Satire in the Global Village

The contemporary Global Village is Orwellian in nature with its degradation of political language and the emerging use of artificial intelligence to detect irony. Satire remains on the front lines in the battle of freedom of speech.

Satire in the Global Village

By Dan Geddes[1]

From the talk, “Satire in the Global Village” given at the Institute of General Semantics’ symposium on “Language and Reality” on October 3, 2015 at the Princeton Club in New York.

First published in Anekaant: A Journal of Polysemic Thought №5, 2016–17 (Spring)

Abstract

The techniques of general semantics can be well applied to the study of satire. The use of irony and satire leads to ambiguous or indeterminate meanings. While in earlier ages satire was intended mainly for one culture, in the Global Village there are fewer common social and linguistic norms to serve as a basis for interpretation within the global audience. The literary and cultural allusion common in satire is a form of time-binding and it assumes specific cultural knowledge in the audience. Genre boundaries and other conventions are less determined in an international context. The satirical mode can take any form. Satirists share many characteristics with General Semanticists, including skepticism toward generalizations…