Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-l4dxg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T09:55:23.724Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Exploring the role of conventionality in children's interpretation of ironic remarks*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2014

DEBRA L. BURNETT
DEBRA L. BURNETT*
Affiliation:
Kansas State University
*
Address for correspondence: Debra L. Burnett, Program in Communication Sciences and Disorders, School of Family Studies and Human Services, Kansas State University, 238 Campus Creek Complex, Manhattan, Kansas 66506. tel: (785) 532-0802; fax: (785) 532-6523; e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Irony comprehension in seven- and eight-year-old children with typically developing language skills was explored under the framework of the graded salience hypothesis. Target ironic remarks, either conventional or novel/situation-specific, were presented following brief story contexts. Children's responses to comprehension questions were used to determine their understanding of the components of irony: speaker meaning, speaker attitude, and speaker intent. It was hypothesized that conventional remarks would be easier to comprehend than novel/situation-specific remarks because they are more likely to be familiar to the children. Results indicated that children demonstrated better comprehension of speaker meaning for conventional remarks than for novel/situation-specific remarks but no significant differences were found for inferring speaker attitude or speaker intent.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1267 - 1288
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

The author would like to thank Linda Milosky, Benita Blachman, Mary Louise Edwards, Janet Ford, and Annette Jenner-Matthews for their considerable support and mentoring in the completion of this project, Caroline Moore for her wonderful illustrations, the undergraduate and graduate students who worked in the language lab on various stages of the project, and the children who participated. Thanks also to Ann Bosma Smit and two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on an earlier version of this paper.

References

REFERENCES

Ackerman, B. (1981). Young children's understanding of a speaker's use of a false utterance. Developmental Psychology, 17, 472–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ackerman, B. (1983). Form and function in children's understanding of ironic utterances. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 35, 487–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, J., Rosenblatt, E.Malkus, U., Gardner, H., & Winner, E. (1986). Children's abilities to distinguish metaphoric and ironic utterances from mistakes and lies. Communication & Cognition, 19, 281–298.Google Scholar
Anolli, L., Ciceri, R., & Infantino, M. G. (2000). Irony as a game of implicitness: acoustic profiles of ironic communication. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 275–311.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anolli, L., Ciceri, R., & Infantino, M. G. (2002). From ‘blame by praise’ to ‘praise by blame’: analysis of vocal patterns in ironic communication. International Journal of Psychology, 37, 266–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ASHA (American Speech-Language Hearing Association) (1997). Guidelines for audiologic screening, online: <www.asha.org/policy>..>Google Scholar
Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J., & Poggi, I. (2003). Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm. Humor, 16, 243–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bishop, D. V. M. & Adams, C. (1992). Comprehension problems in children with specific language impairment: literal and inferential meaning. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 119–129.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boersma, P. & Weenik, D. (2009). Praat: doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1·05) [Computer program], online: <www.praat.org>..>Google Scholar
Bryant, G. A., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2005). Is there an ironic tone of voice? Language and Speech, 48, 257–277.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bugental, D., Kaswan, J., & Love, L. (1970). Perception of contradictory meanings conveyed by verbal and nonverbal channels. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 647–655.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Capelli, C., Nakagawa, N., & Madden, C. (1990). How children understand sarcasm: the role of context and intonation. Child Development, 61, 1824–1841.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H., & Gerrig, R. (1984). On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 121–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, H., & Lucy, P. (1975). Understanding what is meant from what is said: a study in conversationally conveyed requests. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 56–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culatta, B., Page, J., & Ellis, J. (1983). Story retelling as a communicative performance screening tool. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 14, 66–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demorest, A., Silberstein, L., Gardner, H., & Winner, E. (1983). Telling it as it isn't: children's understanding of figurative language. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 1, 121–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dews, S., & Winner, E. (1997). Attributing meaning to deliberate false utterances: the case of irony. In Mandell, C. and McCabe, A. (Eds.), The problem of meaning: behavioral and cognitive perspectives (pp. 377–414). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dews, S., Winner, E., Kaplan, J.Rosenblatt, E.Hunt, M., Lim, K.McGovern, A., Qualter, A., & Smarsh, B. (1996). Children's understanding of the meaning and functions of verbal irony. Child Development, 67, 3071–3085.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eisterhold, J., Attardo, S., & Boxer, D. (2006). Reactions to irony in discourse: evidence for the least disruption principle. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 1239–1256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elliott, C. (2007). Differential ability scales-second edition. San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment, Inc.Google Scholar
Filippova, E., & Astington, J. (2008). Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development, 79, 126–138.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Filippova, E., & Astington, J. (2010). Children's understanding of social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony. Child Development, 81, 913–928.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gaulin, C., & Campbell, T. (1994). Procedure for assessing verbal working memory in normal school-age children: some preliminary data. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79, 55–64.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gibbs, R. (1986a). Comprehension and memory for nonliteral utterances: the problem of sarcastic indirect requests. Acta Psychologica, 62, 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R. (1986b). On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 115, 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillam, R., & Pearson, N. (2004). Test of narrative language. East Moline, IL: Linguisystems.Google Scholar
Giora, R., Balaban, N., Fein, O., & Alkabets, I. (2005). Explicit negation as positivity in disguise. In Colston, H. L. & Katz, A. N. (Eds.), Figurative language comprehension: social and cultural influences (pp. 233–258). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Giora, R., & Fein, O. (1999a). Irony comprehension: the graded salience hypothesis. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 12, 425–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giora, R., & Fein, O. (1999b). Irony: context and salience. Metaphor and Symbol, 14, 241–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giora, R., Fein, O., & Schwartz, T. (1998). Irony: graded salience and indirect negation. Metaphor and Symbol, 13, 83–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, vol. 3, speech acts (pp. 41–50). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hancock, J., Dunham, P., & Purdy, K. (2000). Children's comprehension of critical and complimentary forms of verbal irony. Journal of Cognition and Development, 1, 227–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollingshead, A. B. (1975). Four factor index of social status. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT.Google Scholar
Honeck, R, Welge, J., & Temple, J. (1998). The symmetry control in tests of the standard pragmatic model: the case of proverb comprehension. Metaphor and Symbol, 13, 257–273.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivanko, S., & Pexman, P. (2003). Context incongruity and irony processing. Discourse Processes, 35, 241–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jorgensen, J., Miller, G., & Sperber, D. (1984). Test of the mention theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 113, 112–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, T., & Quigley, K. (1999). Do young children use echoic information in their comprehension of sarcastic speech? A test of echoic mention theory. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 17, 83–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreuz, R., & Roberts, R. (1995). Two cues for verbal irony: hyperbole and ironic tone of voice. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity, 10, 21–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S., & Brown, M. (1995). How about another piece of the pie? The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 124, 3–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Massaro, D., Valle, A., & Marchetti, A. (2013). Irony and second-order false belief in children: What changes when mothers rather than siblings speak? European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 10, 301–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, S. (2000). Neuropsychological studies of sarcasm. Metaphor and Symbol, 115, 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milosky, L., & Ford, J. (1997). The role of prosody in children's inferences of ironic intent. Discourse Processes, 23, 47–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newcomer, P., & Hammill, D. (1997). Test of language development: primary, 3rd ed.Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.Google Scholar
Pexman, P. (2005). Social factors in the interpretation of verbal irony: the roles of speaker and listener characteristics. In Colston, H. L. & Katz, A. N. (Eds.), Figurative language comprehension: social and cultural influences (pp. 209–232). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Pexman, P., & Glenwright, M. (2007). How do typically developing children grasp the meaning of verbal irony? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 20, 178–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P., Glenwright, M., Hala, S., Kowbel, S., & Jungen, S. (2006). Children's use of trait information in understanding verbal irony. Metaphor and Symbol, 21, 39–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rockwell, P. (2000). Lower, slower, louder: vocal cues of sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 483–495.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J. (1979). Expression and meaning: studies in the theory of speech acts. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D. (1984). Verbal irony: pretense or echoic mention? Journal of Experimental Psychology, 113, 130–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981). Pragmatics. Cognition, 10, 281–286.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomblin, J. B., Records, N., & Zhang, X. (1996). A system for the diagnosis of specific language impairment in Kindergarten children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 39, 1284–1294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Utsumi, A. (2000). Verbal irony as implicit display of ironic environment: distinguishing ironic utterances from nonirony. Journal of Pragmatics, 32, 1777–1806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Utsumi, A. (2004). Stylistic and contextual effects in irony processing. Paper presented at 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Winner, E., & Leekam, S. (1991). Distinguishing irony from deception: understanding the speaker's second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 9, 257–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar