"I am the great and powerful Sarcastro!"

I was listening to BBC World Service this morning (back from their 24-hour strike) and they had an item about why some people understand sarcasm, and other people don't. It was an Israeli study proving that persons with prefrontal brain damage have greater trouble recognizing sarcasm, something which I always assumed would probably be true anyways. But then the BBC anchor interviewed an American psychology professor on why Americans don't "get" sarcasm: they kept making the claim that while sarcasm is widely used in Britain and Ireland, Americans have a fair amount of trouble understanding it. The assertion was that while a greater awareness of sarcasm exists in American urban areas, the more rural the population is, the less likely that they will recognize sarcasm. The association of these people to persons with brain damage was never explicity stated, but you could tell that the BBC guy was thinking it.

Now, I do not understand this. Sarcasm has always been one of my two sources of humor (the other [and the mode of humor I enjoy the most, especially as I get older] being goofiness), and sarcasm seems to be my lingua familia. And certainly, irony, which is related to sarcasm, is evident throughout the culture, something which I occasionally find exhausting: sometimes I just want people to say what they mean, and allow themselves to become emotionally vulnerable for once. Just as long as I don't have to do it myself.

At the same time, my mother, who grew up in rural Indiana, does in fact have significant trouble determining whether I am being sarcastic or not. Like she'll call and ask if everything is all right, and I'll respond that one of the dogs spontaneously combusted, caught her curtains on fire, and that the house is now a glowing pile of cinders. Her response is invariably a very credulous, "Really??" She is not a stupid woman, and has a couple of degrees, but I have rarely come up with a response too outlandish for her not to believe, however briefly. Occasionally I suspect that she may just play along with my teasing, but more often than not, she seems to take what I say at face value.

They did say that in the U.S., sarcasm is seen as a more aggresive form of humor than it is in the U.K. I agree that this is probably true. They did not speculate, as I would have, that this is because it is the form of humor most associated with cranky adolescents.