Chapter published in:Irony in Language Use and Communication
Edited by Angeliki Athanasiadou and Herbert L. Colston
[Figurative Thought and Language 1] 2017
► pp. 255–276
Chapter 12Investigating sarcasm comprehension using eye-tracking during reading
What are the roles of literality, familiarity, and echoic mention?
This chapter tests the hypothesised effects of various factors on sarcasm processing. In an eye-tracking experiment, participants read texts ending in either literal or sarcastic and familiar or unfamiliar remarks, either echoing a previous contextual utterance or not. Results indicated that (1) the effect of utterance literality was observed in the later processing stages when sarcasm was more difficult to process than literal language, (2) utterance familiarity also affected processing, and (3) echoing an antecedent made comments faster to read. A novel finding was that echoing an antecedent made sarcastic comments as easy to process as literal equivalents – a result not easily explained within any of the frameworks under investigation here. Implications for theories of sarcasm comprehension are discussed.
- Empirical evidence
- Materials and design
- The pre-critical region
- The critical region
- The post-critical region
- Utterance literality
- Utterance familiarity
- Echoic mention
Published online: 14 December 2017
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