The on-line processing of written irony

Filik, Ruth; Moxey, Linda M.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.06.005

Cited by 121 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…In other words, it seems that we failed to support the prediction that increasing the degree of manifestness of the speaker’s expectation in the context offers an initial processing advantage for sarcastic utterances. These results are in line with those of previous studies of irony processing that report a literality effect (e.g., Filik et al, 2014 for unfamiliar ironies; Filik & Moxey, 2010; Giora, 1995; Giora et al, 1998, 2007; Kaakinen et al, 2014). …”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

“…In a typical experiment, participants would be presented with scenarios that would end in an utterance that could be interpreted as either literal or sarcastic. On the one hand, evidence from self-paced reading studies (e.g., Giora, 1995; Giora, Fein, & Schwartz, 1998; Spotorno & Noveck, 2014), and eye-tracking studies (e.g., Filik & Moxey, 2010; Kaakinen, Olkoniemi, Kinnari, & Hyönä, 2014) showing that sarcasm comprehension takes longer than literal language comprehension, has been taken to support modular accounts. Other evidence showing that sarcasm can be comprehended as fast as literal language, again from self-paced reading (e.g., Gibbs, 1986), and additionally from visual-world paradigm studies (e.g., Kowatch, Whalen, & Pexman, 2013), has been taken as support for more interactive accounts.…”

Section: Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context.

Țurcan

Filik

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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This article addresses a current theoretical debate between the standard pragmatic model, the graded salience hypothesis, and the implicit display theory, by investigating the roles of the context and of the properties of the sarcastic utterance itself in the comprehension of a sarcastic remark. Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted where we manipulated the speaker’s expectation in the context and the familiarity of the sarcastic remark. The results of the first eye-tracking study showed that literal comments were read faster than unfamiliar sarcastic comments, regardless of whether an explicit expectation was present in the context. The results of the second eye-tracking study indicated an early processing difficulty for unfamiliar sarcastic comments, but not for familiar sarcastic comments. Later reading time measures indicated a general difficulty for sarcastic comments. Overall, results seem to suggest that the familiarity of the utterance does indeed affect the time course of sarcasm processing (supporting the graded salience hypothesis), although there is no evidence that making the speaker’s expectation explicit in the context affects it as well (thus failing to support the implicit display theory).

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context.

Țurcan

Filik

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…Instead, while replicating previous results (e.g., Colston and Gibbs 2002;Filik et al 2013;Filik and Moxey 2010;Giora and Fein 1999a;Giora et al 1998;Pexman et al 2000;Schwoebel et al 2000), these findings argue in favor of the view that context cannot bypass salient although inappropriate meanings and hence salience-based yet inappropriate interpretations. The latter, therefore, emerged earlier than nonsalient yet context-based interpretations, on account of their reliance on salient meanings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

“…Such contexts did not filter out incompatible salience-based interpretations, which surfaced initially; nor did they facilitate ironic interpretations immediately. Allowing comprehenders long enough processing time did not make a difference either (for a review, see ; for more recent corroborating results, see Filik et al 2014;Filik and Moxey 2010).…”

Section: Strong Contextual Support: the Expectation Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 88%

On the priority of salience-based interpretations: The case of sarcastic irony

Fein

Yeari

Giora

2015

Intercultural Pragmatics

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Results from 2 experiments support the view that, regardless of strength of contextual expectation for utterance nonsalient (ironic) interpretation, (a) salience-based interpretations will not be blocked. Instead, they will be facilitated initially. And, (b) if conducive to the interpretation process, they will not be suppressed, albeit incompatible (Giora 2003;Giora and Fein 1999a;Giora and Fein 1999b;). In Experiment 1, expectancy for an ironic utterance was manipulated by introducing an ironic speaker, whose ironic utterances were prefaced by overt ironic cues, making explicit the speaker's ironic intent. In Experiment 2, expectancy strongly biased via repeated exposure to ironic utterances, was further strengthened by informing participants that the experiment was testing sarcasm interpretation. Long processing times were allowed so as to tap later (suppression) processes. Results from reading times and lexical decisions support the temporal priority of salience-based interpretations, while arguing against both, the contextualist views (Gibbs 2002;Katz 2009) and the Gricean suppression hypothesis (Grice 1975).

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“…Given these findings, the indirect-access model was challenged by a direct-access model (Gibbs, 1994; Gibbs & Gerrig, 1989; Glucksberg, 1991, 2003), according to which comprehenders use contextual information to immediately select the intended meaning of a word or expression, so that priority in processing is not necessarily given to either the literal or semantically complex interpretation. While these findings led many psycholinguists to see the indirect-access model as discredited, a number of studies investigating a variety of figurative language forms have continued to produce patterns of results that are consistent with its prediction that semantically complex expressions should take more time to process than literal expressions (e.g., Coulson & Van Petten, 2002, 2007; De Grauwe, Swain, Holcomb, Ditman, & Kuperberg, 2010; Dews & Winner, 1999; Filik & Moxey, 2010; Giora, Fein, & Schwartz, 1998; Honeck, Welge, & Temple, 1998; Lai, Curran, & Menn, 2009; Lowder & Gordon, 2012, 2013; Schwoebel, Dews, Winner, & Srinivas, 2000; Tartter, Gomes, Dubrovsky, Molholm, & Stewart, 2002; Temple & Honeck, 1999). These findings indicate that evidence about processing time does not necessarily lead to a rejection of the indirect-access model (cf.…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

The manuscript that we finished: Structural separation reduces the cost of complement coercion.

Lowder¹,

Gordon²

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Two eye-tracking experiments examined the effects of sentence structure on the processing of complement coercion, in which an event-selecting verb combines with a complement that represents an entity (e.g., began the memo). Previous work has demonstrated that these expressions impose a processing cost, which has been attributed to the need to type-shift the entity into an event in order for the sentence to be interpretable (e.g., began writing the memo). Both experiments showed that the magnitude of the coercion cost was reduced when the verb and complement appeared in separate clauses (e.g., The memo that was begun by the secretary; What the secretary began was the memo) compared to when the constituents appeared together in the same clause. The moderating effect of sentence structure on coercion is similar to effects that have been reported for the processing of two other types of semantically complex expressions (inanimate subject-verb integration and metonymy). We propose that sentence structure influences the depth at which complex semantic relationships are computed. When the constituents that create the need for a complex semantic interpretation appear in a single clause, readers experience processing difficulty stemming from the need to detect and/or resolve the semantic mismatch. In contrast, the need to engage in additional processing is reduced when the expression is established across a clause boundary or other structure that deemphasizes the complex relationship.

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The on-line processing of written irony

Cited by 121 publications

References 41 publications

An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context.

An eye-tracking investigation of written sarcasm comprehension: The roles of familiarity and context.

On the priority of salience-based interpretations: The case of sarcastic irony

The manuscript that we finished: Structural separation reduces the cost of complement coercion.

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