A critical skill: detecting sarcasm in tone of voice.  Can your students do it?

updated 1/2023  Are the following statements examples of sarcasm or sincerity?  Yeah,….right.  Wow.  Well, duh!  The correct answer?  You don’t know.  Why?  Sarcasm is typically identified by tone or voice and facial expressions, neither of which you have access to when reading a blog post!  Detecting sarcasm can be very challenging for our students with autism.  Detecting sarcasm requires you to take the perspective of another person while evaluating tone of voice and nonverbal communication, all challenging for students with autism.  That’s difficult enough but then one also needs to consider the context, or surrounding circumstances of the situation.

This blog post provides four manageable teaching areas for teaching students how to detect sarcasm.  I have another blog post that provides a lesson plan for teaching students to detect in people and written communication, and the ins and outs of when to use sarcasm here:  Sarcasm:  detection and use.

Why teach students about detecting sarcasm?

• Being sarcastic to someone with autism can be a form of bullying.  On average, sarcasm or irony is used once every 2 minutes in conversation, according to Gibbs, 2000 in “irony and talk among friends.”  Imagine if you misunderstood a statement once every 2 minutes?
• Without the ability to detect sarcasm, it is impossible for children with autism to fully engage with peers, making them vulnerable to bullying and social ridicule.

How do we teach students about detecting sarcasm?  I find it helpful to break it down into manageable teaching areas for students:

1. Detecting sarcasm in tone of voice only. 

• Teach students to listen for nasal or flat tones, elongated words, stress on certain adjectives, lower pitch, and pauses between or within words.
• I present activities where the student detects sarcasm by tone of voice only.  In other words, don’t use pictures or video clips to detect facial expressions or context on this step.  Just isolate the tone of voice.  You can do this by using sarcasm in your own voice but hide your face with your hands.

2.  Detecting sarcasm in a person’s non-verbal communication.

• Teach students what types of nonverbal communication to LOOK for on this step!  Do they know these nonverbal communication signs of sarcasm:  lifted eyebrows, rolling eyes, smirking mouths, facial expressions that show irritation or disgust.
• At this stage, teach your students the signs of sarcasm on a person’s face without having to evaluate tone of voice or context.   Use pictures or your own facial expressions but don’t include the tone piece just yet.

3.  Detecting sarcasm by tone of voice and facial expressions, combining points 1 and 2. 

• Now that you’ve taught students how to identify tone of voice and nonverbal signs of sarcasm, you can combine the two!  Use real-life models and video clips.

4.  Detecting sarcasm based on context, tone of voice and non-verbal communication.

• Introduce the idea of context, or the surrounding situation.  An example would be a person saying “it’s a beautiful day,” when it’s raining outside.  Teach students to listen for comments that seem out-of-place.
• At this step, students evaluate not only the speaker’s tone of voice and nonverbal communication but also the context of the situation. Use video clips and real-life models.

Teaching a student with autism or a social communication disorder to detect sarcasm is a valuable skill that can lead to more social success!  Try isolating the teaching of each skill using the steps above!  Students with NVLD have difficulties detecting sarcasm.

You might also be interested in these posts on

 Nonverbal Learning Disability: what the SLP needs to know.

Teaching Tone of Voice

Other Helpful Links:

Lesson Plan:  detecting sarcasm (free)

BOOM Bundle for Sarcasm

Social Communication IEP Goal Bank

Join My Newsletter for Free Library Access!

I’m done.  Whatever.  (Have fun teaching sarcasm to your students!