Understanding Versus Discriminating Nonliteral Utterances: Evidence for a Dissociation

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

“…More children were always correct in their speaker belief assessments of ironic criticisms (n ¼ 40) than in their speaker belief assessments of ironic compliments (n ¼ 15, McNemar test, po.001, 13 of these children were also in the perfect accuracy group for ironic criticisms). This is consistent with the findings reported by de Groot et al (1995) and Hancock et al (2000) when no explicit echo was provided for the ironic statements. There was, however, no significant difference in the number of children who achieved perfect accuracy perceiving teasing for ironic criticisms (n ¼ 21) and ironic compliments (n ¼ 25, McNemar test, p ¼ :45, 15 of these children were also in the perfect accuracy group for ironic criticisms).…”

“…At a linguistic level, ironic criticisms and ironic compliments are not different in any principled way; both involve making a remark using the opposite valence to that which is intended (Nakassis & Snedeker, 2002). Certainly, children tend to find speaker belief judgments easier for ironic criticisms than for ironic compliments in cases where an explicit echo is not provided for ironic statements (de Groot et al, 1995;Hancock et al, 2000;Harris & Pexman, 2003) and we would predict the same tendency for speaker belief judgments in the present study. Ironic compliments are less conventional than ironic criticisms (Gibbs, 2000), so children will likely have less experience with ironic compliments than with ironic criticisms.…”

“…The liar does want the listener to believe that they intend the literal meaning of the statement: they intend the target to perceive a compliment about their research. It has also been argued that in order to demonstrate that irony has been comprehended the listener should show understanding that the speaker is being intentionally nonliteral (Ackerman, 1982;Andrews et al, 1986;de Groot et al, 1995). That is, the ironist is using counterfactual language deliberately, to tease the target.…”

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

“…Nasal tones, deadpan tones of voice and an undue emphasis on particular words are all commonly used by sarcastic speakers. While a sarcastic intonation may not be a necessary feature of children's comprehension, it is certainly the case that in some instances a distinctive intonation may further children's ability to detect the speaker's underlying meaning (deGroot, Kaplan, Rosenblatt, Dews & Winner, 1995). Children were given a set of stories which varied on two dimensions: whether the utterance was discrepant or congruent with a literal interpretation of the speaker's remark and whether or not the speaker used a sarcastic intonation.…”

The impact of foreign accent on irony interpretation

“…Two different types of irony (and relative literal controls) were created: ironic criticism, where the irony was used to make an indirect critique (as in the example above “You’re such a great chef!”), and ironic praise, where the ironic statement was an indirect compliment to the interlocutor (e.g., “You’re such a horrible chef!” to a friend who has just been awarded a third Michelin star). These two types of irony have different frequency of use, with the ironic criticism being the prototypical, the most widespread, and the easiest to be learned, produced and understood [27,32,33]. …”