Can Machines Understand Human Emotion? A Deep Dive into Emotion and Sarcasm Detection in NLP
Manav Sharma · 2025
Understanding feelings in text is a key challenge for natural language processing (NLP). This article explains why it is hard for computers to recognise emotions and sarcasm, contrasts sentiment analysis with emotion analysis, and surveys methods from simple word lists to deep learning. I also explain why these tasks matter for chatbots and mental health tools, and point out problems like cultural differences and mislabelled data. To show where systems go wrong, I include examples such as a humorous sarcastic tweet. Finally, I highlight recent progress with models like BERT and describe ideas like combining text with speech and facial cues. The aim is to give a clear, thoughtful overview of the main ideas and obstacles in this field.