The present study in French sought to investigate which factors predict irony perception most efficiently. An experiment was developed following three steps. The first two steps focused on the creation of stimuli to be evaluated in the third step. In this last step, participants, whose sociocultural characteristics (gender, age, and level of…

In spoken discourse, understanding irony requires the apprehension of subtle cues, such as the speaker's tone of voice (prosody), which often reveal the speaker's affective stance toward the listener in the context of the utterance. To shed light on the interplay of linguistic content and prosody on impressions of spoken criticisms and compliments…

Several theoretical proposals tried to account for the meaning open-endedness of metaphors in literature and for the effortful process they trigger in readers. However, very few experiments have tackled the neurophysiological underpinnings of literary metaphor. Here we used Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) to explore the temporal dynamics of…

In the context of texts that depicted either a minimally confrontational conversation (study 1) or a more confrontational argument (study 2) with a close friend, the use of ironic criticism was rated as being more humorous, polite, and positive, yet also as more sarcastic and mocking than direct criticism. Although our results were consistent with…

This article investigates the contextual components utilized to convey sarcastic verbal irony, testing whether theoretical components deemed as necessary for creating a sense of irony are, in fact, necessary. A novel task was employed: Given a set of statements that out of context were not rated as sarcastic, participants were instructed to either…

Two experiments investigated the processing and appreciation of double grounding, a form of intentional ambiguity often used in the construction of headlines. For example, in "Russia takes the froth off Carlsberg results," the key element, "takes the froth off," is significant both metaphorically, where it refers to the…