Is sarcasm/witticism a social skill?

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I've always been impressed with people who can articulate themselves accurately yet expressively. They usually can turn this into venom at will. I asked someone recently how they did this, and they said it's not a social skill at all. I reasoned that they must have picked this up -it has to come from somewhere- but they shot back that they had always been this way. I don't see how somebody can develop this without social interaction.

Is this a social skill? I figure joke telling and schmoozing is a social skill, so would sarcasm be as well?

To determine pecking order in males, wit and sarcasm are used alot in modern day society. So I guess it is a social skill.

I think it is a social skill since it's largely used for the purpose of influencing social interactions to one's advantage.

It is partly a learned skill (there are no 2 year olds that are skilled at this by adult standards), although it's obviously true that people have varying levels of natural talent for it. So, I think of it as a learned skill that develops at a rate that is determined by some combination of innate talent and environmental factors.

Without social interaction, no one will become very skilled at this. Your friend might be one of those people that is very talented at this and may have learned the skill rapidly without any conscious effort -- but it's still learned nonetheless.

I used to be super serious and literal, but I learned how to be sarcastic and witty. I always had a sharp, quick mind, fostered by math games and reading, but I didn't always understand when people were kidding. After a while, I learned that in order to make fun of someone, you have to insult them in context, not out of context, and being vague is a good thing. Also, it's much easier to make fun of someone that you understand. I could never rip skateboarding because I don't get it. But I can easily mock religion and politics, because not only do I understand it, there is so much to make fun of. The less sense something makes, the easier it is to make fun of. Think about dissing Albert Einstein versus dissing Kate Gosselin. One of these things is not like the other. The most important thing to be able to do is relax. If you aren't comfortable in a social situation, being sarcastic is out of the question. So yes, being sarcastic is absolutely a social skill. Why do you think girls like guys that are funny? Same reason girls like guys that can dance-it shows comfort.

It absolutely is a social skill. Your friend just has no memory of learning it because it starts around age 3 and 4 for most kids. To a casual adult listener on the playground, it may not sound like the 3 and 4 year olds are learning sarcasm and witticism because none of it sounds very witty to adults. But that's when it starts.

Tot #1: "that's my truck"
Tot#2: "no it's not"
Tot#1: "yes it is"
Tot#2:"you're a truck....you truck"

This sounds inane and it is. But give it 20 years of practice and it does morph into sarcasm and witticism. It's kids who have only recently learned how to talk realizing that words can be played with to make an emotional point or score a point against a kid you have a sudden flash of animosity against. To toddlers who have just learned to talk, words just convey information. "Want juice". "Mommy" But in a year or two kids realize that words can do so much more than merely convey information and the "witticisms" that sound so ridiculous to adult ears begin.

I probably never would have noticed this if my own daughter weren't autistic. Until she was 5, I didn't know she was. She was just "language delayed". But that starter diagnosis of "language delayed" prompted me to pay attention obsessively to the differences between her speech and the speech of other kids her age.

She really did love going to the playground and by 3 did have some language coming in. It was purely informational. "Go to playground". "Swing". When other kids wanted to play with her they would ask if she wanted to play. "No" was the usual answer. Sometimes she answered "yes". But that was it. The other kid would try to engage her in back and forth conversation and she would not do that (which I attributed to her language delay) but would play with them. Generaly this meant taking turns on the slide or swing while they chattered away at her. NT kids at that young age are far more flexible about who they play with than they will be even 3 years later.

So I had plenty of time to listen to other kids in the 2,3,4 year age range talk amongst themselves and compare it to the way my daughter was talking. At close to 4, she talked similarly to the other kids who were almost 2. Thus the language delay diagnosis. The similarity was not just in the simple sentence construction but also in the way that language was used simply to convey a piece of information or request a piece of information. The kids who were her age chronologically had already moved on to the next stage of using very simple witticisms that aren't witty to an adult but were clearly meant to score a point off another kid verbally. I wrongly assumed that my daughter would get to this 3 or 4 year old stage by the time she was 5 or 6. But she didn't. However, she did get there about age 10 (by which time I knew she was autistic). By then she had a reasonably large vocabulary but her ability to construct a witticism or piece of sarcasm was at about the point of a typical 3 year old, but with a 10 year old's vocabulary. This led to some truly odd-sounding sarcastic insults that left other kids scratching their heads, not even sure if they had been sarcastically insulted or not.

I undertook the project of teaching her sarcasm and witticisms. I point out when other people use it, especially in TV shows. Sometimes I'll say some absurd thing then when she says "really???" I say, with a very straight face, "yes, really". Wait 30 seconds, then laugh and say "not really". She is now able to say something really absurd and then soberly say "really" when questioned about it. Then say "not really" 30 seconds later. On this board that's going to sound like a pretty dubious skill. But the important part is that in recognizing the construction, she's learned to recognize when other people are doing it too, and in middle school that is a crucial thing to know.

So not only is it a social skill, it can be learned. But the people who are truly good at it won't believe that it is a learned skill because they have no more memory of learning it than they have of learning to use the toilet, which they probably learned at roughly the same time.