On the psycholinguistics of sarcasm.

Abstract

Results are reported of six experiments in which comprehension and memory for sarcastic statements in conversation are examined. Data from three reading-time studies indicate that people do not need to first process the literal meanings of sarcastic expressions, such as "You're a fine friend" (meaning "You're a bad friend"), before deriving their nonliteral, sarcastic interpretations. Subjects also comprehended instances of sarcasm based on an explicit echoic mention of some belief, societal norm, or previously stated opinion faster than they did instances in which the echo was only implicit. Three additional experiments examining memory for sarcasm showed that sarcasm was remembered much better than literal uses of the same expressions of nonsarcastic equivalents. Moreover, subjects recalled sarcasm that explicitly echoed a previously mentioned belief or societal norm more often that they remembered sarcasm that did not involve some explicit echo. Together, these experiments demonstrated that ease of processing and memory for sarcastic utterances depends crucially on how explicitly a speaker's statement echoes either the addressee or some other source's putative beliefs, opinions, or previous statement.

The use of co-textual irony markers in written discourse

“…The direct access view is a model of irony comprehension that predicts that co-and context are important factors in irony processing (e.g., Gibbs 1994). The claims of the direct access view are also supported by various empirical studies (e.g., Gibbs 1986;Ivanko & Pexman 2003). These studies show that it depends on the co-and context whether literal utterances are processed faster than ironic utterances or not.…”

Virgin soil in irony research: Personality, humor, and the “sense of irony”.

“…Following Schmidt-Hidding (1963), irony is characterized by saying something differently than what is meant (but with an in-group-serving intent), whereas sarcasm indeed employs the figure of irony but in the context of hostile behavior. In line with this distinction, Gibbs (1986) refers to The Oxford English Dictionary when he defines that "sarcasm depends for its effect on 'bitter, caustic, and other ironic language that is usually directed against an individual'" (p. 3). However, he specifies that "it is possible to make sarcastic remarks without being ironic" (Gibbs, 1986, p. 3).…”

Where is the humor in verbal irony?

“…However, the psycholinguistic literature presents contrasting data on this issue. For example, Gibbs (1986aGibbs ( , 1986b and Pexman et al (2000) have shown, using different measures of processing effort, that people often understand ironic messages as quickly as literal ones. Even complex ironic expressions, such as "Why don't you take your time washing the dishes?"…”