The rules of sarcasm.

A while ago I heard an acquaintance I'll call Dave tell a group that he and his wife have an agreement -- they never use sarcasm on each other. Calling it the anger of cowards, he said it was one of a few little rules that makes their marriage work. 

I thought that was a pretty good idea. I wouldn't ever advise a married couple to come up with a list of a hundred-odd rules they each MUST follow, but a couple of simple ones to keep the peace can certainly help. That didn't seem too onerous. 

I asked a mutual friend about it, a guy who's been married longer than either Dave or I have been, and he assured me that without sarcasm it "would be like everyone had taken a fucking vow of silence" in his house. 

Sarcasm is a kind of irony, a means of saying the opposite of what you're actually saying. That's why it's so mean. The word sarcasm itself is interesting, as Dave also pointed out. For a mode of expression so well known and so long used, its origin is a bit mysterious. Here's what Merriam-Webster has to say:

earlier sarcasmus, borrowed from Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French sarcasme, borrowed from Late Latin sarcasmos "mockery," borrowed from Late Greek sarkasmós, from Greek sarkázein "to jeer at while biting the lips" (in GALEN; perhaps, if the original sense was "to bite or strip off flesh," derivative of sark-, sárx "flesh") + -smos, suffix of verbal action — more at SARCO-

NOTE: The original sense of the Greek verb sarkázein is conjectural, as all instances referring to jeering or mockery come from late or post-classical sources, generally lexica. The sole significant early uses are in Aristophanes' play Peace, where the Megarians, while pulling boulders from the entrance to a cave, are described as performing the action of the verb sarkázein "like mean (?) curs," while perishing from hunger ("hoi Megarês … hélkousin d' hómōs glischrótata sarkázontes hṓsper kynídia"); and in the Hippocratic treatise "On Joints" (Perì Arthrôn), where the verb is used to describe hoofed animals eating grass. In both cases the interpretation of sarkázein is far from transparent.

"To bite or strip off flesh" -- ouch! That certainly shows the cruel edge to the concept. 

My wife and I don't usually get involved in trading sarcastic barbs with each other, and when we do, she is entirely to blame. No, that's not true, but as she was a female teenager at one time, she's a past master at the art form. However, when sarcasm does pop up, regardless of who unleashes it, it doesn't last long -- because a regular fight breaks out quickly. 

Of course, I would never be sarcastic in any way on this blog. I'm always sincere when I compliment someone, and wouldn't dream of using snark to torpedo a target, no matter how worthy. I'm just a regular living saint, am I.

Chatty appliances.

The other day my wife was downstairs and was sure she heard me grumbling in the next room, but I was not even in the house. I was outside with the dog. This was the complainer she heard:

It's funny in part because there would have been no question had this been our old dishwasher, the one that came with the house. That thing was so loud you had to raise your voice to be heard over it. The one we got later, the Bosch, is quiet, but you can just hear it from the next room. And what you hear, I guess, can sound like someone grumbling in the kitchen.

Certainly I can be heard grumbling, mumbling, bitching, and moaning at almost any hour of the day. It's what I do. I observe life, observe my condition, observe my own reactions to it, and utter low sentences for my own complaint or amusement or clarification. I'm the star of my own low-talking show. I'm often asked what I was saying, when what I was saying was not intended for anyone else's ears. 

Mumbling for comic effect probably only came to prominence after the invention of the microphone. Mumbling on stage would be difficult for an audience to follow. In older plays, a character might make asides to the audience to show what he or she is thinking, but those were usually comic or at least pithy observations, not the endless grumble of a muttering character. One of the first comedic mumblers I know of was a Peter Sellers Goon Show character, Willium "Mate" Cobblers, who could even be heard complaining in a low tone while other characters were supposed to be the ones speaking. 

Having determined that it was the dishwasher that was talking, I had to supply its dialogue. 

"Washin' the same damn bowl every day... You got just one cereal bowl, cheapskates?... Every day I gotta do the dog bowls and he never says nuthin'.... Thankless job.... Hate the way them forks poke me in the side when the water goes around.... Y'all usin' that cheap-ass basic Finish instead of the deluxe stuff.... I know what the mannufacterer said but he don' know nuthin'.... Take theses doggone plates and stuff 'em, that's what you can do...."

Of course, I hope the dishwasher is not that much of a malcontent. Goodness knows we rely on it heavily, and that only the air conditioner comes close to its place as a beloved fixture of the home. We lived without one for years, and we're not doing that again. 

Axcents.

As you may know, I grew up within the friendly confines of the Five Boroughs, raised by parents who had grown up in Brooklyn and Queens. My father was a real dese-and-dose guy, possessor of a classic accent most associated with New York. A friend of mine had fun with the meme generator regarding the way we speak:

The last one's an expression rather than an accent, but ask anyone who grew up before 2000 in the city what they call ground beef and you're likely to be told chop meat.

The New York accent has spread to New Jersey, counties of the lower Hudson Valley, and a good ways out into Long Island, as the blue-collar population moved to the 'burbs in fits and starts in the postwar era. But what we think of as the New York City accent is much different from what people in the Civil War period considered a New York accent. I don't know much about it, but some examples of now-extinct northern American speech are detailed here.  

What people consider a street-level New York accent was spread and has been perpetuated by the movies. Wise-crackin' cabbies, surly cops, gum-chewin' secretaries, tough private eyes, all kinds of New York City working stiffs populated the pictures, and America loved 'em. 

Curious accentologists will find a good summary at a Wikipedia page, believe it or not. It notes that some of the classic features formerly associated with the New York accent, like goil for girl, are extinct in practice. I suspect that the spread of Italian Brooklyn accents in New York wiped that out, making the New Yorker sound less like Moe and Curly ("a woise guy, eh?") and more like Vinnie Barbarino ("Whussup?"). 

Obviously the city has been crisscrossed with different ethnicities and languages and foreign accents over the centuries, making an ever-changing mélange. I wouldn't want to be a professor of this stuff, because by the time you catalog it, it's different. O. Henry wrote of New York, "It'll be a great place if they ever finish it," but that will never happen any more than the accent will stay put.