2010 Occasional Papers on Learning and Teaching at UniSA – Paper 4
Nurturing international students’ abilities to
recognise sarcasm, hyperbole, and other types of nonliteral writing when researching in a second language:
observations and intentions
Dr Ben Kooyman
Lecturer, Learning Advice
Learning and Teaching Unit
University of South Australia
International students represent a significant portion of the student population in Australian
universities. The important role international students play in Australian tertiary education is
highlighted in 2008’s Review of Australian Higher Education:
our universities have built Australia’s third-largest export industry – in education services – in
the last two decades. A quarter of our higher education students are from other countries,
and they make an enormous contribution to our economy, our relationship with the region
and our demand for graduates (Bradley et al. 2008, p. xii).
But while internationalisation policies and practices have been widely implemented to attract
international students to Australia and assist their transition into Australian higher education, the
challenges of undertaking tertiary-level research in a second language – or indeed third, fourth, or
fifth language – remain many and varied.
The Australian Universities Quality Agency, in its Good Practice Principles for English Language
Proficiency for International Students in Australian Universities, defines English proficiency as ‘the
ability of students to use the English language to make and communicate meaning in spoken and
written contexts while completing their university studies’ (2008, p. 1). Two of the ten principles
dictate that ‘Development of English language proficiency is integrated with curriculum design,
assessment practices and course delivery through a variety of methods’, and that ‘Resourcing for
English language development is adequate to meet the students’ needs throughout their studies’
(p. 3). Opportunities for the development of English language proficiency are embedded by course
coordinators and program directors into their courses and programs, and teaching and learning
centres devoted to fostering language and study skills provide a range of workshops and resources
to assist international students in improving their reading and comprehension.
However, the challenges international students face in recognising and understanding non-literal
writing while undertaking research in a second language have been largely neglected. This paper
elaborates on this learning and teaching issue, and discusses some workshops that have been
delivered and learning materials currently in development to help address this issue.
I have worked in the Learning and Teaching Unit at the University of South Australia since March
2010. During my seven months’ employment as a Learning Adviser, the problems international
students face when it comes to recognising non-literal writing have been a matter of ongoing
reflection. By non-literal writing, I am referring to writing that is not transparent, denotative, or
literal, but is connotative, figurative, and employs figures of speech and rhetorical devices like
hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, innuendo et al. Many incidents in both group workshops and one-on-one
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2010 Occasional Papers on Learning and Teaching at UniSA – Paper 4
consultations have reinforced for me the importance of addressing this issue, and I will illustrate just
one example here.
In a workshop on paraphrasing delivered earlier this year – which had a large number of
international students in attendance – I set students the task of paraphrasing a short article by Nick
Broughall on recent South Australian legislation concerning the availability and advertising of films
with R classifications. The article opened with the line ‘Maybe all lazy parents should move to South
Australia, because the state government seems to want to do all your parenting for you’, and closed
with the line ‘it’s enough to guarantee that I’ll never move to South Australia’ (Broughall 2010). A
number of international students, though they did not experience difficulty understanding the more
literal, denotative content of the article, failed to recognise the ‘snark’ value of the first and final
lines: the opening line was interpreted literally as objective reporting and perhaps even a
recommendation – ‘lazy parents should move to South Australia’ – while the closing line was
similarly misinterpreted as a finite resolution – ‘I’ll never move to South Australia’.
This misunderstanding reinforces the value of developing materials to nurture the ability of
international students to recognise non-literal types of writing in English. While international
students are often equipped to understand denotative and literal writing in English, it can be harder
to identify innuendo and irony when reading in a second or subsequent language, not to mention
other modes of writing where there is an extra dimension to the phrasing, an alternate or additional
meaning which deviates from but remains inherent in the words on the page. Thus, while all
international students registered the literal surface meaning of Broughall’s statements, many had
difficulty identifying the underlying connotations. If sarcastic writing is read sincerely, or hyperbolic
writing is taken literally, this can lead to significant instances of misunderstanding. While there are
many verbal and vocal cues that can help listeners identify non-literal meaning in a spoken,
conversational context, equivalent cues and signals are often absent in written communication.
Certainly, there are ways of punctuating statements to draw attention to the non-literal meanings –
exclamation marks, scare quotes, italics, and even occasionally an anachronistic snark mark – but in
many cases authors choose not to include these signifiers, thus increasing the likelihood of
misinterpretation for readers who were brought up reading other languages.
These issues do not necessarily affect international students across all disciplines: for instance, I
wager that students undertaking research in the hard sciences are unlikely to come across sarcastic
or hyperbolic prose on a regular basis. However, for students undertaking courses in the Humanities
or Social Sciences, which often entail independent research using the popular press and mainstream
media in addition to more academically rigorous scholarship, it is important that they cultivate skills
to recognise hyperbole, sarcasm, irony, and other types of non-literal writing in English.
Furthermore, regardless of discipline, the ability of international students to identify non-literal
language has ramifications not just for their studies but for their integration into the global
community and workforce. After all, the University of South Australia’s sixth graduate quality
dictates that a graduate of the university ‘communicates effectively in professional practice and as a
member of the global community’ (Graduate Qualities 2010).
However, nurturing these skills poses various challenges. As mentioned above, the vocal cues and
physical gestures that can help both native and non-native English speakers identify non-literal
meanings in verbal communication are absent in written text. While tools like punctuation help
shape the way we receive the words, these signifiers are often absent. In recent months I have
begun developing materials and resources to educate international students on different types of
non-literal writing and provide guidelines for anticipating where they may encounter non-literal
writing. I am reluctant to suggest these materials and resources will ‘teach’ them to ‘identify’
connotative writing: as The Oxford Companion to the English Language notes, ‘Deciding where the
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literal ends and the figurative begins is notoriously difficult’ (McArthur 1992, p. 403), and I suspect
the ability to naturally and instinctively identify the non-literal is something best developed through
consistent reading of and exposure to different types of literature in English over time. However, by
exposing international students to examples of different types of non-literal writing, and by advising
them of the sorts of texts and contexts where they may potentially encounter non-literal writing, we
can help international students to develop ways of anticipating where they may find non-literal
language, so they will know where and when to scrutinise a text closely for alternate meanings. This
would, in turn, nurture and foster their ability to recognise non-literal language when undertaking
independent research. The resources and materials I am currently developing thus revolve around:
1) informing international students of the different types of non-literal writing they might encounter
and need to be aware of; 2) teaching international students to anticipate what sorts of texts and
authors deal primarily on the literal level of language and what sorts of texts and authors are likely
to employ non-literal language; and 3) teaching international students to generate sufficient context
for understanding these readings where necessary.
I have been fortunate to workshop some of the material I have developed across three workshops as
part of the Academic English Language Development Program. Two of these workshops were held in
late July, and were titled Critical Research Skills 1 and 2. The former workshop dealt with
distinguishing between reliable and unreliable research materials, and the latter workshop outlined
many of the emotive and rhetorical devices authors use to persuade and manipulate readers.
Considerations of various types of non-literal writing were embedded into both workshops. The third
workshop, held in late September, combined parts of the earlier workshops and was simply called
Critical Research Skills. I will now proceed to illustrate some of the content of these workshops in
order to clarify how we can prepare students for encounters with non-literal language and thus
gradually nurture their ability to anticipate and, ultimately, recognise this type of writing.
At the outset of the workshop(s), time was spent discussing standard ways of gauging the credibility
and legitimacy of a text in light of its author’s and publisher’s credentials, its genre, medium et al.
For instance, it is standard academic practice to prioritise .edu, .gov, and .org websites as sources of
information over .com websites and personal blogs, for the simple reason that the former sites
usually contain information that has undergone more rigorous, professional editorial processes than
the content posted on the latter sites, and harbour fewer vested interests. Similarly, when it comes
to referencing topical news stories in academic work, it is standard practice to consult ‘heavier’
broadsheets – newspapers like The Australian – over ‘lighter’ tabloid newspapers which emphasise
sport, celebrity, scandal and advertising. While I acknowledge that these sentiments are
undoubtedly open to contention on a website by website, newspaper by newspaper basis, they have
become almost proverbial in academia, and are relatively sound.
In addition, I would argue that these standard academic guidelines also provide a framework for
distinguishing those places where non-literal language is largely absent from those places where
non-literal language potentially abounds. By way of example, an educational institution’s website is
likely to be objective in its reporting and contain thoroughly mediated content, while a commercial
website’s reporting might potentially be influenced by vested interests, and a private blog’s
reporting is usually highly subjective and content usually has not been peer-edited or reviewed. As a
result, students would be required to exercise caution not only in utilising information from these
latter sources, but in interpreting the writing as well, as there is a greater likelihood that the writing
will not be purely denotative, but employ non-literal language and rhetorical devices. Once again,
these sentiments are open to contention on a case by case basis, but serve as sound guidelines. The
function of a text also serves as a useful guideline for evaluating whether the writing will be largely
literal or non-literal: if a text is criticising, pontificating, arguing, or preaching, for example, then it is
likely the material will be subjective and the language will employ a suite of rhetorical devices.
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As a class, we then proceeded to engage in interactive activities examining and contrasting different
types of websites and gauging their scholarly reliability. For example, we looked at two very different
online resources dealing with climate change. The first, the Australian Government’s website for the
Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, was identified as academically legitimate,
given its government credentials, its relative transparency of information, and its regular updates.
The second, a privately run contrarian website called Global Warming Hoax, was identified as
academically suspect for a number of reasons. As a .com site, the website was deemed to have
commercial interests, a fact reinforced by advertisements for comedy t-shirts and custom license
plate frames. Although links to external news items appeared to be routinely updated, the site’s own
major news items appeared to be updated only sporadically, and the nature of these updates was
largely superficial – satirical cartoon strips and personal attacks against activist and former politician
Al Gore – indicating that the authors are not producers of substantial or concrete knowledge. No
biographical information is provided about the managers of the website, John and Joseph Herron, or
their qualifications. After scrutinising both websites, we concluded that if a student was preparing an
assignment – whether supportive or contrarian – on climate change, the former website would be a
valid resource while the latter website would need to be treated with academic trepidation due to
the absence of scholarly/scientific rigour and lack of authorial transparency. Of course, in actual
research into this topic the resources which students discover might not be quite so clearly defined
into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ camps, but the same principles of evaluation would apply, and the sharp
contrast between these two websites helped make those principles clear to students.
Our discussion then shifted to closer consideration of the many devices employed by authors to
persuade readers to their perspective. In addition to generic and unprofessional tools of argument
like omission, generalisation, hearsay and personal attack, we also touched on figurative,
connotative, and rhetorical devices like hyperbole, irony, sarcasm, and innuendo, devices where
additional non-literal dimensions of meaning are communicated in excess of the ‘literal’ words on
the page. International students in the workshop recognised these sorts of devices from their own
everyday conversations – for instance, popular examples of hyperbole like ‘I’m so hungry I could eat
a horse’, where the listener generally knows the speaker is not quite that hungry and is most likely
not going to eat a horse, and popular examples of sarcasm such as saying ‘Lovely weather today!’
when caught in a torrential downpour – and concurred that these non-literal devices are relatively
simple to identify when reading in their native language, with or without emphasis through
punctuation. However, international students also agreed that while a speaker’s tone, volume,
speed of voice and physical expressions can help them identify a statement as being sarcastic or
hyperbolic when they are listening in a second language, it is much harder as readers to identify
these attributes when reading literature written in a second language, with or without the aid of
signifiers like exclamation marks, italics, scare quotes et al.
As mentioned earlier, I suspect the ability to instinctively identify non-literal statements in a second
language is best developed through consistent exposure to and immersion in literatures in that
language. However, that skill can also be nurtured in the short term through familiarising students
with the sorts of texts and contexts where they are likely to encounter non-literal writing, so they
will be cognisant of the need to tread carefully in this territory. Academic textbooks, government
reports and websites, major news stories in broadsheet newspapers, and deliberately worded pieces
of legislation, to name just a few examples, are unlikely to contain sarcasm or irony. However,
opinion pieces in both broadsheets and (especially) tabloids, commercial websites, private blogs,
and other mediums and media where subjective or commercial writing abounds will contain
language laced with non-literal meanings, and consequently must not be regarded as providing
unfiltered, unbiased reporting or analysis. The websites we examined earlier reinforce this: the
government website on climate change contained clear, concise denotative information, while the
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privately run contrarian website contained numerous examples of emotive and provocative
language, fearmongering prose, sarcasm and hyperbole.
After this discussion, as a class we read and discussed a short article published in The Spectator: a
piece about former Australian (Labor) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd written by former Australian
(Liberal) foreign minister Alexander Downer, published shortly before Rudd’s resignation from office.
After establishing the context of the piece for those international students unfamiliar with the
background – Rudd and Downer are members of opposing political parties, Downer’s government
was defeated in 2006 by Rudd’s – and contextualizing its publication – The Spectator is a right-wing,
conservative publication – students rightly anticipated that the content would be highly subjective
and derogatory in its treatment of Rudd. We identified a variety of devices employed by Downer to
advance his point of view, including the omission of contradictory evidence, generalisations,
anecdotal rather than hard evidence – ‘One very senior public servant of long standing ruefully
reported that there hadn’t been a more inefficient and thoughtless prime minister since Malcolm
Fraser’ (Downer 2010, p. vii) – and emotive language and personal attack – ‘Rudd uses people. They
are not emotional beings with feelings of their own; they are vehicles to be used to satiate his
personal ambitions’ (p. vii).
Downer also employs non-literal devices like hyperbole to exaggerate Rudd’s shortcomings: he
declares that ‘Over the past 20 years, few, if any, MPs have been less popular than Kevin Rudd’, and
when it comes to the vanity and ego of politicians he proclaims that ‘no one in recorded Australian
political history has ever exceeded Kevin Rudd’ (p. vii). The absence of notable signifiers of
exaggeration (exclamation marks, italics) lends Downer’s writing an air of objectivity, and if a reader
was unaware of the wider context of the article – the history shared between Downer and Rudd, the
ideological leanings of the publication – they could potentially miss the extreme nature of these
statements and accept them as unfiltered, unbiased truth. The statements are very biased – and I
wager that statements made in an opinion piece on Alexander Downer written by Kevin Rudd and
published in a left-wing magazine would be no less biased – and hyperbolic: many politicians have
toiled in government during the last twenty years, and even more have toiled over the course of
‘recorded Australian political history’, so it is safe to assume that when Downer says Rudd surpasses
them all in unpopularity and vanity he is exaggerating.
After analysing the article, we concluded that due to the biased nature of the piece it could not be
utilised for research purposes as an objective portrait of Rudd, though if research entailed looking at
various perspectives on Rudd it might be useful, so long as the biased nature of the piece was
acknowledged and alternative reflections on Rudd were also consulted to arrive at a balanced
assessment of the politician. This exercise reiterated not only the importance of being aware of nonliteral devices and anticipating where those devices may be encountered, but also the importance of
generating sufficient context for understanding and interpreting texts through reference to, and in
light of, their authors, publishers et al. Once again, it could be argued that the piece chosen for
analysis – like the Global Warming Hoax website discussed above – was perhaps too obvious, where
other instances of authors using rhetorical or non-literal language might be more subtle and
nuanced, but I would argue once again that the obvious nature of the example was important in
making the principles of evaluation clear to students.
Overall, these workshops were relatively successful in conveying the subject matter to students, and
the material developed for those workshops and illustrated above is now serving as the basis for the
resources I am currently developing in this area. These resources will employ similar techniques to
those used in the workshops – definition, illustration and demonstration, comparison and contrast,
close reading and analysis, and interpretive exercises – and may end up in print or electronic form or
both, depending on their suitability for these mediums. As indicated above, an international
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2010 Occasional Papers on Learning and Teaching at UniSA – Paper 4
student’s ability to instinctively identify figurative, rhetorical, connotative, and other types of nonliteral writing like sarcasm, hyperbole, irony, and innuendo when reading in a second language is
something best developed gradually through consistent exposure to and immersion in literatures in
that second language, as non-literal written texts often lack the same cues and nuances that can
help identify non-literal spoken communication. However, this ability can be cultivated through
nurturing international students’ understanding of these concepts, training them to anticipate
where they may encounter this sort of language in their independent reading and research, and
encouraging them to generate sufficient context when interpreting instances of non-literal writing.
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References
Australian Universities Quality Agency 2008, Good Practice Principles for English Language
Proficiency for International Students in Australian Universities, Department of Education,
Employment and Workplace Relations, Canberra, viewed 27 September 2010,
<http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Publications/Documents/Final_ReportGood_Practice_Principles.pdf>.
Bradley, D, Noonan, P, Nugent, H & Scales, B 2008, Review of Australian Higher Education: Final
Report, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Canberra, viewed 27
September 2010,
<http://www.deewr.gov.au/HigherEducation/Review/Documents/PDF/Higher%20Education%
20Review_one%20document_02.pdf>.
Broughall, N 2010, ‘All R-rated films to be treated like porn in South Australia’, Gizmodo 13 January,
viewed 25 September 2010, <http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/01/all-r-rated-films-to-betreated-like-porn-in-south-australia/>.
Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency 2010, Climate Change, Canberra, viewed 25
September 2010, <http://www.climatechange.gov.au/>.
Downer, A 2010, ‘Meet the real Kevin Rudd’, The Spectator (Australia) 19 June, p. vii.
Graduate Qualities 2010, University of South Australia, viewed 27 September 2010,
<http://www.unisa.edu.au/gradquals/student/default.asp>.
Herron, J 2010, Global Warming Hoax, viewed 25 September 2010,
<http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/news.php>.
McArthur, T (ed.) 1992, The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press,
Oxford.
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