How a ban on sarcasm is a protection of free speech

Sarcasm systematically erodes the truth value of statements. Of what use is the freedom to speak your mind if you never do speak your mind, or the words you use to speak your mind have no truth value?

September 10, 2016 06:47 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 02:02 pm IST

This is a blog post from

You may dislike his penchant for guffawing away at the sight of ballistic missiles cleaving through the air. You may dislike the possum that died a premature fake death on his scalp. In fact, there are several things to dislike about him. But somewhere at the core of >Kim Jong-un’s Orwellian move to ban sarcasm in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the country’s name itself is an homage to irony), is a lesson.

You see, a diktat like Jong-un’s indicates a wariness of the danger inherent in sarcasm, and its power to distort language, meaning and, therefore, truth. It actually reveals a desire to preserve and protect the sanctity of semantics. And while a ban is excessive, we should all be equally wary of sarcasm if, ironically, we want to protect freedom of speech.

Fair warning, the rest of this will be insufferably sermonical and pedantic. Or not.

Sarcasm is fun and empowering. It comes, however, with a swift and fulfilling moral payoff that, in the long-run, degrades the semantic integrity of language.

If you asked someone like Aristotle, he’d tell you that “meaning is a relationship between two sorts of things: signs and the kinds of things they mean (intend, express or signify).” In any sentence, or linguistic expression, there is a ‘referent’ (the thing being referred to) and ‘references’ (the symbols and words being used to construct a verbal image). In any sincere sentence, the sum of all references leads to the referent. In a sarcastic sentence — interestingly, as in the case of a lie — the sum of all references leads away from the referent.

No one likes to be lied to. Least of all, almighty dictators who cannot afford to allow an iota of dissent to blossom in their fiefdom. There is an anxious individual with a bad haircut in all of us, who expects that the words they exchange with their fellow humans will be sincere and represent the truth. When you sunder the literal and intended meanings of an utterance from one another, the eventual upshot will be to alienate truth from the symbols we use to represent it. Or, at any rate, devalue them so much that they are reduced to desiccated meaningless husks. This could be hard to accept or fathom if you’re a big fan of sarcasm.

Sarcasm has a power. The power that comes from handing someone a gift-wrapped box containing a bomb. The sarcast earns your trust, and then promptly proceeds to stab the social contract in the back. The power comes from, as Machiavelli posited, keeping one’s enemies guessing, unsure of your motives. All sarcasts are dealers in Trojan Horses.

Sarcasm , I hear you shriek out in its defence, is not that hard to detect; just listen for inflections in the voice . Ah, but true sarcasm is that which is utterly poker-voiced. No chinks. No cadential clues.

If sarcasm is deployed as a desperate backs-to-the-wall retort to an intolerably outrageous situation, it might deserve some sympathy. But the scariest thing is, sarcasm — because of its inherent power — is often used by fully well-adjusted individuals simply for a laugh, mischief or — worse — to gain social superiority. According to John Haiman, author of Talk is Cheap: Sarcasm, Alienation and the Evolution of Language, people use sarcasm to distance themselves in a bid for superiority: “If you’re sincere all the time, you seem naive.”

Sarcasm and segregation

In a world suffused with sarcasm, you really have to be in with the gang. If you want to understand the true import of a sarcastic comment, you need to have prior knowledge of the stance of the person uttering it. If you aren't aware of their intentions and affiliations, there is a strong chance that you will be led down a false path if you take their comment at face value. Sarcasm is one surefire way, therefore, to weed out members who aren’t savvy with the gang’s idiosyncrasies and don’t belong. It’s possible that sarcasm’s popularity among young people has to do with this exclusivism; it helps keep the pesky adults confused, and out of their lives and conversations.

In a world suffused with sarcasm, you are forced to constantly keep your guard up and approach every event and person with a mistrustful mindset. After all, if someone says to you, “I’m so glad you’re in my life”, and then proceeds to slap you away as you go in for a hug, you’re bound to be confused, hurt, and develop chronic distrust. The word ‘sarcasm’ comes from the Greek verb ‘sarkázein’, meaning ‘to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer’. Clearly, sarcasm comes from the warm and fuzzy milk of human kindness. Not.

The sarcasm alibi

Sarcasm also offers obfuscators a tool of brazen negation — a convenient and often unassailable alibi that absolves them of the repercussions of having made an outrageous statement. Take Donald Trump, his recent assertion that Barack Obama was “the founder of ISIS”, and the subsequent backtrack claiming he was being sarcastic. A world in which the sarcasm exemption exists is a world where no one can ever be held accountable for the abuse of free speech.

Do you see the unhealthy effects of sarcasm? It causes an isolationist dictator to fear that his subjects are circulating devious camouflaged narratives. After all, how is an isolationist dictator supposed to run his country if he can’t understand if his countrymen respect him or ‘respect’ him?

Victorian-era philosopher Thomas Carlyle held that “Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.” Even if we consider kindly that sarcasm is, as Fyodor Dostoevsky put it, “the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded”, we are only rationalising semantic violence as a justifiable reciprocation for moral tyranny; sure, the tyrant is to blame for instigating the retaliation, but the sarcastic douchebag is still as guilty of delivering truthful meaning-making a slap in the face. You do feel sad for the victim, but it doesn’t change how mustard tastes, does it?

Sarcasm is fun and empowering. It comes, however, with a swift and fulfilling moral payoff that, in the long-run, degrades the semantic integrity of language.

Like the opiate effect of the nicotine that caresses your neurons before corroding your lungs. Like the allure of the sirens in Greek mythology that cajole seafarers into their devouring maws. Or the pseudo-rewarding carrot that entices you to embrace enslavement before the stick is unsheathed.

Of course, this is not to say that sarcasm is evil, or that we should do away with it. Because it isn’t, and we can’t. It just helps to be more aware of the mechanics of meaning and communication, of which sarcasm is a part, so that we know whom to blame when one day every word eventually loses all meaning.

Because, it doesn’t matter that speech is free if it literally has no truth value.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.