Quotation
The first “universal” signal of
sarcasm that Haiman (1990: 118–192, 1998: 45–53) identifies consists of “formal
indices of direct quotation or repetition” (cf. Bowes and Katz 2012: 220). In
contemporary English-speaking sarcasm, quotation marks have become so codified
a means of communicating the message “these are not my words, I do not mean
them” that it is common even to use an approximate hand gesture to punctuate
our spoken sarcasm. Other ways of indicating direct quotation are also typical
cues of sarcastic intent, everything from “so-called” to that exceptionally
versatile linguistic marker stereotypical of certain sorts of teenagers: like
(see Haiman 1990: 188–192).
Despite a complete lack of
written punctuation, or even spaces between words for that matter, ancient
Greek still has several means at its disposal for indicating direct quotation.
Various conjunctions, particles and uses of verbs of speaking, for example. One
might reasonably hypothesize that direct quotation would therefore remain an
important means of cuing sarcasm in ancient Greek, though in different forms
more idiomatic to the language. This, however, is not the case.
Of the hundreds of instances
surveyed, there is a very limited body of examples—only 3% of the total—that
employ some form of direct quotation to indicate sarcasm. In such cases a verb
of speaking is employed as a passive participle (e.g. legomenos in
Greek, meaning literally ‘being said’ or ‘being called’) to indicate that the
following words should not be thought of as the speaker’s own. The New
Testament furnishes us with our clearest example here. In First Corinthians 8,
the apostle Paul, after stating that there is only one God, ironically concedes
to his polytheistic milieu that there are “indeed many so-called ‘gods’”
(λεγόμενοι θεοὶ [legomenoi theoi], 1 Cor 8:5).
With indicators of direct
quotation present but relatively unimportant as markers of sarcasm in the
ancient texts surveyed, it is worth asking whether there are any other signals
stepping in to make up the ground that we so often cover with quotation. Here
we find that Greek has two other means of closing this linguistic gap: one a
close relative of quotation, and another quite distinct. (Matthew Pawlak, “How
to Be Sarcastic in Greek: Typical Means of Signaling Sarcasm in the New Testament
and Lucian,” HUMOR 32, no. 4 [August 27, 2019]: 548-49)
