Article published in:
Pragmatic Development in First Language Acquisition
Edited by Danielle Matthews
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 10] 2014
► pp. 261–278

Irony production and comprehension

This review sketches some recent approaches and research findings on children’s production and comprehension of discourse irony and situational irony. The separate treatment of production and comprehension in the overview of each of the two kinds of irony helps in highlighting children’s reliance on different competencies for their generating and interpreting irony, respectively. The definition-challenge section highlights the form and content of irony across different domains of research inquiry, and is followed by a discussion of methodological challenges leading to seeming inconsistencies across the reported findings. The final section offers suggestions for more ecologically valid research methods and calls for combining quantitative and qualitative methods in future studies of irony in both children and adults.
Published online: 26 June 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.10.15fil
References
Ackerman, B.P
(1981) Young children’s understanding of a speaker’s intentional use of a false utterance. Developmental Psychology , 17, 472–480. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1983) Form and function in children’s understanding of ironic utterances. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 35, 487–508. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1986) Children’s sensitivity to comprehension failure in interpreting a nonliteral use of an utterance. Child Development, 57, 485–497. Crossref
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, 281–297.Google Scholar
Attardo, S., Eisterhold, J., Hay, J., & Poggi, I
(2003) Multimodal markers of irony and sarcasm. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research , 16, 243–260. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bryant, G.A
(2010) Prosodic contrasts in ironic speech. Discourse Processes, 47, 545–566. Crossref
Bryant, G.A., & Fox Tree, J.E
(2005) Is there an ironic tone of voice? Language and Speech , 48, 257–277. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Capelli, C.A., Nakagawa, N., & Madden, C.M
(1990) How children understand sarcasm: The role of context and intonation. Child Development , 61, 1824–1841. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H.H., & Gerrig, R.J
(1984) On the pretense theory of irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 113, 121–126. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Creusere, M.A
(2000) A developmental test of theoretical perspectives on the understanding of verbal irony: Children’s recognition of allusion and pragmatic insincerity. Metaphor and Symbol , 15, 29–45. 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, 1527–1534. 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., 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 Scholar
Dyer, J.R., Shatz, M., & Wellman, H.M
(2000) Young children’s storybooks as a source of mental state information. Cognitive Development , 15, 17–37. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, A., Kaplan, J., Rosenblatt, E., Dews, S., & Winner, E
(1995) Understanding versus discriminating nonliteral utterances: Evidence for a dissociation. Metaphor & Symbolic Activity , 10, 255–273. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ely, R., & McCabe, A
(1994) The language play of kindergarten children. First Language , 40, 19–35. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Filippova, E
(2010, July). Development of advanced social reasoning in Canadian and Czech children . Poster presented at the 21st biennial meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Lusaka, Zambia.
Filippova, E., & Astington, J.W
(2008)  Further development in social reasoning revealed in discourse irony understanding. Child Development , 79, 126–138. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2010) Children’s understanding of social-cognitive and social-communicative aspects of discourse irony. Child Development , 81, 915–930. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gemrichova, M., & Filippova, E
(2012, July). The function of irony in children’s literature . Poster presented at the 22nd biennial meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development, Edmonton, Canada.
Gibbs, R.W., Jr
(2000) Irony talk among friends. Metaphor and Symbol , 15, 5–27. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Glenwright, M., & Pexman, P.M
(2010) Development of children’s ability to distinguish sarcasm and verbal irony. Journal of Child Language , 37, 429–451. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H.P
(1975) Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J.L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics : Vol.3. Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). New York, NY: Academic 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, 227–248. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Happé, F.G.E
(1993) Communicative competence and theory of mind in autism: A test of relevance theory. Cognition , 48, 101–119. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(1995) The role of age and verbal ability in the theory of mind task performance of subjects with autism. Child Development , 66, 843–855. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Harris, M., & Pexman, P.M
(2003) Children perceptions of the social functions of verbal irony. Discourse Processes , 36, 147–165. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, T.R., & 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., & Glucksberg, S
(1989) How to be sarcastic: The reminder theory of verbal irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 118, 347–386. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kreuz, R.J., Long, D.L., & Church, M.B
(1991) On being ironic: Pragmatic and mnemonic implications. Metaphor and Symbolic Activity , 6, 149–162. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S., & Brown, M
(1995) How about another piece of pie: The allusional pretense theory of discourse irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 124, 3–21. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Leggitt, J.S., & Gibbs, R.W
Jr (2000) Emotional reactions to verbal irony. Discourse Processes , 29, 1–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lucariello, J
(1994) Situational irony: A concept of events gone awry. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General , 123, 129–145. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lucariello, J., & Mindolovich, C
(1995) The development of complex metarepresentational reasoning: The case of situational irony. Cognitive Development , 10, 551–576. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lucariello, J.M., & Mindolovich, C
(2002) The best laid plans … : Beyond scripts are counterscripts. Journal of Cognition and Development , 3, 91–115. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Markova, P., Filippova, E., & Volin, J
(2009) Suprasegmental markers of irony in acted and natural discourse. Proceedings of XIXth Czech-German Workshop Speech Processing – Prague, IPE ASCR, 56–60.Google Scholar
Milosky, L.M., & Ford, J.A
(1997) The role of prosody in children’s inferences of ironic intent. Discourse Processes , 23, 47–61. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Morton, J.B., & Trehub, S.E
(2001) Children’s understanding of emotion in speech. Child Development , 72, 834–843. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P.M., & Glenwright, M
(2007) How do typically-developing children grasp the meaning of verbal irony? Journal of Neurolinguistics , 20, 178–196. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P.M., Glenwright, M., Krol, A., & James, T
(2005) An acquired taste: Children’s perceptions of humor and teasing in verbal irony. Discourse Processes , 40, 259–288. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pexman, P.M., Zdrazilova, L., McConnachie, D., Deater-Deckard, K., & Petrill, S.A
(2009) “That was smooth, mom”: Children’s production of verbal and gestural irony. Metaphor and Symbol , 24, 237–248. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Recchia, H.E., Howe, N., Ross, H.S., & Alexander, S
(2010) Children’s understanding and production of verbal irony in family conversations. British Journal of Developmental Psychology , 28, 255–274. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rockwell, P
(2000) Lower, slower, louder: Vocal cues of sarcasm. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research , 29, 483–495. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schank, R.C., & Abelson, R
(1977)  Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding . Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Schwoebel, J., Dews, S., Winner, E., & Srinivas, K
(2000) Obligatory processing of the literal meaning of ironic utterances: Further evidence. Metaphor & Symbol. Special Issue on The Uses of Processing of Irony and Sarcasm , 15, 47–61.Google Scholar
Searle, J.R
(1979) Literal meaning. In J.R. Searle (Ed.), Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts (pp. 117–136). Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, C
(2001) The bicoherence theory of situational irony. Cognitive Science , 25, 775–818. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D
(1995)  Relevance: Communication and Cognition (2nd Ed.). ­Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google 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
Thelander, M.J
(2004)  Putting the Pieces Together: The Development of Children’s Interpretive Judgment through Irony . Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Toronto.
Varga, D
(2000) Hyperbole and humor in children’s language play. Journal of Research in Childhood Education , 14, 142–151. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Whalen, J.M., & Pexman, P.M
(2010) How do children respond to verbal irony in face-to-face communication? The development of mode adoption. Discourse Processes , 47, 363–387. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, D
(2000) Metarepresentation in linguistic communication. In D. Sperber (Ed.), Metarepresentations: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (pp. 411–448). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
(2010) Irony and metarepresentation. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 21, 183–226.
Wilson, D., & Sperber, D
(2012)  Meaning and Relevance . Cambridge: CUP. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winner, E
(1988)  The Point of Words: Children’s Understanding of Metaphor and Irony . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Winner, E., Brownell, H., Happé, F., Blum, A., & Pincus, D
(1998) Distinguishing lies from jokes: Theory of mind deficits and discourse interpretation in right hemisphere brain-damaged patients. Brain and Language , 62, 89–106. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Winner, E., & Leekam, S
(1991) Distinguishing irony from deception: Understanding the speaker’s second-order intention. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Special Perspectives on the Child’s Theory of Mind: II , 9, 257–270.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Hess Zimmermann, Karina, Graciela Fernández Ruiz & Andrea Minerva Silva López
2021. ¿Para qué ironizamos? Reflexiones de adolescentes de 12 y 15 años sobre las funciones de la ironía verbal. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages 8:1 ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Lehmann, Claudia & Alexander Bergs
2021. As if irony was in stock. Constructions and Frames 13:2 ► pp. 309 ff. Crossref logo
ZAJĄCZKOWSKA, Maria, Kirsten ABBOT-SMITH & Christina S. KIM
2020. Using shared knowledge to determine ironic intent; a conversational response paradigm. Journal of Child Language 47:6 ► pp. 1170 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 08 june 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.