Vocal Features of Conversational Sarcasm: A Comparison of Methods

This study investigated vocal cues that differentiate sarcastic utterances from non-sarcastic utterances. Utterances were drawn from videotapes of participant interviews and arranged on a master tape for analysis. Utterances that were identified as sarcastic by speakers and recognized as sarcastic by listeners were randomly arranged with utterances identified and recognized as non-sarcastic by the same participants. Both sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances were analyzed by two methods–acoustic analysis and perceptual coding. The acoustic analysis proved slightly more successful than the perceptual coding in discriminating between sarcastic and non-sarcastic utterances. The acoustic analysis indicated that fundamental frequency, frequency range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. The perceptual coding method revealed that pitch range, length of utterance, and total amount of sound significantly discriminated sarcastic from non-sarcastic utterances. Moderate correlations were found between the acoustic and perceptual variables.