ERIC Number: EJ1020902
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0163-853X
EISSN: N/A
Distinguishing Sarcasm from Literal Language: Evidence from Books and Blogging
Kovaz, David; Kreuz, Roger J.; Riordan, Monica A.
Discourse Processes: A Multidisciplinary Journal, v50 n8 p598-615 2013
Sarcasm production and comprehension have been traditionally described in terms of pragmatic factors. Lexical cues have received less attention, but they may be important potential indicators. A major obstacle to examining such features is determining sarcastic intent. One solution is to analyze statements explicitly marked as being sarcastic. This study examined Twitter postings marked with #sarcasm as well as dialog from Google Books containing the phrase "said sarcastically." We used word counting and part-of-speech tagging to compare specific lexical features of the explicitly-marked sarcastic statements to statements by the same author not marked as sarcastic. Our results broadly support the Lexical Cues Hypothesis--certain word-level cues, such as interjections and positive affect terms, are stereotypic of sarcasm. A model incorporating these features performed comparably to human raters in making sarcastic versus nonsarcastic judgments. This finding shows promise for future work toward automatically identifying sarcasm in text.
Descriptors: Language Usage, Electronic Publishing, Phrase Structure, Negative Attitudes, Books, Discourse Analysis, Cues, Computer Mediated Communication, Stereotypes, Computational Linguistics, Comprehension, Accuracy, Language Processing, Regression (Statistics), Comparative Analysis, Pragmatics
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A