Do young children use echoic information in their comprehension of sarcastic speech? A test of echoic mention theory

Abstract

This study sets out to provide a test of echoic mention theory, which predicts that irony and sarcasm are most easily comprehended by a listener when the speaker explicitly 'echoes' a previous utterance or some shared norm rather than when the speaker only implicitly alludes to the same information. Children aged 6-10 years were given stories containing either a sarcastic comment that explicitly echoed an earlier remark, a sarcastic comment that only implicitly alluded to an earlier remark, or a literal comment from a speaker. Half of the children heard the stories presented with a sarcastic intonation and half heard the stories presented with an unin ected intonation. The results of the study showed that when vocal intonation was absent, children comprehended explicit stories better than implicit stories. The ndings suggest that echoic mention theory is a useful theory for describing children's developing comprehension of sarcastic speech, but is only one of many factors that play a role in the comprehension process.

Young children's detection and decoding of ironic intonation

“…Similarly, whilst they are more consistent with the findings of Capelli et al (1990) and Keenan & Quigley (1999) that sarcastic intonation was well understood by primary school children, they show that onset of its appreciation occurs at a much younger age. In this respect, they are more consistent with Yasui & Lewis (2003), who report that 4-year-olds who witnessed a scene involving use of intonationally marked sarcasm were able both to grasp and explain the non-literal nature of the language employed.…”

“…Keenan & Quigley (1999) found that sarcastic intonation enabled 6-to 10-year-olds to make significantly more correct judgments of a speaker's intended meaning, and conclude that intonation is the easiest cue to sarcasm for children to grasp. Similarly, Capelli, Nakagawa & Madden (1990) report that 8-to 12-year-olds were only able to recognize sarcastic intent when intonation was present.…”

“…Thus the examination of both lies and jokes provided a test not only of whether 3-and 4-year-olds could decode a basic form of ironic intonation, but also of whether they did so by evaluating it as one piece of information amongst the others available, as implied by Ackerman's (1982) two stage account -and if so, how -or formulaically, via a knowledge of what it conventionally signals (cf. Keenan & Quigley, 1999;Capelli et al, 1990) -in which case there should be no difference between lies and jokes.…”

How do typically developing children grasp the meaning of verbal irony?

“…There is evidence that children attend to some of the same conditions for irony as do adults. For instance, children's irony comprehension is facilitated by echoic mention (Hancock et al, 2000;Keenan & Quigley, 1999). We would argue that a developmental explanation of irony comprehension requires more than a restatement of adult theories.…”

Irony as Expression (of a Sense of the Absurd)

“…1 Capelli and Nakagawa (1990), Creusere (1999;, Keenan and Quigley (1999), Nakassis and Snedeker (2002), and Winner (1997) address developmental issues in comprehension of irony. Giora et al (2000), Happé (1993), Langdon, Davies and Coltheart (2002), McDonald and Pearce (1996), and Smith and Tsimpli (1995) discuss its impairment.…”