Two Cues for Verbal Irony: Hyperbole and the Ironic Tone of Voice

The use of co-textual irony markers in written discourse

“…These findings confirm earlier research that found a close connection between hyperbole and the use of irony (e.g., Kreuz & Roberts 1995).…”

“…Kreuz & Roberts 1995). In other words, an ironic utterance that is marked with a hyperbole may be easier to identify as ironic than an ironic utterance that is not marked at all.…”

“…Various scholars have identified many different types of irony markers that an author can use to mark such an utterance (e.g., Attardo 2000a;Kreuz 1996;Muecke 1978;Seto 1998). In written communication, these markers can roughly be classified into four different categories: (1) tropes, such as hyperboles (e.g., Kreuz & Roberts 1995) and rhetorical questions (e.g., Muecke 1978), (2) schematic markers such as repetition (e.g., Muecke 1978) and a change of register (e.g., Haiman 1998), (3) morpho-syntactic markers such as exclamations (e.g., Seto 1998) and tag questions (e.g., Kreuz A r t i c l e i n p r e s s 1996) and (4) typographic markers such as quotation marks (e.g., Attardo 2001) and emoticons (e.g., Kreuz 1996; for a more detailed explanation, see Burgers 2010).…”

“…This means that the irony marker of hyperboles (cf. Kreuz & Roberts 1995) could be extended to the domain of co-textual markers.…”

Influence of Voice Intonation on Understanding Irony by Polish-Speaking Preschool Children

“…Verbal irony is a fi gure of speech very commonly used to achieve various social and communicative goals (Kreuz & Roberts, 1995;Leggit & Gibbs, 2000). Th e speaker may decide to use an ironic utt erance instead of a literal one in order to, for example, express criticism indirectly -a positive statement with a negative intended meaning (e.g., Dews, Kaplan, & Winner, 1995).…”