as small as a world and as large as alone, Hi! I have a question about wizards and sarcasm. I...

11:22am July 12, 2014

firebreathing-bookworm asked: Hi! I have a question about wizards and sarcasm. I know that they can use snark just fine, but with the whole not lying because it might happen thing, does that mean that wizards don't use pure say-the-opposite-of-what-you-mean sarcasm? Or does the speech have some sort of tone of voice detection system?

dduane:

Well, something like, though in a more sophisticated sense.

Here’s how it goes. Since the Speech was invented for the purpose of transparently translating genuine intention into being, it cannot / will not allow itself to be used to purposefully deceive.

However, in sarcasm of the kind you’re discussing, there is generally no purpose to deceive. You mean the other person to understand clearly that when you say in the Speech “No, I want you to jump off that cliff and see what happens at the bottom”, the actual message is more along the lines of, “You’ve just suggested (in the concrete or the abstract) something really stupid: I’m going to substitute some suggestion equally stupid so the emphasis will make it even clearer how stupid the original idea was.” No deception was ever intended, and therefore there are no untoward side effects of the statement (such as the failure of the words to make it out of your mouth). In brief: the Speech can parse sarcasm and irony because it’s inside your head (in more modes than one) and knows what you mean.

Nonetheless, even when this is clearly understood, wizards will be cautious about how they frame such statements… even in their native “language of discourse”. This is because when you’re someone who routinely works with words in a language capable of directly manipulating the universe, the universe gets in the habit of paying attention / listening to you. It may therefore not wait to see what language you’re working in before it reacts. Which can make life interesting.

Anyway, hope that helps.

(PS: the jury is out on whether the Speech is itself sentient. “Babe, I might be,” would probably be Bobo’s response. But then Bobo is no stranger to snark either.)