Irony production and comprehension

How does childhood bilingualism and bi-dialectalism affect the interpretation and processing of pragmatic meanings?

“…In this respect, it has been suggested that pragmatic intrerpretation depends on a Theory of Mind (ToM), the cognitive component that is responsible for ascribing mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions) to oneself and/or to others and for interpreting the behaviour of others based on these mental states. Again, experimental evidence has shown that ToM-related processes (e.g., taking into account speaker's reliability or knowledge) are involved during online pragmatic interpretation (see e.g., Breheny, Ferguson & Katsos, 2013;Grodner & Sedivy, 2011;Spotorno & Noveck, 2014) and that successful pragmatic understanding in children may depend on the development of a Theory of Mind (Filippova, 2014).…”

“…First, given that bilingual and bi-dialectal children in our study were exposed to Dutch primarily through education, we wanted to ensure that they had sufficient experience and knowledge of that language. Second, we tested older children because we wanted to examine pragmatic meanings such as irony, which previous research has shown to develop until late in childhood (Filippova, 2014). Thirdly, we wanted to test children who would be old and competent enough to understand the pragmatic meanings examined and to perform unaided a computerised task recording RTs.…”

“…Our study included a larger sample of participants ( n = 138) and more critical items ( n = 12) than past research on bilingual children's understanding of non-literal meanings (apart from Syrett et al, 2017 who tested 139 children in two experiments and Antoniou & Katsos, 2017, who used 15 critical items). In addition, we examined the comprehension of irony, which is generally thought to be the most demanding pragmatic meaning for children (Filippova, 2014). Thus, the items on irony are possibly more sensitive to group differences.…”

Addressing the Challenge of Verbal Irony: Getting Serious about Sarcasm Training

“…Children's appreciation tends to be more accurate for more direct forms of verbal irony: ironic criticisms like "you are so graceful" rather than the less direct "you could be an acrobat" (Dews et al 1996;Hancock et al 2000;Harris and Pexman 2003;Pexman et al 2005). Appreciation of verbal irony continues to develop through middle childhood, between about 7 and 10 years of age (Bosco and Bucciarelli 2008;Filippova andAstington 2008, 2010;Glenwright and Pexman 2010), with more sophisticated understanding of the humor and teasing functions (Dews et al 1996;Pexman et al 2005) and improved comprehension of less common forms of irony, like ironic compliments (Filippova and Astington 2010;Pexman and Glenwright 2007). Indeed, counterfactual irony can also be used to compliment (Dews et al 1996;Dews et al 1995;Pexman and Olineck 2002a), as when a speaker says "you sure are a terrible student" to someone who has just received a perfect score on a test.…”

“…They suggested that social learning was also important to irony development. A child must have a mental category for ironic language in order to detect ironic intent, acquired through experience with sarcastic speech and with people's reactions to it (see also Filippova 2014). Once opposition between statement and context is detected, children need to have sufficient knowledge of irony to know that it might be the inferential solution (Ackerman 1983).…”