Irony: Context and Salience

Understanding irony in autism : The role of context and prosody

Charcot's irony and sarcasm.

Jean-Martin Charcot is considered the father of modern neurology and was the first neurologist to hold a professorship of international stature devoted to the study of the diseases of the nervous system. His biographers paint an image of an austere presence, reserved manner, shyness, economy of gestures and an impenetrable, impassive face. However, a wry and sarcastic side of Charcot can be dem...

Explaining irony

1. Traditional approaches to irony Here are some typical examples of verbal irony: (1) Mary (after a boring party): That was fun. (2) I left my bag in the restaurant, and someone kindly walked off with it. (3) Sue (to someone who has done her a disservice): I can't thank you enough. In each case, the point of the irony is to indicate that a proposition the speaker might otherwise be taken to en...

Lake irony

Kenya over the last few decades, and the change from a nomadic lifestyle to communally owned ranches, wildlife in the Samburu District is under threat from deforestation, land degradation, overgrazing by livestock, and unsustainable water use. Alexander Njue, who is also involved in a separate Earthwatchsponsored project studying the wildlife habitats in this area, hopes that wildlife can also ...

Irony and metarepresentation

This paper considers how two recent accounts of verbal irony – the pretence account and the echoic account – can explain a range of experimental results on the nature of irony and the differences between irony and metaphor. Of particular interest is the fact that irony comprehension correlates with success in standard second-order falsebelief tasks, and therefore requires a higher order of meta...