TY - JOUR
T1 - Expecting irony
T2 - Context versus salience-based effects
AU - Giora, Rachel
AU - Fein, Ofer
AU - Laadan, Dafna
AU - Wolfson, Joe
AU - Zeituny, Michal
AU - Kidron, Ran
AU - Kaufman, Ronie
AU - Shaham, Ronit
N1 - Funding Information:
The studies reported here were supported by a grant to the first author by Adams Super Center for Brain Tel Aviv University, and by Tel Aviv University Basic Research Fund. We thank Tal Eyal for very helpful comments, Veronica Yudkevich for help with the second experiment, Adi Ezra for help with the third experiment, and Robyn Carston, Ray Gibbs, and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful criticisms.
PY - 2008/3/20
Y1 - 2008/3/20
N2 - Results from 4 experiments support the view that, regardless of contextual information, when an end-product interpretation of an utterance does not rely on the salient (lexicalized and prominent) meanings of its components, it will not be faster than nor as fast to derive as when it does. To test this view, we looked into interpretations of salience-based (here, literal) interpretations and expectation-based (here, ironic) interpretations in contexts inducing an expectation for irony. In Experiment 1, expectancy was manipulated by introducing an ironic speaker in vivo who also uttered the target utterance. Findings show that ironic targets were slower to read than literal counterparts. Experiment 2 shows that ironies took longer to read than literals and that response times to ironically related probes were longer than to literally related probes, regardless of context. Experiments 3 and 4 show that, even when participants were given extra processing time and were exclusively presented ironically biasing contexts, the expectancy for irony acquired throughout such exposure did not facilitate expectancy-based compared to salience-based interpretations.
AB - Results from 4 experiments support the view that, regardless of contextual information, when an end-product interpretation of an utterance does not rely on the salient (lexicalized and prominent) meanings of its components, it will not be faster than nor as fast to derive as when it does. To test this view, we looked into interpretations of salience-based (here, literal) interpretations and expectation-based (here, ironic) interpretations in contexts inducing an expectation for irony. In Experiment 1, expectancy was manipulated by introducing an ironic speaker in vivo who also uttered the target utterance. Findings show that ironic targets were slower to read than literal counterparts. Experiment 2 shows that ironies took longer to read than literals and that response times to ironically related probes were longer than to literally related probes, regardless of context. Experiments 3 and 4 show that, even when participants were given extra processing time and were exclusively presented ironically biasing contexts, the expectancy for irony acquired throughout such exposure did not facilitate expectancy-based compared to salience-based interpretations.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=40649116803&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10926480701235346
DO - 10.1080/10926480701235346
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AN - SCOPUS:40649116803
SN - 1092-6488
VL - 22
SP - 119
EP - 146
JO - Metaphor and Symbol
JF - Metaphor and Symbol
IS - 2
ER -