A Functional Trade-off between Prosodic and Semantic Cues in Conveying Sarcasm
This research addresses the problem of understanding sarcasm communication for linguists and AI developers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing categorization of sarcasm types.
The study investigated how prosodic and semantic cues interact in conveying sarcasm, finding that prosodic cues are less relevant when semantic cues are strong, indicating a trade-off at the phrase level.
This study investigates the acoustic features of sarcasm and disentangles the interplay between the propensity of an utterance being used sarcastically and the presence of prosodic cues signaling sarcasm. Using a dataset of sarcastic utterances compiled from television shows, we analyze the prosodic features within utterances and key phrases belonging to three distinct sarcasm categories (embedded, propositional, and illocutionary), which vary in the degree of semantic cues present, and compare them to neutral expressions. Results show that in phrases where the sarcastic meaning is salient from the semantics, the prosodic cues are less relevant than when the sarcastic meaning is not evident from the semantics, suggesting a trade-off between prosodic and semantic cues of sarcasm at the phrase level. These findings highlight a lessened reliance on prosodic modulation in semantically dense sarcastic expressions and a nuanced interaction that shapes the communication of sarcastic intent.