Just my personal experiences, so take it with a grain of salt:
In the US and Australia, sarcasm generally has a very distinct tone of voice. I can identify sarcasm, jokes, etc. from tone of voice fairly well, even if I don’t know the speaker. In Britain, “dry” humor (where the tone and body language mimic a “serious” statement) is more common, but you can still usually identify it based on Adelene’s comment above if you know the culture well.
In both cases, the choice of words is still fairly distinct—there’s usually an emphasis on unreasonable confidence, and a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. There’s also often more repetition.
I wouldn’t have a clue about body language.
To try and give an example of the word choice differences:
“Woo, the Oxhorns are totally going to win tomorrow!” <-- the “Woo” indicates enthusiasm, and confidence is only emphasized once (“totally”). This is probably a serious statement.
“Yes, the Oxhorns are TOTALLY going to win tomorrow. There’s NO way they could POSSIBLY lose” <-- “Yes” instead of “Woo” indicates more of a factual tone. The second sentence reiterates confidence. Note the emphasis on confidence words. This one is quite probably sarcasm.
Just my personal experiences, so take it with a grain of salt:
In the US and Australia, sarcasm generally has a very distinct tone of voice. I can identify sarcasm, jokes, etc. from tone of voice fairly well, even if I don’t know the speaker. In Britain, “dry” humor (where the tone and body language mimic a “serious” statement) is more common, but you can still usually identify it based on Adelene’s comment above if you know the culture well.
In both cases, the choice of words is still fairly distinct—there’s usually an emphasis on unreasonable confidence, and a pronounced lack of enthusiasm. There’s also often more repetition.
I wouldn’t have a clue about body language.
To try and give an example of the word choice differences:
“Woo, the Oxhorns are totally going to win tomorrow!” <-- the “Woo” indicates enthusiasm, and confidence is only emphasized once (“totally”). This is probably a serious statement.
“Yes, the Oxhorns are TOTALLY going to win tomorrow. There’s NO way they could POSSIBLY lose” <-- “Yes” instead of “Woo” indicates more of a factual tone. The second sentence reiterates confidence. Note the emphasis on confidence words. This one is quite probably sarcasm.