Quotation marks and the processing of irony in English: evidence from a reading time study

Abstract

Quotation marks are used for different purposes in language, one of which is to signal that something has to be interpreted in an ironic way, as in the utterance What a “nice” day! said on a rainy and cold day. The present contribution describes a reading time experiment in which we analyzed the processing and understanding of ironic written sentences with or without quotation marks and asked whether and how these marks affect the subjects’ reading of the sentences. Native speakers of English were exposed to two contexts and a subsequent target sentence. Semantically, context and target sentences were connected either ironically or literally or were entirely unrelated. Each of these three meaning conditions contained quotation marks or not. Within the target sentences, which were identical across the different conditions, we measured the reading time before the respective meaning (ironic, literal, unrelated) was revealed, at the phrase that made the scenario ironic, literal, or unrelated, and at the end of the sentence. Furthermore, having read the target sentence, subjects rated how well this sentence fit the preceding context, and the time they needed for their judgment was recorded as well. Results clearly show that quotation marks increase the processing burden first, independently of the meaning specification in a sentence, but then play a crucial and beneficial role in the processing and recognition of irony. We reflect upon these findings against the background of semantic and pragmatic theories of quotation.