This Wednesday, there was a ridiculous op-ed about women rights in a Swedish daily that looked like something out of the 19th century. The writer, Eva Sternberg, was ironically quoted on Twitter which lead to hilarious misunderstandings. Where is Alcanter de Brahm’s irony mark when we it?
As people quoted away on the op-ed which argued women shouldn’t leave their natural domain (i.e. taking care of the family home), responses suggested several users suddenly began wondering what kind of people they had chosen to follow.
Since the quotes required the followers’ having read the op-ed in order to spot the irony, I watched with amusement as friends tried to explain and distance themselves from earlier tweets as fury rained down on them from followers unaware of Sternberg’s text.
And I realized French poet Alcanter de Brahm was right when he introduced the irony mark for written language.
No matter how irritating smileys and “OMFG” expressions are, they exist for a reason: Written language is not particularly good at expressing extra-linguistic properties in dialogues that take place in digital networks.
In one way, that’s positive. In social media, speech impediments, weird accents and readers’ prejudice on, for example, etnicity does not diminish a statement. But more often than not, an important dimension of what is said is lost in written text.
How we say something is just as important as what we say.
Therefore, I call for de Brahm’s irony mark to be resurrected for common use. He may have done it as an arty poetry thing, but in our time le point d’ironie has an actual use.
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