British humour, especially northern humour uses sarcasm to quite a large degree. It's all to do with being able to laugh at ourselves and each other without taking offense.
Not only is sarcasm not the lowest form of wit, but scientific proof has emerged in the past few years that understanding sarcasm requires social intelligence lacking in people who've suffered damage to a section of the right brain known as the parahippocampal gyrus. Using videotaped exchanges and MRIs of the brain, Katherine P. Rankin, a neuropsychologist and assistant professor in the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, conducted an Awareness of Social Inference Test to measure the brain reactions of people responding to words that are straightforward on paper but delivered sarcastically. She found that people suffering from a progressive brain disease known as semantic dementia failed to perceive sarcasm.
After presenting her findings at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in 2008, The New York Times reports, Dr. Rankin was asked if a difference in brain areas could explain the inability of people with intact brains to detect sarcasm. "We all have strengths and weaknesses in our cognitive abilities, including our ability to detect social cues," Rankin said. There was no indication of whether people with semantic dementia were able to understand puns.
Seems like I'm not the only one confused about this.
"I have always been hearing people say that now Canada is bigger than Russia in terms of land size after the USSR broke up...
But from the latest statistics on Encarta and Infoplease.com Russia is still bigger.
If so, what is the discrepancy between the two varying comparisons? Is there a little something that they are comparing differently that may end up in different rankings?"
LARGEST COUNTRIES1 (in sq mi)*: 2002 1. Russia 6,592,735 2. Canada 3,851,788
bodleing Forum Posts (13,810)
RE: Sarcastic comments.. what do u think is the cause ?
Well it is the sarcasm thread.Otherwise I would never dream of being sarcastic.