Which contextual and sociocultural information predict irony perception?

ABSTRACT

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 education) were taken into account as factors, evaluated utterances according to their level of irony and the presence of contextual factors (i.e., allusion to a failed expectancy, negative tension, and presence of a victim). The absence or presence of a lexical marker in the utterances was also a controlled factor. The main results revealed contextual factors as the strongest predictors of irony perception, but also pointed out the not inconsiderable role played by the sociocultural factors (gender and level of education) of the participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Each stimulus was rated by two different participants. To assess the influence of the raters, repeated-measures ANOVAs 2 production instruction (ironic, sincere) x 2 rater (number 1, number 2) were performed on the judgment of the three pragmatic constraints. Since results from these ANOVAs showed no main effect of the rater or interaction with this factor, this factor was removed from the analyses. For more clarity, we only present results from the paired samples t-tests comparing the presence of the pragmatics constraints (i.e., allusion to a failed expectancy, negative tension, and presence of a victim) in each of the production instruction (ironic, sincere).

2. Each stimulus was rated by two different participants. To assess the influence of the raters, a repeated-measures ANOVA 2 production instruction (ironic, sincere) x 2 gender of the rater (female, male) x 2 lexical marker condition (absent, present) x 2 rater (number 1, number 2) was performed on the level of irony. Since results from this ANOVA showed no main effect of the rater or interaction with this factor, we removed this factor from the analyses and did not present the results.

3. Additional analyses, including the gender of the interlocutor presented in the stimuli in the ANOVA, showed no influence of this factor on the degree of the irony rating (no main effect or interaction with this factor).

4. Standardized coefficient beta: change in standard deviation for the dependant variable (i.e., level of irony) for the increase of one standard deviation of the independent variable (e.g., allusion to a failed expectancy) when all other values are stable.

5. Based on the R2 change.