Cognitive Processing and Contextual Factors in Irony Detection

Prototypical Cases of Ironic Interpretation

The following principles describe the relationship between utterance processing, contextual information, and the identification of ironic intent:

1. Uttering an ironic utterance is not a condition for the hearer to access information from different contextual sources and infer the ironic intention. The hearer can infer intention even before the utterance has been spoken.
2. Complete processing of the utterance is not a condition for accessing the ironic interpretation. Sometimes, the ironic interpretation is obtained even before the utterance has been processed completely (i.e., before all the words have been identified).
3. It is not always necessary to process completely the explicit information contained in the utterance to access the implicit ironic interpretation.
4. However, if there is limited contextual information available, the hearer may process the explicit (literal) interpretation of the utterance completely before accessing the intended ironic interpretation.
5. Sometimes the hearer does not access the intended ironic interpretation due to an erroneous prediction by the speaker about the hearer’s ability to utilize contextual information. In this case, the hearer will stop processing at the explicit (literal) interpretation and will not identify the intended irony.

Prototype Case 1: Pre-Processing Ironic Identification

Interpretation in which, thanks to a high level of contextual information, the ironic intention is identified even before the logical form (“zero context” identification of words) has been fully processed by the language module of the brain.

Prototype Case 2: Ironic Intent Before Literal Processing

Interpretation in which, thanks to a high level of contextual information, the ironic intention is obtained before the explicit (literal) interpretation of the utterance has been fully processed.

Prototype Case 3: Parallel Interpretation (Uncommon)

Interpretation in which the ironic intention is obtained in parallel to the identification of the explicit (literal) interpretation of the utterance (not very common).

Prototype Case 4: Literal Interpretation Precedes Irony Search

Interpretation in which, due to the weak contextual information available, the identification of the explicit (literal) interpretation of the utterance is, on paper, plausible, and hence precedes the search and identification of the intended ironic interpretation.

Prototype Case 5: Misunderstanding Due to Weak Context

Interpretation in which, due to very weak contextual information available, the explicit (literal) interpretation obtained is not only plausible, but is the only interpretation selected, and hence, the intended ironic interpretation is not detected (resulting in a misunderstanding).