Understanding Verbal Irony: Clues From Interpretation of Direct and Indirect Ironic Remarks

Abstract

Recently, irony researchers have emphasized that irony interpretation involves metarepresentational inferencing in order that the perceiver can determine whether the speaker's attitude is counterfactual to their statement. This research investigated whether the perception of irony also depends on the extent to which an ironic statement is suitably face-threatening in its particular context. Target statements were direct and indirect ironic remarks, and context conditions were modulated on 2 dimensions: context incongruity (strong vs. weak) and speaker–target relationship (close vs. distant). This study examined interpretations of ironic criticisms (Experiments 1 and 2) and ironic compliments (Experiment 3). Results showed evidence that suitable face-threat was important to a perception of irony: In some contexts (strongly incongruent context and close speaker–target relationships), irony was perceived more strongly for direct ironic remarks; and in other contexts (weakly incongruent context and distant speaker–target relationships), irony was perceived more strongly for indirect ironic remarks.

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