Indian children’s understanding of
verbal irony
Upasna Behl
Education Quality Foundation of India
Nandita Chaudhary
Ph. D., University of Delhi
XXth Congress of IACCP 2010, 7th – 10th July 2010, Melbourne, Australia
Theoretical Background
‰ Verbal irony
– what you say is different from what you
mean, serves social and pragmatic functions
• Ironic criticism - positive sentence meaning conveys
negative intended meaning
• Ironic compliment - negative sentence meaning conveys
positive speaker meaning
‰
Comprehension of verbal irony emerges around 6 years of
age (Dews et al., 1996; Dyer, 2003)
‰
Comprehension of ironic criticism appears prior to that of
ironic compliment (Hancock, Dunham & Purdy, 2007)
‰
Some components of irony: pragmatic competence,
metalinguistic awareness, perspective taking, understanding
emotional states, and second order intentions
Objectives of the Study
Assuming that socialization and cultural explanations would
influence the sequence and emergence of the understanding of
verbal irony. The present study investigated:
‰ children’s understanding of
the meaning and functions of
verbal irony
‰ age trends in children’s understanding of
verbal irony
‰ cultural patterns in functions related to irony by children
‰ parents’
irony
beliefs about children’s understanding of verbal
Method
Participants
‰ 30 Children (ten 4-5 year-olds, ten
6-7 year-olds, ten 8-9
year-olds)
‰ 15 Adults, one parent each of five selected children from each
of the age groups
‰ All families were middle-class, educated, bilingual (Hindi and
English), living in New Delhi, India
Tools
‰
Story comprehension task:
- four short stories
- ending with a literal/ironic remark
- one for each of the types – literal criticism, ironic criticism,
literal compliment and ironic compliment
Method
‰
Picture comprehension task, using thought bubble and
speech bubble:
- hypothetical situations (one for criticism and one for
compliment)
- literal and ironic remarks presented in similar
contexts in contrast to the story comprehension task
‰
Rating Scale:
- with facial expressions depicting two emotional states –
sad and happy (Figure 1)
Method
Procedure
‰
Participants tested individually
‰
In case of children, first stories presented in a random
order
‰
Picture comprehension task, literal and ironic remarks (made by
two different characters) presented using speech bubble and the
same characters thought about their actual intentions using
thought bubble
‰
In case of parents, only story comprehension task was conducted,
they were asked to give their assessment of the child’s
understanding
Analysis
‰
Qualitative analysis to evaluate children’s understanding
and developmental trends
‰
Categories (emerged from questions) used for analysis:
- Detection of speaker’s actual belief and the cue used
- Interpretation of critical context information
- Function of the remark/speakers’ pragmatic intent
- Feeling/emotional state of the target character
- Social appropriateness of the remark
‰
Linkages were made between responses and cultural
patterns
Results
Ironic criticism
‰ Comprehension:
(Figure 2)
‰ Functions:
Figure 2: Comprehension of Ironic Criticism
4-5 year olds – muting, true intentions conveyed
6-7 year olds – teasing, humour, disobedience, muting
8-9 year olds - teasing, effective communication, humour, one
child when interpreting the context was himself being ironic,
muting, humour and mockery with the intention of ridicule,
one child specified “NOT teasing”
Results
Ironic compliments
‰ Comprehension:
(Figure 3)
Figure 3: Comprehension of Ironic Compliment
‰ Functions:
4-5 year olds – jealousy
6-7 year olds – teasing, jealousy, humour
8-9 year olds – teasing, humour and jealousy
Results
‰ Feelings of the target character
- ironic criticism associated with sadness
- for ironic compliment, 8 year olds sensitive towards
pragmatic
intent before describing the emotional state
- understand playful nature, if positively oriented
‰ Social appropriateness
- older children considered speaker meaning and pragmatic
intent
- positive functions (muting, effective communication,
disobedience) judged as appropriate
- negative functions (teasing, jealousy, humour, mockery)
considered inappropriate
- only exception was humour function, judged appropriate
in case of compliments
Results
‰
No significant difference in the understanding of ironic
criticism and compliments as expected from review
‰ Where remarks not perceived as ironic, taken as either a
‘mistake’ or a literal remark
‰ Picture task was easier than story task
‰ Parents’
beliefs
- overestimated comprehension for the youngest age-group
- reasonable accurate assessment for older children
- understanding of functions was overestimated
- underestimated their abilities regarding social
appropriateness of ironic remarks
Conclusion
‰ Comprehension of verbal irony:
- emerges between 4-5 years of age (with remarkable
intermediate level of detection)
- considerable understanding develops between 6-7 years
- complex understanding develops by 9
‰ Younger children showed early detection of
social use of
language
‰
Older children attributed more complex functions
‰
Many functions that emerged not evident in any literature
review, children identified negative and positive pragmatic
intent
‰
Cultural prevalence of ironic compliments in adults’
interactions could be a possible explanation for findings of
ironic compliments being understood by children
Conclusion
‰
Parents’ estimations suggest interesting trends
‰ Some critical points in the comprehension of irony:
- both detection of speaker’s belief and pragmatic intent are
critical, irrespective of the sequence of their emergence
- contextual information, important cue for detection
- functions attributed determine effectiveness and
social appropriateness of the remark
‰ This study extends knowledge in the area of
language
development and social cognition by providing findings of
communication patterns and socialization practices in the
Indian setting
Emerging implications: inferring children’s pragmatic
competence, meta-linguistic awareness, perspective taking skills,
understanding of emotional states and second order intentions
‰