Another little question about sarcasm please.

[richuk]

Hey everyone! Just a quick question if anyone has any ideas please.

---Opinion:
"Hey we learnt a lot in that lesson - I definitely know about the pie charts now, hehe!"
---

Would you say that this opinion is sarcastic or not or is it impossible to tell from just that sentence alone (i.e. you would need to know more about the lesson, the person saying the comment, the tone of voice/how it is said, etc)?

Cheers guys, I really appreciate any help.

Rich.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hey everyone! Just a quick question if anyone has any ideas please.

---Opinion:
"Hey we learnt a lot in that lesson - I definitely know about the pie charts now, hehe!"
---

Would you say that this opinion is sarcastic or not or is it impossible to tell from just that sentence alone (i.e. you would need to know more about the lesson, the person saying the comment, the tone of voice/how it is said, etc)?

Cheers guys, I really appreciate any help.

Rich.

Personally, I would say that the inclusion of "hehe" (or "ha ha" in BrE) definitely suggests sarcasm. However, it is always much easier for native speakers to pick up on sarcasm. I don't think that more information about the lesson or the speaker would help, but certainly the tone of voice used (if spoken aloud) would make a huge difference in deciding if they were being sarcastic.

 

[MASM]

Hey everyone! Just a quick question if anyone has any ideas please.

---Opinion:
"Hey we learnt a lot in that lesson - I definitely know about the pie charts now, hehe!"
---

Would you say that this opinion is sarcastic or not or is it impossible to tell from just that sentence alone (i.e. you would need to know more about the lesson, the person saying the comment, the tone of voice/how it is said, etc)?

Cheers guys, I really appreciate any help.

Rich.

For me, the whole sentence would be sarcastic if they expected to learn about pie charts and the teacher didn't mention anything about it.
Or the speaker would be telling the truth because he/she learnt a lot.
I might need to hear the sentence, to distinguish the tone.
But I'm not a native speaker, so maybe I'm not of much help

 

[magimagicE]

"Hey we learnt a lot in that lesson - I definitely know about the pie charts now, hehe!"

I don't interpret this sentence as being sarcastic myself - it is ambiguous in tone at best.

The "hehe!" term, often used to denote mischief, intimates some prior event that we are not privvy to. It is the absence of this knowledge that leads me to the above conclusion.

Perhaps if the sentence was spoken with special emphasis on some of the words, then yes - as it is written, no.

If the speaker wanted to remove all ambiguity, then he/she should have used the more recognised "yeah, right" term to indicate sarcasm.

"Hey we learnt a lot in that lesson - I definitely know about the pie charts now... yeah, right."

 

[richuk]

Hey everyone that's really interesting, thank you.