Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-8cg97 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-09T23:53:43.791Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Development of children's ability to distinguish sarcasm and verbal irony*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2009

MELANIE GLENWRIGHT  and
PENNY M. PEXMAN
MELANIE GLENWRIGHT*
Affiliation:
University of Manitoba
PENNY M. PEXMAN
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
*
[*]Address for correspondence: Melanie Glenwright, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, P517B Duff Roblin Bldg, 190 Dysart Rd, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA, R3T 2N2. tel: 1 (204) 474-9726; fax: (204) 474-7599; e-mail: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Adults distinguish between ironic remarks directed at targets (sarcasm) and ironic remarks not directed at specific targets. We investigated the development of children's appreciation for this distinction by presenting these speech acts to 71 five- to six-year-olds and 71 nine- to ten-year-olds. Five- to six-year-olds were beginning to understand the non-literal meanings of sarcastic speakers and ironic speakers but did not distinguish ironic and sarcastic speakers' intentions. Nine- to ten-year-olds were more accurate at understanding sarcastic and ironic speakers and they distinguished these speakers' intentions, rating sarcastic criticisms as more ‘mean’ than ironic criticisms. These results show that children can determine the non-literal meanings of sarcasm and irony by six years of age but do not distinguish the pragmatic purposes of these speech acts until later in middle childhood.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 429 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ackerman, B. P. (1983). Form and function in children's understanding of ironic utterances. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 35, 487–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bryant, B. K. (1982). An index of empathy for children and adolescents. Child Development 53, 413–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Capelli, C. A., Nakagawa, N. & Madden, C. M. (1990). How children understand sarcasm: The role of context and intonation. Child Development 16, 1824–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Colston, H. (1997). Salting a wound or sugaring a pill: The pragmatic functions of ironic criticism. Discourse Processes 23, 24–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, A., Kaplan, J., Rosenblatt, E., Dews, S. & Winner, E. (1995). Understanding versus discriminating nonliteral utterances: Evidence for a disassociation. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10, 255–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demorest, A., Meyer, C., Phelps, E., Gardner, H. & Winner, E. (1984). Words speak louder than actions: Understanding deliberately false remarks. Child Development 55, 1527–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennis, M., Purvis, K., Barnes, M. A., Wilkinson, M. & Winner, E. (2001). Understanding of literal truth, ironic criticism, and deceptive praise following childhood head injury. Brain & Language 78, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dews, S., Kaplan, J. & Winner, E. (1995). Why not say it directly? The social functions of irony. Discourse Processes 19, 347–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dews, S. & Winner, E. (1995). Muting the meaning: A social function of irony. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 10, 3–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dews, S. & Winner, E. (1997). Attributing meaning to deliberately false utterances: The case of irony. In Mandell, C. & McCabe, A. (eds), The problem of meaning: Behavioral and cognitive perspectivesS, 377–414. New York: Elsevier Science.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, 3071–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Filipova, E. & Astington, J. W. (2008). Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development 79, 126–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbs, R. W. Jr. (2000). Irony in talk among friends. Metaphor & Symbol 15, 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. (1975) Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J. L. (eds), Syntax and semantics, Vol. III, Speech acts, 41–58. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Hala, S., Pexman, P. M., Climie, E., Rostad, K. & Glenwright, M. (in press). A bidirectional view of executive function and social interaction. In Carpendale, J., Iarocci, G., Müller, U., Sokol, B. & Young, A. (eds), Self- and social-regulation: Exploring the relations between social interaction, social cognition, and the development of executive functions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hancock, J. T., Dunham, P. J. & Purdy, K. (2000). Children's comprehension of critical and complimentary forms of verbal irony. Journal of Cognition and Development 1, 227–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Happé, F. G. E. (1993). Communicative competence and theory of mind: A test of relevance theory. Cognition 48, 101–119.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harris, M. & Pexman, P. M. (2003). Children's perceptions of the social functions of verbal irony. Discourse Processes 36, 147–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive-developmental approach to socialization. In Goslin, D. (ed.), Handbook of socialization theory and research, 347–480. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Kreuz, R. J. (2000). The production and processing of verbal irony. Metaphor and Symbol 15, 99–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreuz, R. J. & Glucksberg, S. (1989). How to be sarcastic: The echoic reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 118, 374–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, C. J. & Katz, A. N. (1998). The differential role of ridicule in sarcasm and irony. Metaphor and Symbol 13, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, S. & Pearce, S. (1996). Clinical insights into pragmatic theory: Frontal lobe deficits and sarcasm. Brain & Language 53, 81–104.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nakassis, C. & Snedeker, J. (2002). Beyond sarcasm: Intonation and context as relational cues in children's recognition of irony. In Greenhill, A., Hughs, M., Littlefield, H. & Walsh, H. (eds), Proceedings of the 26th Boston University Conference on Language Development, 429–40. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Perner, J. & Wimmer, H. (1985). John thinks that Mary thinks that: Attribution of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 39, 437–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P. M. (2008). It's fascinating research: The cognition of verbal irony. Current Directions in Psychological Science 17, 286–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P. M. & Glenwright, M. (2007). How do typically developing children grasp the meaning of verbal irony? Journal of Neurolinguistics 20, 178–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P. M., 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
Pexman, P. M. & Olineck, K. (2002). Does sarcasm always sting? Investigating the impact of ironic insults and ironic compliments. Discourse Processes 33, 199–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sullivan, K., Winner, E. & Hopfield, N. (1995). How children tell a lie from a joke: The role of second-order mental state attributions. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 13, 191–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Winner, E. & Leekam, S. (1991). Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker's second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 9, 257–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Utsumi, A. (2000). Verbal irony as implicit display of ironic environment: Distinguishing ironic utterances from nonirony. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1777–806.CrossRefGoogle Scholar