Irony, Prosody, and Social Impressions of Affective Stance

Mauchand, Maël; Vergis, Nikos; Pell, Marc D.

doi:10.1080/0163853x.2019.1581588

Cited by 29 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…unfriendly), ironic compliments were rated much less friendly than could have been expected by the speaker; in fact, the perceived friendliness of teasing did not differ significantly from sarcasm. These results, frequently observed in prior studies [4], [7], [8], cannot be explained by a misunderstanding of the prosodic cues, since directed attention to these cues yield very accurate recognition of their friendly nature [17]; even the explicit incongruent context is not sufficient to facilitate a more friendly interpretation of teasing [4]. Recent evidence suggests that the source of the asymmetry actually arises from the nature of the content: negative content appears to be given more weight in the mental representation of a speaker's attitude, thus diminishing the importance of prosodic cues for the interpretation of intent [17].…”

Section: Ironic Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 49%

“…When content was positive, perceptual ratings showed that listeners accurately discriminated irony from literality, rating sarcastic utterances (-.299, SD = .565) significantly less friendly than nice utterances (.843, SD = .342) [17]. This distinction was accurate and significant for all sentence tokens (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Positive Contentmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…When content was negative, perceptual ratings showed that listeners still accurately discriminated irony from literality, with teasing utterances (-.387, SD = .622) rated more friendly than mean utterances (-1.07, SD = .295) [17]. Moreover, Figure 1 shows that both attitudes were correctly distinguished for all sentence tokens.…”

Section: Negative Contentmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Although the concept of an ironic tone of voice is oversimplified, it is possible that some prosodic cues are used preferentially to signal a particular type of ironic incongruence (e.g., sarcasm). A recent study observed that listeners were extremely accurate in distinguishing ironic prosody from literal prosody, for both compliments and criticisms, without any other contextual cues [17], suggesting that there are indeed prosodic cues sufficient to identify irony. However, whether these cues vary across utterances or follow similar patterns when differentiating ironic/literal compliments from ironic/literal criticisms requires further analysis, which the present study aims to initiate through the observation of a few basic, global acoustic features.…”

Section: Ironic Prosodymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimuli described below are the same as in a previous experiment by the authors; more extensive description of the methods can be found in this paper [17].…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ironic tones of voices

Mauchand¹,

Vergis²,

Pell³

2018

Speech Prosody 2018

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While prosody is thought to play a major role in the production and comprehension of irony, the manner in which prosody is used to signal ironic intentions is still poorly understood. The complexity and variety of ironic interactions create divergences in the observations of irony production and interpretation, making the theoretical "ironic tone of voice" a challenging concept to define. To examine the possibility of such a concept, acoustic and perceptual measurements were performed on literal or ironic criticisms and compliments. Our goal was to isolate cues specific to different attitudes conveyed and to relate these cues to the recognition and interpretation of particular attitudes. The very accurate discrimination between literal and ironic utterances in the perceptual judgements contrasted with the diversity in prosodic strategies between and within each attitude. We found that ironic criticisms (sarcasm) could often be distinguished from literal compliments based on increased utterance duration and reduced pitch variability. However, none of the acoustic measures significantly predicted the distinction between ironic compliments (teasing) and literal criticisms. This asymmetry in the prosodic strategies, when related to the asymmetries in production and interpretation of ironies, highlighted the interdependence between prosodic consistency and functional interpersonal interactions in ironic speech.

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Section: Ironic Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 49%

Section: Positive Contentmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Negative Contentmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Ironic Prosodymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimuli described below are the same as in a previous experiment by the authors; more extensive description of the methods can be found in this paper [17].…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations