication of sarcasm (Gibbs, 1994). Essentially, we might fall into the trap of believing that the receiver of our message shares the same context as us. If it is not true, then our sarcasm intent is lost. In a very interesting study, Kruger, Epley, Parker, and Ng (2005) suggested that this is most likely the case. Essentially, these researchers first conducted two experiments showing that their participants were overconfident in their ability to convey sarcasm by e-mail as their sarcasm was not recognized by the receiver as well as they expected. These findings were extended to anger and sadness in a third experiment. In the last two experiments of their series, Kruger et al. showed that participants make the egocentric assumption that the receivers know that they are trying to convey sarcasm. As a result, the senders falsely expect that the person receiving their message knows their sarcastic communicative intentions. In one experiment, this was achieved by essentially making participants aware (or priming) of the possibility of a non-sarcastic interpretation of their meaning. This reduced the participants’ confidence in their ability to convey sarcasm to the point that it matched the actual accuracy of the receiver. Experiment 5 used a similar approach and extended the results to the communication of humor.

What this kind of research tells us is that we should be careful about what we put in e-mails and text messages. We might think that we are clever and convey sarcasm or humor in our messages, but we are more likely to miss the mark and have to send an extra message that says “I guess you had to be there”. In fact, if you want to have a long productive life, you should avoid sarcasm in messages you send to strangers as you never know how they will react! (By the way, could you tell that I was trying to convey humor in this last statement?)

One way that some people believe that they can get away with conveying any emotion in e-mails is by using emoticons, these little smileys (or other emotions) faces you can scatter in your text. The issue with those is that not everybody can identify the emotion on the faces either and some of the faces are downright ambiguous. They are also seen by some as unprofessional (see this post as a counterpoint: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-weight-ing-game/201411/emoticon…). So, in the end you are stuck with ambiguity or lack of professionalism.

Here’s my advice: Keep your sarcasm for vocal communication and you will have much better interpersonal relationships all around! Even better: Avoid sarcasm at all time and say what you mean and everybody will understand you! Think about this one: Why do YOU use sarcasm?

References

Attardo, S. (2000). Irony markers and functions: towards a goal-oriented theory of irony and its processing. Rask, 12, 3–20.

Gibbs, R. W. (1994). Figurative thought and figurative language. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of Psycholinguistics (pp. 411–446). New York, NY: Academic.

Jorgensen, J. (1996). The functions of sarcastic irony in speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 26, 613–634.

Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z. W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 925-936.

Rockwell, P. (2000). Lower, slower, louder: Vocal cues of sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 483-495.

Voyer, D. & Techentin, C. (2010). Subjective acoustic features of sarcasm. Metaphor and Symbol, 25, 1-16.

Voyer, D., Thibodeau, S.-H., & Delong, B. J. (in press). Context, Contrast, and Tone of Voice in Auditory Sarcasm Perception. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. Online first publication. doi: 10.1007/s10936-014-9323-5