Making sense of nonliteral language, like irony, has been a hot topic in pragmatics and psycholinguistics for quite some time. Since the '70s, there's been an ongoing debate on whether context helps us grasp figurative language early on or if we always default to the basic, context-independent meanings of words. This paper digs into the specifics of irony processing, focusing on key psycholinguistic theories that aim to shed light on how people interpret ironic expressions.
Among these theories, three stand out: the standard pragmatic model (Grice 1975; Searle 1985), the direct access view (Gibbs 1994), and the graded salience hypothesis (Giora 1997; 1999). The graded salience hypothesis, in particular, suggests that we always start with the most obvious, context-independent meanings of words.
Recent research by Giora, Givoni, and Fein (2015), however, challenges this idea. They propose that sentences with explicit negation of extreme or highly positive statements default to an ironic interpretation. This goes against the graded salience hypothesis, which says that the most obvious meanings always come first.
To untangle this debate, this paper presents findings from an online questionnaire study. The focus is on sentences with explicit negation in different contexts. Participants have to choose between literal and ironic interpretations, giving us insights into how context affects the understanding of ironic statements.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Empirical findings: Figurative language comprehension
2.1 Characteristics of irony
2.1.1 Definition of irony
2.1.2 Features of verbal irony: Functions and cues for ironic interpretations
2.2 Psycholinguistic models of irony comprehension
2.2.1 The standard pragmatic model
2.2.2 The direct access view
2.2.3 The graded salience hypothesis
3. Online study
3.1 Goals of the questionnaire study
3.2 Methodology
3.2.1 Participants
3.2.2 Procedure
3.3 Results
3.4 Discussion
4. Conclusion
Objectives & Themes
This thesis aims to investigate how people comprehend ironical utterances that contain an explicit negation of extreme assessments. It specifically evaluates whether such utterances are interpreted ironically by default, as suggested by competing psycholinguistic theories and prior experimental data, by comparing interpretations in contextualized versus isolated settings.
- Comparison of major psycholinguistic models (Standard Pragmatic Model, Direct Access View, Graded Salience Hypothesis).
- Empirical analysis of verbal irony, its functions, and its communicative cues.
- Evaluation of the role of structural context (second-turn position vs. isolation) in irony comprehension.
- Exploration of sociolinguistic factors, particularly gender differences, in the interpretation of ironic and literal meanings.
Excerpt from the Book
1. Introduction
How exactly do we interpret an utterance such as What nice weather we are having today even though it may be rainy outside? Do we first have to access the literal meaning of the individual words, or even the whole literal proposition, before deriving the ironic interpretation? Or can we, at least in some cases, immediately understand the ironic undertone of the message conveyed? Are literal and nonliteral utterances, thus, understood in different ways or do they rely on the same comprehension processes? These are some of the key questions taking center stage in recent debates on figurative language comprehension. This thesis will be concerned with the two dominant approaches to figurative language processing, more specifically irony processing: Giora’s ‘graded salience hypothesis’ (1997; 1999) and Gibbs’ ‘direct access view’ (1994).
The study of figurative expressions – such as metaphors, idioms, proverbs, and ironies – has always been a considerable research area for both psycholinguists and neuroscientists (Colston and O’Brien 2000: 1558; Gibbs and Colston 2012: 3). Much as other types of figurative language, the interpretation of ironical utterances is heavily context-dependent (Gibbs and Colston 2012: 3). In this respect, irony is a particularly interesting type of nonliteral language as it expresses a speaker’s attitude and opinion towards a certain event, opinion or person in an indirect evaluative way (Giora 1995: 259; Ivanko and Pexman 2003: 242; Partington 2007: 1547). Thus, irony serves a variety of social and communicative functions (ibid.). The focus of this thesis lies on verbal irony and how instances of ironic messages are understood and processed by the listener.
Chapter Summaries
1. Introduction: This chapter introduces the core research questions regarding the comprehension of ironical utterances and outlines the two primary psycholinguistic theories analyzed in the thesis.
2. Empirical findings: Figurative language comprehension: This chapter defines verbal irony and discusses the major theoretical frameworks, specifically the standard pragmatic model, the direct access view, and the graded salience hypothesis.
3. Online study: This chapter details the design, methodology, and results of a questionnaire study aimed at testing how participants interpret negated extreme assessments in different contexts.
4. Conclusion: This chapter synthesizes the main findings and provides a discussion on the limitations of current research while suggesting avenues for future studies.
Keywords
irony comprehension, psycholinguistics, graded salience hypothesis, direct access view, literal meaning, nonliteral language, explicit negation, context-dependence, pragmatic processing, sarcasm, questionnaire study, figurative language, cognitive processing, salience, structural context.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the fundamental focus of this research paper?
The paper focuses on the psycholinguistic processing of verbal irony, specifically examining whether utterances containing explicit negation are interpreted as ironic by default.
What are the central theoretical themes addressed?
The central themes are the debate between top-down and bottom-up processing in language, and the conflict between the standard pragmatic model, the direct access view, and the graded salience hypothesis.
What is the primary research question?
The study asks whether negative utterances containing a quality judgment are preferentially interpreted ironically, and to what extent structural context (isolation vs. second-turn in a sequence) influences this interpretation.
What methodology is employed to gather data?
The author conducted an online questionnaire study, using two different conditions—one with isolated target sentences and one where target sentences were preceded by a context-providing statement—to analyze participant responses.
What does the main body of the paper cover?
The main body covers a comprehensive review of existing irony literature, a critical comparison of psycholinguistic models, and a detailed analysis of the results obtained from the conducted online study.
Which keywords best characterize this work?
Key terms include irony comprehension, graded salience hypothesis, direct access view, explicit negation, figurative language, and structural context.
How does the author define verbal irony in the context of this study?
The author discusses irony as a complex rhetorical figure that often expresses a speaker's speaker's attitude or opinion indirectly and frequently involves a contrast between expectation and reality.
What did the results reveal about isolated vs. contextualized utterances?
The results indicated that while isolated negated utterances tend to be interpreted ironically, they are much more likely to be understood literally when embedded in a context that provides a second-turn conversational structure.
Are there notable differences in how males and females interpret these stimuli?
The study found that, in certain conditions, female participants showed a slightly higher preference for ironic interpretations, whereas males displayed a clearer inclination toward literal ones.
- Quote paper
- Kim-Cheyenne Greiner (Author), 2016, Testing Psycholinguistic Theories of Irony Comprehension, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1440768
