An Empirical Study On The Impact Of Emotional Contexts On L2 Irony Processing

Irony is a form of indirect language used by speakers to express the opposite of what is said.Scholars believe that irony can not only weaken criticism,but also enhance the negative mental state of readers,and different emotional contexts affect the ways and contents of readers’ processing of irony.At present,scholars have different views on the nature of irony,that is,there is still no consensus on how irony affects mental state.At the same time,the existing research mainly focuses on the influence of emotional context on the processing of irony by native English speakers,and we have not seen any research on the L2 irony processing from the perspective of emotional contexts.Therefore,the present study refers to Pfeifer ＆ Lai’s（2021）experimental materials and paradigms,and uses E-Prime 3.0,SPSS 26.0 statistical analysis software and R programming software to explore the impact of emotional contexts on L2 irony processing by Chinese English learners.Based on the findings of existing literature,the present research investigates the following issues: 1)How does the use of irony affect learners’ negative mental states in different emotional contexts? 2)Does emotional context affect the processing of L2 irony of Chinese English learners? If yes,what is the impact? In experiment one,participants were asked to evaluate the emotional valence and arousal of the mental states in which the protagonist used ironic and literal statements in different emotional contexts.According to the tinge hypothesis,no matter how negative the context is,irony users will have fewer negative mental states.In contrast to the tinge hypothesis,contrast and assimilation theory holds that the negative mental state of irony users will be weakened in low emotional context but increased in high emotional context.The data results show that L2 ironic statements can activate less negative emotional states and less emotional arousal than literal statements in both high and low emotional contexts.The results of experimental one support the “tinge hypothesis”.In experiment two,an online test was used to investigate the processing of L2 irony in different emotional contexts by Chinese English learners,so as to understand the influence of emotional context on L2 irony processing.The results show that: 1)Emotional context has an impact on L2 irony processing,and the processing cost of L2 ironic statements in high emotional context is significantly higher than that in low emotional context;2)The effects of different emotional contexts on the processing of L2 irony are similar: in both high and low emotional contexts,the processing cost of L2 ironic statements is significantly higher than that of literal statement.The results confirm the priming effect of emotional context on L2 irony processing.The present research analyzes and explains the research results from the aspects of emotional priming effect,semantic integration,two-stage processing,and pragmatic reasoning.The results of this study have certain circumstantial significance for the research on the cognitive processing of L2 irony.But,English proficiency also has influence on the acquisition and processing of irony.In the future,we can further explore whether there are differences in the cognitive processing of L2 irony among learners with different English proficiencies.