Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought
- Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
- The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Part I Introduction
- Part II The Scope of Irony
- Part III Irony’s Impact
- Part IV Irony in Linguistic Communication
- 8 Constructions in Verbal Irony Production: The Case of Rhetorical Questions
- 9 Tracking the Ironical Eye: Eye Tracking Studies on Irony and Sarcasm
- 10 Inferring Irony Online
- 11 Irony and Thought: Developmental Insights
- 12 Vocal Strategies in Verbal Irony
- 13 Great Expectations and EPIC Fails: A Computational Perspective on Irony and Sarcasm
- Part V Irony, Affect, and Related Figures
- Part VI Irony in Expressive, Nonlinguistic Media
- Index
- References
11 - Irony and Thought: Developmental Insights
from Part IV - Irony in Linguistic Communication
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought
- Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology
- The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Part I Introduction
- Part II The Scope of Irony
- Part III Irony’s Impact
- Part IV Irony in Linguistic Communication
- 8 Constructions in Verbal Irony Production: The Case of Rhetorical Questions
- 9 Tracking the Ironical Eye: Eye Tracking Studies on Irony and Sarcasm
- 10 Inferring Irony Online
- 11 Irony and Thought: Developmental Insights
- 12 Vocal Strategies in Verbal Irony
- 13 Great Expectations and EPIC Fails: A Computational Perspective on Irony and Sarcasm
- Part V Irony, Affect, and Related Figures
- Part VI Irony in Expressive, Nonlinguistic Media
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter describes how children learn to produce and understand irony. Children do not usually understand irony very well until age 6 or so, a developmental process that continues to unfold throughout childhood. Pexman explores how children’s developing cognitive and linguistic skills (e.g., theory of mind abilities, specific language skills, executive functions related to metarepresentaitonal reasoning, emotion recognition, and epistemic vigilance) are critical to their becoming competent in understanding irony. Research on adults’ irony understanding suggests that part of children’s irony abilities may be explained via the parallel-constraint-satisfaction (PCS) theory that demonstrates how language, quite generally, is comprehended via the online integration of multiple discourse and sociocultural cues. Pexman discusses new findings from studies that may offer greater precision in detailing exactly how both children and adults detect and combine various cues in a predictive manner to quickly infer the complexities of ironic messages. She also sketches out several concrete directions for future experimental studies to better understand when and how children understand irony.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Handbook of Irony and Thought , pp. 181 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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