What English term is used to describe "sarcasm toward questions about trivial issues"?
The question is difficult to mention in a single line as a title, hence feel free to edit the title.
Person-1: Did Brazil win the football match today?
Person-2: People are dying across the world, economies are going down, Earth is burning and you are asking about a match?
Here "Person-1" is asking a good and valid question which interests him/her. However "Person-2" doesn't think that such questions are important when there are other major questions yet to be solved.
What is the term used for such sarcasm?
The response is belittling.
belittle:
make (someone or something) seem unimportant.
and disparaging
regard or represent as being of little worth.
there's also denigrating
criticize unfairly; disparage.
Ngrams: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=disparage%2C+denigrate%2C+belittle&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdisparage%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cdenigrate%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbelittle%3B%2Cc0
This type of argument can be referred to as the "fallacy of relative privation", the "not as bad as" argument, or "appeal to worse problems". It was mentioned in the philosophy stackexchange.
But all of these are technical terms unfamiliar to most people. And I'm not aware of any single-word term for this. Is there one in other languages?
Close:
mockery – noun
- Teasing and contemptuous language or behavior directed at a particular person or thing:
‘Stung by her mockery, Frankie hung his head.’oxforddictionaries.com