Obligatory processing of literal and nonliteral meanings in verbal irony

Dews, Shelly; Winner, Ellen

doi:10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00005-3

Cited by 139 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…A rich body of literature in psychology and linguistics has examined how people use and understand nonliteral language (1)(2)(3)(4). However, most of the work has been qualitative, with little focus on analyzing aspects of an utterance that predict the quantitative details of people's figurative interpretations.…”

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confidence: 99%

Nonliteral understanding of number words

Kao¹,

Bergen

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

123

107

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One of the most puzzling and important facts about communication is that people do not always mean what they say; speakers often use imprecise, exaggerated, or otherwise literally false descriptions to communicate experiences and attitudes. Here, we focus on the nonliteral interpretation of number words, in particular hyperbole (interpreting unlikely numbers as exaggerated and conveying affect) and pragmatic halo (interpreting round numbers imprecisely). We provide a computational model of number interpretation as social inference regarding the communicative goal, meaning, and affective subtext of an utterance. We show that our model predicts humans' interpretation of number words with high accuracy. Our model is the first to our knowledge to incorporate principles of communication and empirically measured background knowledge to quantitatively predict hyperbolic and pragmatic halo effects in number interpretation. This modeling framework provides a unified approach to nonliteral language understanding more generally.pragmatics | computational modeling I magine a friend describing a new restaurant where she recently dined. Your friend says, "It took 30 minutes to get a table." You are likely to interpret this to mean she waited ∼30 min. Suppose she says: "It took 32 minutes to get a table." You are more likely to interpret this to mean exactly 32 min. Now, suppose she says: "It took a million years to get a table." You will probably interpret this to mean that the wait was shorter than a million years, but importantly that she thinks it took much too long. One of the most fascinating facts about communication is that people do not always mean what they say-a crucial part of the listener's job is to understand an utterance even when its literal meaning is false. People's ability to interpret nonliteral language poses a critical puzzle for research on language understanding.A rich body of literature in psychology and linguistics has examined how people use and understand nonliteral language (1-4). However, most of the work has been qualitative, with little focus on analyzing aspects of an utterance that predict the quantitative details of people's figurative interpretations. Here, we present a computational model that formalizes and integrates three general principles of language and communication to explain the basis of nonliteral language understanding. First, speakers and listeners communicate with the assumption that their interlocutors are rational and cooperative agents; second, listeners assume that speakers choose utterances to maximize informativeness with respect to their communicative goals; third, speaker and listener use common ground-their shared knowledge of the world-to communicate effectively. The first principle has been formalized by a recent body of work on rational speech act (RSA) models, which views pragmatic language understanding as probabilistic inference over recursive social models and explains a range of phenomena in human pragmatic reasoning (5-8). We go beyond the previous formal wor...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonliteral understanding of number words

Kao¹,

Bergen

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

123

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Verbale ironie is een linguïstische troop waarbij de impliciete betekenis altijd tegengesteld is aan de letterlijke betekenis (o.a. Dews & Winner, 1999;Giora, 1995). De impliciete ironische betekenis van de titel is bijvoorbeeld dat je juist wél verder moet lezen, en dat dat wel degelijk een nuttige bezigheid is.…”

Section: Ironie En Redenen Om Er Gebruik Van Te Makenunclassified

“…Dit vereist enig raffinement en laat zien dat je je emoties onder controle hebt (Attardo, 2000). Onderzoek (Dews & Winner, 1999;Jorgensen, 1996) laat zien dat kritiek als milder wordt ervaren als dat gebeurt met een ironische uiting. Dews & Winner (1999) schrijven dit toe aan het zogenaamde assimilatie-effect: bij ironische kritiek assimileert de positieve toon van de letterlijke boodschap met de bedoelde negatieve betekenis (Dews & Winner, 1999).…”

Section: Ironie En Redenen Om Er Gebruik Van Te Makenunclassified

“…De rest van de co-tekst was voor alle condities identiek en alle fragmenten (met uitzondering van de fillers) gaven blijk van een negatieve attitude ten opzichte van het beschreven werk. Verschillen in verwerking die veroorzaakt worden door de polariteit van ironie, zoals beschreven door Dews & Winner (1999, 1583, werden dus voorkomen door alleen gebruik te maken van positieve ironie (negatieve ironie is immers vrij ongebruikelijk en moeilijker te interpreteren dan positieve ironie).…”

Section: Materiaalunclassified

“…Naast deze praktische implicatie zullen de resultaten hun weerslag moeten vinden in de wetenschappelijke theorievorming omtrent ironieverwerking. Net als in eerder onderzoek (Dews & Winner, 1999) wordt ironische kritiek als milder ervaren dan letterlijke kritiek. Omdat zowel de letterlijke als de ironische betekenis hierbij een rol speelt, is dit moeilijk in overeenstemming te brengen met de standaard pragmatische benadering (waarbij de letterlijke betekenis wordt verworpen en er dus geen punt is waar zowel de letterlijke als de ironische betekenis zijn geactiveerd).…”

Section: Maatschappelijke En Wetenschappelijke Implicatiesunclassified

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Lees Niet Verder! Ga Iets Nuttigs Doen

Hodiamont

Burgers

Mulken

2010

TTwiA

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In this research, we investigated the influence of co-text (the text of which an utterance is part of) on the processing of ironic evaluations. In an experiment, we adapted and manipulated fragments from film, book and music reviews. Participants randomly read versions with either two ironie evaluations, two literal evaluations, or an ironie evaluation preceded by a literal evaluation. Findings show that literal evaluations (such as "we don't want to hear the local brass band play at a rock festival") were read faster than ironie evaluations (such as "we all love to hear the local brass band play at a rock festival"). However, ironie evaluations were read faster if they were marked by a preceding ironie evaluation. Fragments of negative reviews were interpreted as less negative if they contained irony. Irony thus muted criticism. In addition, appreciation of the reviews was higher if fragments contained two ironie evaluations.

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Is Verbal Irony Special?

Bryant

2012

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The way we speak can reveal much about what we intend to communicate, but the words we use often only indirectly relate to the meanings we wish to convey. Verbal irony is a commonly studied form of indirect speech in which a speaker produces an explicit evaluative utterance that implicates an unstated, opposing evaluation. Producing and understanding ironic language, as well as many other types of indirect speech, requires the ability to recognize mental states in others, sometimes described as a capacity for metarepresentation. This article aims to connect common elements between the major theoretical approaches to verbal irony to recent psycholinguistic, developmental, and neuropsychological research demonstrating the necessity for metarepresentation in the effective use of verbal irony in social interaction. Here I will argue that verbal irony is one emergent, strategic possibility given the interface between people's ability to infer mental states, and use language. Rather than think of ironic communication as a specialized cognitive ability, I will claim that it arises from the same set of abilities that underlie a wide range of inferential communicative behaviors.Language interaction involves a complex interplay of many cognitive abilities. Theorists across many disciplines struggle with questions of how to carve up these abilities, and whether they can be carved up in the first place (e.g., Christiansen and Chater 2008). Among the most difficult questions to address are those that involve how people recognize intentions in others' behavior, and how that is achieved through language in the context of many other sources of information. The way we speak can reveal much about what we intend to communicate, but the words we use are often quite different from the meanings we wish to convey. People often speak indirectly for a variety of strategic reasons, and these strategies rely intrinsically on social cognition. One well-researched example of this is the phenomenon of verbal irony -a type of indirect speech in which a speaker produces an explicit evaluative utterance that implicates an unstated, opposing evaluation. As described below, this trope has been traditionally defined in rather vague terms, but has generated a great deal of research as a phenomenon in need of special theoretical explanation. Here I will argue that verbal irony is one emergent, strategic possibility given the interface between people's ability to infer the mental states of others, and use language. Rather than think of ironic communication as a unique skill or specialized cognitive ability, I suggest that it arises from the same set of abilities that underlie a wide range of inferential communicative behaviors.The study of verbal irony production and comprehension has been a multidisciplinary effort lacking extensive interdisciplinary exchange. There have been various taxonomies and definitions of what constitutes irony, both verbal and situational -a struggling enterprise to say the least (Colston and Gibbs 2007). The traditional not...

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Obligatory processing of literal and nonliteral meanings in verbal irony

Cited by 139 publications

References 36 publications

Nonliteral understanding of number words

Nonliteral understanding of number words

Lees Niet Verder! Ga Iets Nuttigs Doen

Is Verbal Irony Special?

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