How to Write a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are commonly assigned pieces of writing at different stages through school. Typically, assignments involve telling a story from your own life that connects with class themes. It can be a fun type of assignment to write, if you approach it properly. Learn how to choose a good topic, get a solid rough draft on paper, and revise your narrative essay.

Part 1 Choosing a Good Topic

1. Choose a story that illustrates some topic or theme. 
Generally, narrative essays involve two main components: a story and some analysis of that story. A narrative essay may be "about" a particular issue, theme, or concept, but it uses a personal story to illustrate that idea.

• Most of the time, narrative essays will involve no outside research or references. Instead, you'll be using your personal story to provide the evidence of some point that you're trying to make.
• Narrative essays are a common school assignment used to test your creative story-telling skills, as well as your ability to connect some element of your personal life to a topic you might be discussing in class.

2. Make sure your story fits the prompt. 

Often, narrative essays are school assignments and they're written based on a prompt you'll receive from your teacher. Even if you've got a crazy story about the time you escaped from a deserted island on a hot air balloon, read the prompt closely to make sure your story fits the assignment. Common topics for narrative essays include but are not limited to a description of some moment that:

• You experienced adversity and had to overcome
• You failed and had to deal with the consequences of that failure
• Your personality or character was transformed
• You experienced discrimination or experienced privilege

3. Choose a story with a manageable plot. 

Good narrative essays tell specific stories with very vibrant and luminous details. You're not writing a novel, so the story needs to be fairly contained and concise. Try to limit it as much as possible in terms of other characters, setting, and plot. A specific family vacation or weekend with a friend? A disaster holiday, or night out during high school? Perfect.

• Bad narrative essays are generally too broad. "My senior year of high school" or "This summer" are examples of stories that would be far too big to tell in the amount of specific detail that a good narrative essay requires. Pick a single event from the summer, or a single week of your senior year, not something that takes months to unfold.
• It's also good to limit the number of characters you introduce. Only include other characters who are absolutely essential. Every single friend from your fifth grade class will be too many names to keep track of. Pick one.

4. Choose a story with vibrant details. 

Good narrative essays are full of specific details, particular images and language that helps make the story come alive for the reader. The sights and smells in your story should all be discussed in particular details. When you're thinking of stories that might make for good essays, it's important to think of some that are rich in these kinds of details.

• Let your imagination fill in the gaps. When you're describing your grandmother's house and a specific weekend you remember spending there, it's not important to remember exactly what was cooked for dinner on Friday night, unless that's an important part of the story. What did your grandmother typically cook? What did it usually smell like? Those are the details we need.
• Typically, narrative essays are "non-fiction," which means that you can't just make up a story. It needs to have really happened. Force yourself to stay as true as possible to the straight story.

Part 2 Writing a Draft

1. Outline the plot before you begin. 

Where does your story start? Where does it end? Writing up a quick list of the major plot points in the story is a good way of making sure you hit all the high points. Every story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.

• It helps to limit things as much as possible. While it might seem like we need to know a bunch of specific details from your senior year, Try to think of a particularly tumultuous day from that year and tell us that story. Where does that story start? Not the first day of school that year. Find a better starting point.
• If you want to tell the story of your prom night, does it start when you get dressed? Maybe. Does it start when you spill spaghetti sauce all down your dress before the dance? While that might seem like the climax of a story you want to tell, it might make a better starting place. Go straight to the drama.
• You don't need to write up a formal outline for a narrative essay unless it's part of the assignment or it really helps you write. Listing the major scenes that need to be a part of the story will help you get organized and find a good place to start.

2. Use a consistent point of view.

Generally, narrative essays will be written in first person, making use of "I" statements, which is a little unusual compared to other assignments you'll be given in school. Whether you're giving us scenes with dialog, or discussing what happened in past-tense, it's perfectly fine to use first person in a narrative essay.

• Don't switch perspectives throughout the story. This is a difficult and advanced technique to Try to pull off, and it usually has the effect of being too complicated. There should only be one "I" in the story.
• In general, narrative essays (and short stories for that matter) should also be told in past tense. So, you would write "Johnny and I walked to the store every Thursday" not "Johnny and I are walking to the store, like we do every Thursday."

3. Describe the important characters. 

Who else is important to the story, other than yourself? Who else was present when the story took place. Who affected the outcome of the story? What specific, particular details can you remember about the people in the story? Use these to help build the characters into real people.

• Particular details are specific and only particular to the character being described. While it may be specific to say that your friend has brown hair, green eyes, is 5 feet tall with an athletic build, these things don't tell us much about the character. The fact that he only wears silk dragon shirts? Now that gives us something interesting.
• Try writing up a brief sketch of each principal character in your narrative essay, along with the specific details you remember about them. Pick a few essentials.

4. Find the antagonist. 

Good narratives often have a protagonist and an antagonist. The protagonist is usually the main character (in most narrative essays, that'll be you) who is struggling with something. It might be a situation, a condition, or a force, but whatever the case, a protagonist wants something and the reader roots for them. The antagonist is the thing or person who keeps the protagonist from getting what they want.

• Who or what is the antagonist in your story? To answer this question, you also need to find out what the protagonist wants. What is the goal? What's the best case scenario for the protagonist? What stands in the protagonist's way?
• The antagonist isn't "the bad guy" of the story, necessarily, and not every story has a clear antagonist. Also keep in mind that for some good personal narratives, you might be the antagonist yourself.

5. Describe the setting. 

Just as important to a good story as the characters and the plot is the setting. Where does the story take place? At home? Outside? In the city or the country? Describe the location that the story takes place and let the setting become part of your story.

• Do a freewrite about the location that your story takes place. What do you know about the place? What can you remember? What can you find out?
• If you do any research for your narrative essay, it will probably be here. Try to find out extra details about the setting of your story, or double-check your memory to make sure it's right.

6. Use vivid details. 

Good writing is in the details. Even the most boring office environment or the most dull town can be made compelling with the right kinds of details in the writing. Remember to use particulars–unique details that don't describe anything else but the specific thing you're writing about, and let these vivid details drive the story.

• A popular creative writing phrase tells writers to "show" not to "tell." What this means is that you should give us details whenever possible, rather than telling us facts. You might tell us something like, "My dad was always sad that year," but if you wrote "Dad never spoke when he got home from work. We heard his truck, then heard as he laid his battered hardhat on the kitchen table. Then we heard him sigh deeply and take off his work clothes, which were stained with grease."

Part 3 Revising Your Essay

1. Make sure your theme is clearly illustrated in the story. 

After you've written your rough draft, read back over it with an eye for your theme. Whatever the purpose of your telling us the story that you're telling us needs to be made very clear. The last thing you want is for the reader to get to the end and say, "Good story, but who cares?" Answer the question before the reader gets the chance to ask.

• Get the theme into the very beginning of the essay. Just as a researched argument essay needs to have a "thesis statement" somewhere in the first few paragraphs of the essay, a narrative essay needs a topic statement or a thesis statement to explain the main idea of the story.
• This isn't "ruining the surprise" of the story, this is foreshadowing the important themes and details to notice over the course of the story as you tell it. A good writer doesn't need suspense in a narrative essay. The ending should seem inevitable.

2. Use scenes and summaries. 

All narratives are made of two kinds of writing: scenes and summaries. Scenes happen when you need to slow down and tell specific details about an important moment of the story. Scenes are small moments that take a while to read. Summary is used to narrate the time between scenes. They are longer moments that you read over more quickly.

• Scene: "On our walk to the store, Jared and I stopped at the empty grass lot to talk. 'What's your problem lately?' he asked, his eyes welling with tears. I didn't know what to tell him. I fidgeted, kicked an empty paint bucket that was rusted over at the edge of the lot. 'Remember when we used to play baseball here?' I asked him."
• Summary: "We finished walking to the store and bought all the stuff for the big holiday dinner. We got a turkey, cornbread, cranberries. The works. The store was crazy-packed with happy holiday shoppers, but we walked through them all, not saying a word to each other. It took forever to lug it all home."

3. Use and format dialogue correctly. When you're writing a narrative essay, it's typically somewhere between a short story and a regular essay that you might write for school. You'll have to be familiar with the conventions of formatting both types of writing, and since most narrative essays will involve some dialogue, you should make formatting that dialogue correctly a part of your revision process.

• Anything spoken by a character out loud needs to be included in quotation marks and attributed to the character speaking it: "I've never been to Paris," said James.
• Each time a new character speaks, you need to make a new paragraph. If the same character speaks, multiple instances of dialog can exist in the same paragraph.

4. Revise your essay. 

Revision is the most important part of writing. Nobody, even the most experienced writers, get it right on the very first run through. Get a draft finished ahead of time and give yourself the chance to go back through your story carefully and see it again. How could it be improved?

• Revise for clarity first. Are your main points clear? If not, make them clear by including more details or narration in the writing. Hammer home your points.
• Was the decision you made about the starting place of the story correct? Or, now that you've written, might it be better to start the story later? Ask the tough questions.
• Proofreading is one part of revision, but it's a very minor part and it should be done last. Checking punctuation and spelling is the last thing you should be worried about in your narrative essay.

Sample Essay, for download click the link below!

1. Download as Adobe PDF

2. Download as MS Word

3. Download as Text File

4. Open in Office Online

TIPS for you:

• Be sensible while writing. It is necessary to stay on the topic rather than moving away from it. Do not lose your focus.
• Divide your essay into paragraphs, according to your limit: an introduction, two body paragraph and one conclusion. Your introduction can be either a shocker one, or one just describing the setting; the conclusion can reveal a surprise, or end with just a hint of the climax, keeping the final question to be answered by the readers.
• Write only when you have a perfect story to tell. When a reader finishes reading the story, he\she should feel all those emotions seep right through his\her rib cage. Only then as a narrator, have you succeeded.
• Don't worry if you can't grip it at the beginning; writing a great story takes drafting and revising. Get some second opinions and input from others as you go.
• Using second-person or third person narration (you, she) can be interesting rather than first-person (I, me).

Src : Wh

Eo : Ahmad Zaman Huri

Al-Khwarizmi - Islamic Mathematics

One of the first Directors of the House of Wisdom in Bagdad in the early 9th Century was an outstanding Persian mathematician called Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi. He oversaw the translation of the major Greek and Indian mathematical and astronomy works (including those of Brahmagupta) into Arabic, and produced original work which had a lasting influence on the advance of Muslim and (after his works spread to Europe through Latin translations in the 12th Century) later European mathematics.

The word “algorithm” is derived from the Latinization of his name, and the word "algebra" is derived from the Latinization of "al-jabr", part of the title of his most famous book, in which he introduced the fundamental algebraic methods and techniques for solving equations.

Perhaps his most important contribution to mathematics was his strong advocacy of the Hindu numerical system, which Al-Khwarizmi recognized as having the power and efficiency needed to revolutionize Islamic and Western mathematics. The Hindu numerals 1 - 9 and 0 - which have since become known as Hindu-Arabic numerals - were soon adopted by the entire Islamic world. Later, with translations of Al-Khwarizmi’s work into Latin by Adelard of Bath and others in the 12th Century, and with the influence of Fibonacci’s “Liber Abaci” they would be adopted throughout Europe as well.

Al-Khwarizmi’s other important contribution was algebra, a word derived from the title of a mathematical text he published in about 830 called “Al-Kitab al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa'l-muqabala” (“The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing”). Al-Khwarizmi wanted to go from the specific problems considered by the Indians and Chinese to a more general way of analyzing problems, and in doing so he created an abstract mathematical language which is used across the world today.

His book is considered the foundational text of modern algebra, although he did not employ the kind of algebraic notation used today (he used words to explain the problem, and diagrams to solve it). But the book provided an exhaustive account of solving polynomial equations up to the second degree, and introduced for the first time the fundamental algebraic methods of “reduction” (rewriting an expression in a simpler form), “completion” (moving a negative quantity from one side of the equation to the other side and changing its sign) and “balancing” (subtraction of the same quantity from both sides of an equation, and the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides).

In particular, Al-Khwarizmi developed a formula for systematically solving quadratic equations (equations involving unknown numbers to the power of 2, or x²) by using the methods of completion and balancing to reduce any equation to one of six standard forms, which were then solvable. He described the standard forms in terms of "squares" (what would today be "x²"), "roots" (what would today be "x") and "numbers" (regular constants, like 42), and identified the six types as: squares equal roots (ax² = bx), squares equal number (ax²= c), roots equal number (bx = c), squares and roots equal number (ax² + bx = c), squares and number equal roots (ax² + c = bx), and roots and number equal squares (bx + c = ax²).

Al-Khwarizmi is usually credited with the development of lattice (or sieve) multiplication method of multiplying large numbers, a method algorithmically equivalent to long multiplication. His lattice method was later introduced into Europe by Fibonacci.

In addition to his work in mathematics, Al-Khwarizmi made important contributions to astronomy, also largely based on methods from India, and he developed the first quadrant (an instrument used to determine time by observations of the Sun or stars), the second most widely used astronomical instrument during the Middle Ages after the astrolabe. He also produced a revised and completed version of Ptolemy's “Geography”, consisting of a list of 2,402 coordinates of cities throughout the known world.

Src : SM

Eo : Ahmad Zaman Huri

Sarcasm, Litotes, and Pun (English Literature)

     1. Sarcasm

The word sarcasm comes from the Greek word, "sarkasmos", which means “to tear flesh, bite the lip in rage, sneer”. Thus the original definition of sarcasm was quite negative, while in some cultures and time periods it can be a relatively mild form of taunting. Actually, the original understanding of sarcasm by the customs of foreigners are as satire or criticism intelligently. However, another definition is: "a spicy direct expression". Therefore, we classify Sarcasm into two, rude sarcasm and clever sarcasm.

·        Rude Sarcasm

Rude Sarcasm is a kind of sarcasm that is widely used by the people of Indonesia, Sarcasm is almost the same as the coarse expletives directly. So that the people who become the object of sarcasm will know the purpose of the speaker as clear in his words and certainly will be offended.

Examples:

a.       You cannot answer this question? You stupid!

b.      Everyone hates you, you have a very bad trait.

Rude sarcasm is very clearly mention the existence of an insult in a sentence. Probably in Indonesia is very often the case like this, but out there, it is an insult that is highly exaggerated.

·         Clever Sarcasm

The purpose of clever sarcasm is an indirect allusion, but obviously with the intention of insulting. Sarcasm is synonymous with intelligent speech. Because who can understand the significance of this clever sarcasm are only those who have a different way of thinking. Not everyone can understand what the meaning of a word that contains this sarcasm. Therefore, this is often used in a debate.

Examples:

a.       Earth is full, can you please go home?

b.      Don’t worry. I forgot your name, too!

Looks a little funny when we see examples of sarcasm that. Moreover, if we compare the two types of it.

President Barack Obama used sarcasm to mock the rapper Kanye West’s announcement that he wants to run for president. However, he didn’t just mock Kanye; in the following joke, his sarcasm is targeted only at those who said Obama could never be president:

“Do you really think this country is going to elect a black guy from the south side of Chicago with a funny name to be president of the US?”

In other parts, Todd Smith as a American rapper said that sarcasm is really just a convenient way for people to express hurt feelings, criticize others.

2. Litotes

Litotes is a figure of speech in which a negative statement is used to affirm a positive sentiment. For example, when asked how someone is doing, that person might respond, “I’m not bad.” In fact, this means that the person is doing fine or even quite well. The extent to which the litotes means the opposite is dependent on context. For example, the person saying is “I’m not bad” may have recently gone through a divorce and is trying to reassure a friend that things are okay. On the other hand, this person may have just won the lottery and says, “I’m not bad” with a grin on his face, implying that things are, in fact, incredible. If a person is very intelligent, someone might say, “he’s not dumb.” Or “he’s not unintelligent”. In other situations, after someone hires you, you might say, “Thank you sir, you won’t regret it.”

Litotes is use of negative to express a strong affirmative of the opposite kind. This is a deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying or negating its opposite.

Following are some of the commonly used litotes:

a.      The food is not bad.

b.      He is not unlike his dad.

c.      She's not the brightest girl in the class.

d.      He is not unaware of what you said behind his back.

Examples of Litotes in poems:

a.       In the poem 'The Spider and the Fly' by Mary Howitt, "I'm really glad that you have come to visit," says the spider to the fly. The spider is not just glad to get a visitor, but also is excited to get his next meal.

b.      In the poem 'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell, the grave's a fine a private place, but none, I think, do there embrace.

Usually, litotes occurs in a language when the speaker does not make an affirmation, rather denies the opposite. Though widely used in conversational language, its usage depends on intonation and emphasis as in the case of phrase "not bad". This can be said in such a way which means everything from 'mediocre' to 'excellent'.

     3. Pun

A pun is a play on words which usually hinges on a word with more than one meaning or the substitution of a homonym that changes the meaning of the sentence for humorous or rhetorical effect. For example, here’s a well-known pun: “Corduroy pillows are making headlines.” The word “headlines” usually refers to something that is new and popular, but this pun changes the meaning in that after having slept on a corduroy pillow, a person would wake up with lines on their heads.

Another meaning of pun is a play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words. A better way to describe pun as 'a play on words'. Although such terms render ambiguity to a sentence, it is often added for a humorous. For example, “when it rains, it pours” and “The two pianists had a good marriage. They were always in a chord”.

·         Types of Puns

There are several different types of puns. Here are some of the different classifications of puns:

a.       Homophonic Pun: This type of pun uses homonyms (words that sound the same) with different meanings. For example: “The wedding was so emotional that even the cake was in tiers”. The professor Walter Redfern said of this type of pun, “To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms.”

b.      Homographic Pun: This type of pun uses words that are spelled the same but sound different. These puns are often written rather than spoken, as they briefly trick the reader into reading the “wrong” sound. For example, “You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless you play bass.” In this case, “tuna fish” is a homophonic pun because it is a homonym for “tune a.” The word “bass,” though, functions as a homographic pun in that the word “bass” pronounced with a long “a” refers to a type of instrument while “bass” pronounced with a short “a” is a type of fish.

c.       Homonymic Pun: A homonymic pun contains aspects of both the homophonic pun and the homographic pun. In this type of pun, the wordplay involves a word that is spelled and sounds the same, yet has different meanings. For example, “Two silk worms had a race and ended in a tie.” A “tie” can of course either be when neither party wins, but in this pun also refers to the piece of clothing usually made from silk.

d.      Compound Pun: A compound pun includes more than one pun. Here is a famous compound pun from English rhetorician and theologian Richard Whately: “Why can a man never starve in the Great Desert? Because he can eat the sand which is there. But what brought the sandwiches there? Why, Noah sent Ham, and his descendants mustered and bred.” There are several separate puns, including the pun on “sand which” and “sandwich,” as well as “Ham” (a Biblical figure) and “ham” and the homophonic puns on “mustered”/“mustard” and “bred”/“bread.”

e.       Recursive Pun: This type of pun requires understanding the first half of the joke to understand the second. For example, “A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.” The term “Freudian slip” was coined by the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud to refer to a mistake in speaking where one word is replaced with another. Freud proposed that these mistakes hinted at unconscious or repressed desires. He also had several theories about the relationship between children (especially boys) and their mothers. Therefore, this pun requires knowledge of Freud’s theories and recognition that the pun itself is a Freudian slip with the substitution of “your mother” for “another.”

·         Difference Between Pun and Joke

While they share much in common, puns and jokes are not synonymous. The definition of pun is such that it necessitates wordplay. A joke may contain this type of wordplay, but there are a great many jokes that do not have any plays on words. Also, some puns are not humorous and used for rhetorical, rather than humorous, effect.

     ·        Common Examples of Pun

There are thousands of common puns in English; many languages have their own puns as well. Puns are quite frequent in everyday language. You may have heard or used the following ones in regular conversations:

a.       Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

b.      Make like a tree and leave.

c.       Put that down, it’s nacho cheese.

Some businesses have puns in their names. For example:

a.       Hairdressing salon: Curl Up and Dye

b.      Lawyers office: Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe

c.       Ophthalmologist: For Eyes

Some people consider puns to be quite foolish and worthy only of eye-rolls or groans. However, puns can require a good deal of knowledge on the part of the audience (especially in recursive puns, as explained above). If the puns are particularly clever they are rewarding for the reader or listener when they decipher the pun. Many famous authors used puns to great effect, perhaps none more so than William Shakespeare. Shakespeare used language with such dexterity that his puns often delight and surprise the reader.

Eo : Ahmad Zaman Huri

Pengertian Lengkap Litotes

Majas litotes tergolong dalam jenis majas pertentangan. Majas ini biasanya digunakan untuk merendah sebagai bentuk penghargaan terhadap lawan bicara. Sesuatu yang sudah menjadi budaya bangsa yang ramah seperti Indonesia. Mengenai pengertian litotes, dalam Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesia disebutkan bahwa majas litotes adalah Ungkapan berupa penurunan kualitas suatu fakta dengan tujuan merendahkan diri. Padahal pada kenyataannya tidak seburuk apa yang diungkapkan. Sedangakan dalam bahasa inggris berartikan sama namun tetap lebih ramah Bahasa Indonesia (this is the best part of our country, dude). 

Dalam Bahasa Inggris dikatakan:

Litotes, derived from a Greek word meaning "simple", is a figure of speech which employs an understatement by using double negative or, in other words, positive statement is expressed by negating its opposite expressions. 

Intinya, litotes ini adalah sikap merendah diri dengan mengatakan hal yang sebaliknya yang tidak sesuai dengan fakta. Majas ini mudah untuk di pahami.

"Kapan-kapan sudikah kau mampir ke gubukku"

Unsur merendah (litotes) dalam contoh kalimat di atas adalah terdapat pada pilihan kata "gubuk".

Contohnya:

"Kapan-kapan sudikah kamu mampir ke gubuk tua-ku" 

Unsur merendah (litotes) disini adalah pada pemilihan kata-kata "gubuk tua-ku". Dalam kasus litotes, pemaknaan "gubuk" bukan sebanarnya suatu tempat yang lusuh namun pembicara menggunakan litotes untuk merendahkan diri (biar ga sombong kali ya-red).

Untuk memudahkan sobat, berikut contoh lain:

1. Tolong terima bantuan yang tidak seberapa ini.
2. Saya hanya orang desa yang beruntung mengenyam pendidikan.
3. Sehelai kain lusuh ini mungkin akan berguna untukmu dikemudian hari.
4. Perjuangan kami hanyalah setetes air dalam samudra luas
5. Dalam ceramah: Mungkin hanya ini yang bisa saya sampaikan. (padahal udah panjang banget tuh dia ngomongnya-red) 

Saya juga akan membagikan beberapa contoh litotes dalam bahasa inggris, ini sering terjadi di daily conversations:

1. They do not seem the happiest couple around.
2. You are not as young as you used to be.
3. A million dollars is not a little amount.
4. Your apartment is not unclean.
5. You are not doing badly at all.

Sedikit berbeda dalam percakapan hari-hari kita, namun pada dasarnya litotes adalah cara kita mengungkapkan kerendahan diri kita ataupun mengatakan sesuatu penilaian terhadap orang lain dengan cara yang lebih baik. 

Sekedar Informasi, dalam bahasa inggris, Litotes ini ada juga yang mengatakan sebagai "hiperbola negatif". Untuk pengertian dari hiperbola itu sendiri akan saya bahas dalam kesempatan yang lain.

Begitulah kira-kira pengertian dari majas litotes. Kalau ada tambahan mengenai ini, kolom komentar tersedia buat sobat. 

SEMOGA BERMANFAAT^^

Eo: Ahmad Zaman Huri

Pengertian Lengkap Sarkasme (Sarcasm)

Kali ini kita akan membahas mengenai pengertian lengkap Sakasme, atau dalam bahasa Inggris disebut Sarcasm. Ini juga merupakan tugas untuk saya yang harus mempresentasikan sedikitnya tentang majas tersebut dalam bahasa inggris. Untuk lebih bisa memahaminya, admin akan membagikan informasi sekilas tentang itu dalam bahasa indonesia. Ini hanya untuk memudahkan kita dalam menyingkronkan bahasa indonesia ke dalam bahasa asing, terutama bahasa Inggris. Setidaknya ini adalah cara yang paling cepat untuk bisa memahami pengertian dan contoh yang akan dijelaskan dalam makna sarkasme itu sendiri. Selamat Membaca.

1. Pengertian

Sarkasme merupakan sebuah ungkapan yang bermaksud menghina orang lain secara tidak langsung dengan pembubuhan Majas, majas yang dominan digunakan disini adalah Ironi. Walaupun banyak yang mengatakan Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) itu sama dengan Ironi atau sinisme, tidak semuanya benar dan tidak semuanya salah juga. Majas Ironi lebih menjurus kepada penyampaian maksud yang berlainan, sementara ungkapan Sarkasme/Sarkastik/Sarcasm lebih kepada Hina-an tidak langsung.

Sebenarnya pengertian asli Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) berdasarkan tafsiran luar negri adalah sindiran kritikan secara pintar (poh sampeng-red). Namun pengertian lainnya adalah: “ungkapan pedas secara langsung” entah mengapa juga merupakan pengertian dari Sarkasme dalam bahasa Indonesia, oleh karena itu saya golongkan Sarkasm menjadi dua, yaitu Sarkasme Kasar dan Sarkasme Pintar. 

A. Sarkasme Kasar

Sarkasme Kasar ini merupakan jenis Sarkasme yang banyak ditafsirkan oleh orang-orang Indonesia, jenis Sarkasme ini yang saya ketahui hampir menyerupai umpatan kasar secara langsung, berbanding terbalik dengan Sarkasme pintar, bahasa yang digunakan untuk mengumpat yaitu secara langsung dan to the point, sehingga orang yang menjadi objek sarkasme-nya akan langsung mengetahui dan tersinggung.

Contohnya:

- Dasar Bodoh! Begitu saja tidak bisa!
- Kamu memang buaya darat!
- Dasar manusia Anj*ng!
- Soal semudah itu tidak bisa dikerjakan? Dasar Dungu!

Sobat bisa lihat sendiri dari kalimatnya, Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) ala Bahasa Indonesia ini saya rasa tidak mengandung majas Ironi sama sekali, lebih langsung dan saya rasa tidak ada bedanya dengan kalimat ungkapan biasa, oleh karena itu mari sobat lihat ungkapan Sarkasm Pintar sebagai pembandingnya.

B. Sarkasme Pintar

arkasme Pintar ini jenis Sarkasme yang digunakan secara global, yaitu sindiran secara tidak langsung, tetapi tajam dengan maksud mengolok-olok. Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) di luar sana sendiri identik dengan ungkapan umpatan yang cerdas, karena kenapa? Umpatan Sarkasme bagi orang yang ditujukan bagi orang yang kurang cerdas tidak akan tersampaikan. Saat di umpat dengan Sarkasme, orang yang menjadi bahan umpatan itu akan berfikir, jika ia cerdas maka ia akan tahu umpatan tersebut, jika ia tidak cerdas, maka maksud asli dari Sarkasme itu tidak tersampaikan. 

Contohnya:g

- Cantik sekali kamu? Pake bedak berapa sendok?

- Bagus aku ingat gaya itu.. Ya! Seperti Anj*ng peliharaanku..
- Kamu terlalu pintar ya? Soal semudah ini tidak bisa..
- Apakah kamu tau Arti diam?
- Kamu terlambat 4 jam, kenapa gak tanggung nambah 1 jam lagi?
- kamu bekerja 24 jam sehari untuk menjadi miskin

Karena saya bilang Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) pintar ini berdasarkan pengertian global,

jadi saya akan beri sobat beberapa contoh Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) dalam bahasa Inggris.

- Earth is full, can you please go home?
- Is it time for your medication or mine?
- You look like Sh*t. Is that the trend style now?
- And which planet you come from?
- Don’t worry. I forgot your name, too!

Jika kita lihat jelas sangat beda ungkapan Sarkasme pintar dengan sebelumnya bukan? Struktur kalimatnya lebih banyak memutar balikan tafsiran sebenarnya, dengan menyembunyikan maksud sebenarnya justru yang membuat Sarkasme ( Sarcasm ) lebih menyakitkan dan tergolong dengan umpatan tingkat tinggi untuk dan bagi orang-orang cerdas saja, karena banyak pepatah luar sana mengatakan : “Stupid People Swear, Smart People Sarcasm” atau “Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against  stupid”. 

Oleh karena itu Sarkasme cerdas lebih elit daripada Sarkasme Kasar. Sekedar mengingatkan, berhati-hatilah saat berbicara, karena itu menunjukkan diri kamu sebenarnya, ya walaupun kita tau bahwa ada sebagian manusia yang memang blak-blakan dengan omongannya (termasuk admin, hehe) tapi itulah sikap manusia. Kita berhak memilih cara hidup kita namun jangan lepas dari konsep bahwa manusia ini adalah makhluk sosial.

SEMOGA BERMANFAAT^^

Src : fni

Eo : Ahmad Zaman Huri