Children's Understanding Of The Meaning And Function Of Verbal Irony

Irony has always been the research focus of many subjects such as rhetoric, philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Traditional research usually considers irony as a kind of trope. However, since 1980s the focus of irony research shifted from rhetoric and semantic perspectives to cognitive and pragmatic perspectives.Psycholinguistic study of irony mainly includes the characters of irony, mechanism of comprehension, pragmatic value, perception of function as well as psychological factors constraining irony understanding and processing. There are several theory models about the essence of irony, and the most forceful one so far is allusion and pretense theory of irony brought forward by Kumon—Nakamura.According to this theory, necessary characters of irony are allusion and pragmatic pretense, and forms of irony are not merely counterfactual statement , but include many other forms such as true statement, rhetoric question, offering and thanks.Former research indicates that children of 6 years old have been able to understand irony and the ability of understanding related to emergence of second-order theory of mind. Functions of irony include meanness, humor and politeness. Children are able to perceive the meanness of irony to a certain extent since they can understand it. However, there are different views on whether irony is meaner or less mean than literal forms, mainly tinge hypothesis versus contrast and assimilation theory. Children's perception of the humor of irony begins at about 8, several years later than the perception of meanness. The perception of politeness of irony begins between 9 to 11 years old. However, these studies are all based on one form of irony that is counterfactual statement.Story reading which is most often used in previous research is used to examine children's understanding of the meaning and function of verbal irony, as well as the influence of the relationship of communication. Subjects of this research include four groups, that is, 6, 8,10 and 12 years old. The results indicate that children of different years old differ in their sensitivities to different forms of irony, but counterfactual is the worst understood through all groups. Children's ability to perceive the meanness of irony improves gradually as the age accreted, and displays a trend of tinging, and differences among forms of irony can be explained under the framework of contrast and assimilation theory. Children's perception of humor of irony doesn't appear notable until 10 years old, but the perception of politeness of irony doesn't appear even at 12 years old. Both of forms of irony and relationship of communication influence children's understanding of the meaning and function of verbal irony. On the whole, influence of the relationship of communication is greater on young children while influence of forms become greater as the age accreted.