Yan Luo

Although sarcasm is commonly used worldwide, little is known about the interpretation of sarcasm in intercultural communications. We conducted an experiment investigating the effect of common ground in intercultural communication by manipulating communicators’ cultural background, with high common ground communicators from the same culture and low common ground communicators from different cultures. Specifically, 201 UK participants and 201 Chinese participants read scenarios describing speakers and recipients from the UK or China. The target comment was either literal or sarcastic criticism. Participants rated the critical comment in terms of how sarcastic, aggressive, amusing, and polite they perceived it to be. Results showed that critical comments made between characters who had low common ground (i.e. UK speaker and Chinese recipient, Chinese speaker and UK recipient) were considered as being more aggressive than those with high common ground (i.e. UK speaker and UK recipient, Chinese speaker and Chinese recipient). Sarcastic criticism, specifically, was viewed as being less amusing when characters had low common ground compared to those with high common ground. The findings have implications for theories developed to explain the social functions of sarcasm, specifically, mutual knowledge shared between communicators plays an important role in sarcasm interpretation in intercultural communications.