Children's Perceptions of the Social Functions of Verbal Irony

Abstract

Verbal irony can serve many social functions: Speakers can mute the aggression conveyed by criticism or temper the praise conveyed by a compliment (the Tinge Hypothesis; Dews, Kaplan, & Winner, 1995), and speakers can also bring humor to a situation. A full understanding of ironic language requires one to make complex inferences about speaker intent, a task that can be challenging for children. This study was devised as a developmental test of the Tinge Hypothesis. Two experiments assessed 5- to 6- and 7- to 8-year-old children's abilities to detect and interpret the aggressive and humorous intent of speakers who made ironic criticisms, literal criticisms, ironic compliments, and literal compliments depicted in puppet shows. When children detected the use of irony, their aggression ratings provided support for the Tinge Hypothesis but their humor ratings indicated that the humor function was not recognized.