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Here’s a brief guide to understanding Trumpian sarcasm

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.
— Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

It all arises from a big misunderstanding as to the importance of the emphasis placed on words. Trumpian understanding differs from commonly accepted wisdom and that challenges us all to come to a better understanding of how sarcasm works. Our tutor in that exercise, as in so many things, has been the master of language and, coincidentally, the president of the United States-the trump.

Those of us who are slavishly wed to dictionary definitions are at a disadvantage when we are confronted by the trumpian use of language and discover that it is more sophisticated than the run of the mill usage to which we are accustomed. The most recent example is our failure to understand sarcasm as used by the trump. To the uninitiated, a group to which many of us belong, we thought that the endless procession of untruths flowing from the presidential mouth were misstatements of fact or simply lies. We now have been informed by their author that some of those seemingly false statements were not in fact misstatements of fact or lies, but examples of presidential sarcasm. Since many of us were accustomed to sarcasm being distinguished from factual statements by the inflection with which the words were delivered, the trump’s recent explanations have broadened our understanding of the genre. Continue reading.

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