Journal ArticleDOI
Muting the Meaning A Social Function of Irony
Shelly Dews,Ellen Winner +1 more
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The authors found that the evaluative tone of the literal meaning of ironic utterances automatically colors the hearer's perception of the intended meaning, and that the speaker-target relationship is affected less negatively when the insult is delivered ironically rather than literally.Abstract:
According to the tinge hypothesis, the evaluative tone of the literal meaning of ironic utterances automatically colors the hearer's perception of the intended meaning. In Experiment 1, participants read short stories that end with either a literal or an ironic insult. Ironic insults are rated as less critical than literal insults, and the ironic speaker is rated as less annoyed than the literal speaker. In addition, the speaker-target relationship is affected less negatively when the insult is delivered ironically rather than literally. These results are obtained regardless of whether the addressee or a third person is the target of the remark and regardless of whether the story characters know one another or have just met. In Experiment 2, participants read similar short stories that end with either a literal or ironic compliment. Results mirror those of Experiment 1. Ironic compliments are rated as less praising than literal compliments, and the ironic speaker is rated as less pleased than the literal ...read more
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Understanding figurative and literal language: The graded salience hypothesis
TL;DR: The authors examine the claim that figurative language does not involve processing the surface literal meaning (e.g., Gibbs 1984), and that its comprehension is not processing-intensive, because it does not involving a trigger (eg., Keysar 1989).
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Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence
TL;DR: In this article, the authors introduce the notion of impoliteness and define a metadiscourse for understanding it: face and social norms, intentionality and emotions, and co-texts and contexts.
Interpreting Metaphors and Idioms: Some Effects of Context on Comprehension. Technical Report No. 93.
TL;DR: The comprehension of phrases receiving an idiomatic interpretation took no longer than the comprehension of those same phrases when given a literal interpretation, and there was some evidence that idiomatic interpretations were consistently faster.
Journal ArticleDOI
Irony as relevant inappropriateness
TL;DR: The authors presented a theory of irony which claims that an ironical utterance is both inappropriate and relevant to its context, and extensive discussion of previous theories of irony is presented to justify the various aspects of the theory and in particular its two-stage processing approach.
Journal ArticleDOI
On irony and negation
TL;DR: In this paper, irony is viewed as a mode of indirect negation, and irony understanding involves processing both negated and implicated messages, so that the difference between them may be computed.
References
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Politeness : Some Universals in Language Usage
TL;DR: Gumperz as discussed by the authors discusses politeness strategies in language and their implications for language studies, including sociological implications and implications for social sciences. But he does not discuss the relationship between politeness and language.
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Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage
TL;DR: This paper presents an argument about the nature of the model and its implications for language studies and Sociological implications and discusses the role of politeness strategies in language.
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The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research.
TL;DR: The authors showed that the language-as-fixed-effect fallacy can be avoided by doing the right statistics, selecting the appropriate design, and sampling by systematic procedures, or by proceeding according to the so-called method of single cases.
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The comprehension of idioms
TL;DR: This paper investigated the access of idiomatic expressions in three cross-modal priming experiments and found that subjects were faster at performing a lexical decision to idiomatic related targets than to literally related targets.