Expecting Irony: Context Versus Salience-Based Effects (original) (raw)
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Individual differences in processing written irony
2019
Theoretical accounts of irony comprehension assume that when an ironic utterance is unfamiliar and the context does not prime for ironic interpretation, processing should take longer than when reading the same utterance with a literal meaning. This slowdown reflects problems in integrating the utterance into the developing text representation, which results in a reanalysis of the utterance. Similar assumptions are made about other forms of figurative language, such as metaphors, although studies have shown that there are differences in the cognitive demands of different forms of figurative language. Until fairly recently, most of the studies have ignored possible individual differences in irony comprehension among healthy adults. Recent results have suggested that there might be individual differences in irony comprehension related to working memory capacity (WMC) and emotion processing. In the present thesis, I wanted to answer the following questions: 1) How do readers resolve the meaning of irony? 2) How do individual differences in WMC and the ability to process emotional information affect the processing of irony? and 3) Does the processing of irony differ from the processing of other forms of figurative language, namely metaphors? These questions were examined in four studies using eye-tracking to tap into the detailed time-course of resolving the meaning of irony. The results of these studies showed that readers need to reprocess the ironic utterance to achieve the intended meaning, as suggested by the theories on irony comprehension. WMC aids this process by helping readers to keep contextual information in their mind while they integrate the meaning of the utterance with the context and/or inhibit a more salient literal interpretation while making the inference. Emotion processing abilities help to recognize the emotional cues of irony; readers with a poorer ability to process emotional information need to rely more on textual context to resolve the ironic meaning. Finally, resolving the ironic meaning differs from resolving other forms of figurative language, namely metaphors. Metaphors are easier to comprehend, and the processing of the intended meaning of metaphors starts at an earlier stage of reading. Moreover, emotion processing abilities are related to the processing of irony, but not metaphors. Based on the findings of this thesis, I present a new theoretical framework, the Cumulative Evidence Model.
Asymmetries in the Use of Verbal Irony
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 2002
Three experiments assessed four variables that may affect verbal irony processing: people's expectations of events, event outcome, evaluations of outcome, and shared common ground. Reading times and rating tasks were used to quantify the interaction of these factors. The failed expectation hypothesis predicts an interaction of expectation, outcome, and evaluation. In contrast, the expectation irrelevance hypothesis states that expectation does not matter-only interactions between outcome and evaluation should result. The results provide support for the expectation irrelevance hypothesis. There were also consistent common ground effects: Statements directed at high common ground targets were read more quickly and rated as more ironic than statements directed at low common ground targets. These studies also provide online evidence of the asymmetry of affect (positive evaluations of negative outcomes are more ironic than negative evaluations of positive outcomes). Together, these experiments further elucidate the complex pragmatic factors that govern verbal irony comprehension.
Verbal irony processing: How do contrast and humour correlate?
International Journal of Psychology, 2013
V erbal irony relies on contrast, that is, incongruity between the situational context and the ironic assertion. But is the degree of contrast related to the perceived humorousness of ironic comments? We answered this question by conducting two experiments. In the first experiment, participants were asked to read a list of sentence pairs (ironic or control) and judge the extent to which the meaning of the first sentence contrasted with that of the second. In the second experiment, participants were invited to rate the humorousness of ironic comments compared with their literal counterparts. Results showed that ironic remarks were rated as more contrasting and more humorous than their literal counterparts, but that humour only emerged from a moderate contrast.
Type of evaluation and marking of irony: The role of perceived complexity and comprehension
Journal of Pragmatics
This paper reports on two experiments which demonstrate that textual characteristics of irony (type of ironic evaluation and irony markers – e.g., hyperbole, quotation marks) can influence comprehension, perceived complexity and attitudes towards the utterance and text. Results of experiment 1 show that explicitly evaluative irony is perceived as less complex and is more appreciated than implicitly evaluative irony. In experiment 2, irony markers were found to increase comprehension, reduce perceived complexity and make attitudes towards the utterance more positive. Both experiments also demonstrate that the influence of irony on attitudes depends on comprehension and complexity; if irony is understood or perceived as relatively easy, it is better liked than when it is not understood or perceived as relatively difficult.
Irony Comprehension in the Nonnative Language Comes at a Cost
Psychology of Language and Communication, 2016
Irony as a communicative phenomenon continues to puzzle. One of the key questions concerns cognitive and linguistic mechanisms underpinning irony comprehension. Empirical research exploring how much time people need to grasp irony as compared to literal meanings, brought equivocal answers. In view of the timespan-oriented-approach’ inconclusiveness, we set to explore the efficiency of irony online processing in a limited-response-time paradigm. Additionally, we aimed to find out whether advanced nonnative users of a language, who have mastered ironic mode of thinking in their native language, get irony as efficiently in their nonnative as they do in their native language. Results show that participants were less efficient in processing irony than nonirony in both tested languages, yet the efficiency decreased in their nonnative language. These results license a claim that irony is a cognitively more demanding communicative phenomenon than literal meaning, and the effort invested in ...
Brain Research, 2010
extra-linguistic and linguistic information to compute the speaker's intended meaning. To assess whether knowledge about the speaker's communicative style impacts the brain response to irony, ERPs were recorded as participants read short passages that ended either with literal or ironic statements made by one of two speakers. The experiment was carried out in two sessions in which each speaker's use of irony was manipulated. In Session 1, 70% of ironic statements were made by the ironic speaker, while the non-ironic speaker expressed 30% of them. For irony by the non-ironic speaker, an increased P600 was observed relative to literal utterances. By contrast, both ironic and literal statements made by the ironic speaker elicited similar P600 amplitudes. In Session 2, conducted 1 day later, both speakers' use of irony was balanced (i.e. 50% ironic, 50% literal). ERPs for Session 2 showed an irony-related P600 for the ironic speaker but not for the non-ironic speaker. Moreover, P200 amplitude was larger for sentences congruent with each speaker's communicative style (i.e. for irony made by the ironic speaker, and for literal statements made by the nonironic speaker). These findings indicate that pragmatic knowledge about speakers can affect language comprehension 200 ms after the onset of a critical word, as well as neurocognitive processes underlying the later stages of comprehension (500-900 ms post-onset). Thus perceived speakers' characteristics dynamically impact the construction of appropriate interpretations of ironic utterances.
Electrophysiological evidence of different interpretative strategies in irony comprehension
Journal of …, 2007
We explore the hypothesis that induction of holistic or analytic strategies influences comprehension and processing of highly contextualized expressions of ordinary language, such as irony. Twenty undergraduate students were asked to categorize as coherent or incoherent a group of sentences. Each sentence completed a previous story, so that they could be ironical, literal or nonsensical endings. Participants were asked to evaluate whether each sentence was coherent or incoherent. Half of them were initially instructed to consider whether the sentences made sense (holistic condition); the other half were instructed to consider whether the sentences were congruent or incongruent (analytic condition). Behavioral responses and Event Related Potentials were registered during the experiment. Both behavioral and electrophysiological results allow clearly distinguishing between the holistic and the analytic strategies. The fact that the same set of stimuli elicits different ERP waveforms, depending on the strategy with which they are analyzed, suggests that different cognitive processes and different areas of the brain are operating in each case.
The emotional impact of verbal irony: Eye-tracking evidence for a two-stage process
Journal of Memory and Language, 2017
In this paper we investigate the socio-emotional functions of verbal irony. Specifically, we use eye-tracking while reading to assess moment-to-moment processing of a character's emotional response to ironic versus literal criticism. In Experiment 1, participants read stories describing a character being upset following criticism from another character. Results showed that participants initially more easily integrated a hurt response following ironic criticism; but later found it easier to integrate a hurt response following literal criticism. In Experiment 2, characters were instead described as having an amused response, which participants ultimately integrated more easily following ironic criticism. From this we propose a two-stage process of emotional responding to irony: While readers may initially expect a character to be more hurt by ironic than literal criticism, they ultimately rationalize ironic criticism as being less hurtful, and more amusing.